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The abstract is available here: https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1630987

The characters of Živojin Pavlović’s seminal film The Rats Woke Up (Buđenje Pacova, 1967), regularly discussed in the context of the Yugoslav Black Wave cinema, offer significant and very intriguing figures of dissent. The film depicts misfits, bottom-dwellers, and dissidents living on the margins of society in the largest and capital city of Belgrade at a time when Black Wave authors have been breaking some new grounds for Yugoslav cinema and influencing artists well after the movement became a part of history. This essay concentrates on the characters and their interaction, the complexity of which suggests the complexity of Pavlović’s criticism of everyday life and institutions in the 1960s Yugoslavia.Keywords: Živojin Pavlović, The Rats Woke Up, Black Wave, Belgrade, figures of dissent, film criticism, Yugoslav cinemaHistorical studies of socialist Yugoslav cinema often place special emphasis on the Black Wave tendency of the 1960s and early 1970s (Goulding), sometimes even considering it to be a proper movement. Owing to the Black Wave cinema’s international success accompanied by film reviews and scholarly studies, as well as several major festival awards, it is deemed as one of the lasting cultural legacies of socialist Yugoslavia, a country dissolved at the beginning of the 1990s. The importance of cinema in Yugoslavia’s popular culture is extensively discussed in Radina Vučetić’s book Koka-kola socijalizam (Coca-cola socialism), albeit often from the perspective of western influences, while Greg DeCuire Jr. (2013) discusses the role of “realist” depictions of war and partisan fight in Yugoslav cinema as a part of the State-Building process, building the consensus around the Yugoslav values. The role of the Black cinema, however, points to the complexity of the cinematic institution, wide enough to embrace imported films, local cinematic populism, and (at least for a length of time) the Black Wave cinema (Vučetić 142-66).

