screening
The work of renowned Serbian director Želimir Žilnik is characterised by a marked social-critical bearing and a specific mixing of fictive and real elements. His visually expressive style and critical, often even politically engaged documents have captured audiences’ attention since the 1960s (in 1969 his film Early Works received the first-prize Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival). In the early 1970s, he was banned from shooting in Yugoslavia for ideological reasons, so he worked as an independent filmmaker in Germany until 1976 (Unter Denkmalschutz, Inventory Metzstrasse 11), In the 1980s, he formulated the unique language of the docu-drama.
During the war in the former Yugoslavia he shot several films that made a swaggering analytical (while maintaining a pertinent overview)query into the roots of nationalism, national myths and relationship to the past (these were made Once Again Among the Serbs, Marble Ass, Throwing Off the Yolks of Bondage...).
Most recently he has been producing low-budget films in his own company Terra Film. Such films include Fortress Europe and Kenedi Goes Back Home, mapping the lives of people of Central and Eastern Europe with impacts on the social and political changes on their lives.
introduced by Vjera Borozan
original version with english subtitles
total length: 80 min.