U prva dva desetljeća 21. stoljeća u međunarodnom i postjugoslavenskom prostoru pojavilo se nekoliko članaka, studija, monografija, izložbi i DVD-ova koji su u središtu imali jugoslavenski eksperimentalni film, razvojno usko vezan uz kinoklubove i organizirani filmski amaterizam. Ti su materijali otvorili niz pitanja i ukazali na brojne lakune ove paralelne kinematografije, što je posljedično postalo i tema ovog doktorata. Budući da eksperimentalni film u (post)jugoslavenskoj filmologiji, filmskoj kritici i teoriji nije zauzimao preveliku ulogu, nakon obaveznog uvoda koji nudi problemski pregled polja i postojeće literature, drugo je poglavlje posvećeno promišljanju temeljnih pojmova ovog filmskog roda s naglaskom na jugoslavenskom kontekstu. Razmatraju se ideja jugoslavenstva kao zajedničkog nazivnika ovog korpusa filmova, pitanje temeljne definicije eksperimentalnog filma, njegove (avangardne) pozicije između povijesti filma i vizualnih umjetnosti, položaj žena unutar ove umjetničke prakse te se nudi šest postojećih tipologija kojima je analitički i interpretativno moguće obuhvatiti eksperimentalni film. Prvi dio trećeg poglavlja bavi se idejnim i ideološkim koordinatama unutar kojih je eksperimentalni film u Jugoslaviji nastajao te se podrobnije razmatraju razni aspekti njegove usidrenosti u amaterski kontekst. Tu se ujedno donosi i pregled festivala amaterskog i eksperimentalnog filma, kao središnjih mjesta diseminacije znanja i teorije o ovoj filmskoj praksi, te pregled pojedinih (amaterskih, eksperimentalnih) filmskih škola i njima pripadajućih jugoslavenskih teorija eksperimentalnog filma. U četvrtom i petom poglavlju analiziraju se sami filmovi, koji su radi preglednosti podijeljeni u četiri velike cjeline, prepoznate kao četiri polja istraživanja, koja povratno odgovaraju tipološkim pregledima ponuđenima u drugom poglavlju – sadržaj/slika, filmski jezik, filmski dispozitiv, i film kao nadilaženje pokretne slike. Ta su polja istraživanja unutar sebe usitnjena u manje značenjske, sadržajne i interpretativne cjeline, koje odgovaraju raznim aspektima fenomena pokretne slike. The first two decades of the twenty-first century saw a number of articles, monographs, studies, exhibitions and DVDs dedicated to the Yugoslav experimental cinema, a film practice inextricably linked to the cinéclub culture and the organized amateur cinema scene. Whilst these scholarly and non-scholarly works differ in their theoretical and interpretive approaches, they raise a myriad of questions, revealing the numerous lacunae in the knowledge about this parallel cinema; lacunae this dissertation seeks to fill. Bearing in mind that experimental cinema does not figure prominently in the (post)Yugoslav film studies, film criticism or film theory, the mandatory introduction on the existing sources of our knowledge of the subject is followed by a chapter devoted to clarifying the basic concepts of this particular mode of film practice in the Yugoslav context. Therefore, the second chapter opens with one of the most pertinent questions in regard to Yugoslav cinema and in particular, its designation as Yugoslav: the idea of a single cinema unified under that supranational identitary term. The decision to unify and classify the existing body of films as Yugoslav is corroborated by an overview of both historical and contemporary film and art historical debates and reflections on the subject, as well as by the experimental cinematic experiences shared by the filmmakers in Yugoslavia. The same chapter deals with the history of experimental cinema and the invisibility of Yugoslav experimental cinema and examines this film practice as belonging both to the history of cinema as well as the history of visual arts. This fact has likely contributed to its marginalization and invisibility, additionally complicated by the filmmaker’s amateur position in the Yugoslav context. Furthermore, this position has caused a number of other omissions, misunderstandings and oversights, especially when it comes to the women's experimental cinema. Although women did not figure prominently in this field during the 1960s and 1970s, there was a number of remarkable women experimentalists who failed to find their (historical) place in the fragile and provisory canon of Yugoslav experimental cinema, as put forth by the existing literature. For that reason, one of the aims of this dissertation was to seamlessly weave their work back into this field, by looking at the reasons for their exclusion, especially in a society which declaratively proclaimed their equality. Concluding subchapters are devoted to the existing typologies of experimental cinema which could be adequately applied to the films from the Yugoslav context. The typologies used are the ones proposed by Malcolm Le Grice, Nicole Brenez, Amos Vogel, P. Adams Sitney and Hrvoje Turković, complemented by a short overview of various terms used for designating this film practice, which I named "floating categories". The third chapter is dedicated entirely to the manifold facets of experimental cinema in the Yugoslav context, which are relevant for understanding its cultural and ideological position as an independent film practice. Starting with a brief analysis of the rebellious and avant-garde position of experimental cinema within the (contradictory) Yugoslav society of the 1960s and 1970s, and the intricate question of representation of "reality" in cinema – relevant for the subsequent backlash on the so called Black wave cinema in the early 1970s – I proceed with the discussion about the development of experimentalism within its institutional context. The evolution of amateur cinema is scrutinised in parallel with the development of official professional cinema, and the ciné-clubs themselves are discussed under the purview of the Yugoslav organization for technical culture Narodna tehnika (The People's Technics), an organization of and for amateur hobbyists which provided an institutional framework for the birth of experimental cinema. In this subchapter I raise several issues that are important for understanding the ideological position of this oppositional film practice in a socialist society as well as its connection to the Western models of experimental film production and distribution: the questions of individual ciné-club initiatives and independent film studios, and the idea of ciné-clubs functioning as film-makers' cooperatives on the free (socialist) market. The amateur institutional position, nevertheless, caused the instrumentalisation of this film genre and its constant subjugation to the official, professional cinematography, exiling it in the position of permanent in-betweenness and making it difficult for experimental cinema in the Yugoslav context to fully emancipate itself. One of the strategies of Yugoslav experimentalists for navigating both the amateur and the professional context consisted in hijacking the already existing network of amateur festivals organized by the local, federal and republic ciné-associations, and establishing their own festivals which would feature only – or predominantly – experimental films. Four of these festivals are analyzed in the following subchapters – GEFF (1963-1970), MAFAF (1965-1990), Sabor alternativnog filma (1977-1987) and IF STAF (1970-1974). Besides serving as homogenizing events for the multinational Yugoslav (film) community, these festivals also played a key role in the development of Yugoslav experimental film theory. Last part of the third chapter consequently provides a more in-depth view of the dominant experimental/amateur film schools, as articulated precisely in the (experimental) film festival circle – the Zagreb film school, the Belgrade film school and the Split film school. The particular poetics of these schools are analyzed in relation to the particular theories which developed alongside them – the fixation film and antifilm (Zagreb), alternative film (Belgrade) and filmic cardiogram (Split). In the focus of the final two chapters are the interpretations and analyses of selected films . Introductory remarks to the fourth chapter summarize the existing general overviews of Yugoslav experimental cinema: the linear differentiation between particular periods followed by stylistic and poetic examinations (Turković, Obad), the classificatory approach focused on particular filmic procedures (Milošević, Turković) and the differentiation of authors, films and styles according to the particular paradigmatic principles (Vuković). For the purposes of a clearer overview of the films analyzed in these chapters, I decided to divide them into four major areas of research, which I named the content/image, the film language, the cinematic dispositif and the cinema as a mode of transcending the moving image. These areas of research are further fragmented into smaller interpretive and significatory units which correspond to different approaches in the construction of meaning, explorations of particular aspects of the film medium, particular modes of interaction with the camera and the film language, or specific attempts at conveying particular ideas by means of cinema. The above-mentioned fields of research and their representative filmmakers are: political film and the societal critique (Dušan Makavejev, Marko Babac, Želimir Žilnik, Vinko Rozman, Kokan Rakonjac), home movies and diary films (Vukica Đilas, Dragiša Krstić, Biljana Belić), meanings behind textures (Tatjana Ivančić, Ante Verzotti), structures and durations (Tomislav Gotovac, Bojana Vujanović), editing and narration (Ivan Martinac), cinematic tableaux of Karpo Godina, materiality of the film strip (Zlatko Hajdler, Vladimir Petek, Ante Verzotti, Sava Trifković, Nikola Đurić), camera-body (Ante Verzotti, Nikola Đurić, Mihovil Pansini), the text-image (OHO/Naško Križnar, Mladen Stilinović, Ljubiša Grlić), performance for the camera (Ivo Lukas, Tomislav Gotovac, Radoslav Vladić, Karpo Godina, Ante Verzotti, Nuša Dragan), and expanded cinema (Tomislav Kobia, Nikola Đurić, Ivo Lukas, Milenko Jovanović and Miša Avramović). Other films that are mentioned within the course of the analysis, might also serve as equally good examples of the listed procedures. The thesis ends with chapter six serving as the proverbial conclusion, wherein I stress the fact that each freely chosen doctoral dissertation eventually represents an intellectual imprint of personal obsessions, interests and pursuits. All the omissions, mischosen examples, over-accentuated historical, cultural or theoretical questions contribute in part to building a small discursive arena which I felt necessary to enter in order to fully understand the exciting field of Yugoslav experimental cinema.

This paper focuses on the editing career of Radojka Tanhofer, which can be divided into two main phases. The first covers Tanhofer’s years in editing (1940s - 1960s), learning and honing her craft, her work in numerous feature films with a number of domestic and international directors. The second covers her teaching at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, Croatia (from the founding of the Editing Department as a two-year programme in 1969, until its development into a four-year full university study programme in 1977). The aim of this paper is to outline Tanhofer’s significance in the context of Croatian and Yugoslav cinema through the use of existing literature, analysis of significant works of classic Croatian cinema, as well as my own insights into the history and current practice of the Editing Department at the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, as a former student, and now assistant professor., Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, No 7 (2018): Women Cutting Movies: Editors from East and Central Europe

Dieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Laufbahn von Radojka Tanhofer, die in zwei Hauptphasen unterteilt werden kann. Die erste umfasst die Jahre von Tanhofer als Cutterin (1940er–1960er Jahre), das Erlernen und Schärfen ihres Handwerks, ihre Arbeit in zahlreichen Spielfilmen mit einer Reihe von nationalen und internationalen Regisseuren. Die zweite umfasst ihre Lehrtätigkeit an der Akademie für Schauspielkunst in Zagreb, Kroatien (von der Gründung der Montageabteilung und des zweijährigen Studienprogramms 1969 bis zu seiner Erweiterung zu einem vierjährigen Universitätsstudium 1977). Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, Tanhofers Bedeutung im Kontext des kroatischen und jugoslawischen Kinos anhand der vorhandenen Literatur, der Analyse bedeutender Werke des klassischen kroatischen Kinos sowie meiner eigenen Einblicke (als eines ehemaligen Studenten und des heutigen Assistenzprofessor an der Akademie für Schauspielkunst der Universität Zagreb) in die Geschichte und aktuelle Montagepraxis zu erläutern.

Edward Alexander`s review of the book Modernizam u hrvatskom igranom filmu by Tomislav Šakić, Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, No 5 (2017): Mise en geste. Studies of Gesture in Cinema and Art

The work is a review of the poetics and main animated works of Vatroslav Mimica. It explains the author's poetry and place at the Zagreb School of Cartoon Film and its Reception, and is also a generalized place of modernist creativity in canon of Yugoslav and Croatian film.

Her bir argümanı ile güncel yaşam pratiklerinden soyutlanmaya olanak tanıyan, büyüsü ile sanatın en çekici dallarından biri olan sinema, kuşkusuz ki olayların, öykülerin, karakterlerin ve hikayelerin betimlendiği mekanlar ile hafızalarda yer edinir. Görkemli dekorları ve büyülü mekanları ile hayaller kurdurabilen, gerçeğe en yakın görüntüleri ile yaşamı sorgulatabilen sinema, mekan kurguları ile anlatılmak istenenin (içerik) kurgu, ideoloji, mizansen ve form gibi sembolik anlatım araçlarını kullanarak, düşün dünyasını zenginleştirmektedir. Toplumsal referansların izdüşümü niteliğine haiz sinema, içeriği, mekanlarının tasarımı, hikayenin gücü ve oyuncularının ifadeleri ve öğeleri ile birey ve toplumlara, gerçek veya hayal söylenmek isteneni, düşünsel ipuçları aracılığı ile görsel algı yaratarak akıl gözüne hitap etmektedir. Çalışma ile ‘’insanlık için, aydınlık için, gelecek için sinema yapıyoruz, filmlerimiz insanlık mücadelesi içindir, kriterlerimiz yoktur’’ söylemi ile hareket eden, sinema disiplini içerisinde farklı bir kıymete sahip Yugoslav Sinemasının (1945-1991) tarihi seyri incelenerek, dönemin iktidarının sinema sanatına bakış açısı ve beklentileri ile dönemin şartları içerisinde mevcut olan siyasal ve toplumsal olayların sinema disiplini üzerindeki etkileri ile sinema yapımcılarının iktidara karşı itaatkar ve muhalif şeklindeki zıt duruşları irdelenmiştir. Yugoslavya’nın dağılma süreci itibariyle, 1992 yılından günümüze kadar olan süreç içerisinde, BosnaHersek ülkesinde sinema sanatının durumu hakkında saptamalar yapılmaya çalışılmıştır. Çalışma karşılıklı görüşme tekniği ile hazırlanmıştır. Karşılıklı görüşme ise BosnaHersek sinemasının en güçlü temsilcilerinden biri olan Yönetmen Danis Tanovic ile gerçekleştirilerek, Yugoslav, Bosna-Hersek ve Danis Tanovic sinemaları üzerine tespitleri içermektedir. Çalışma ile literatürde, Yugoslavya Sineması’na dair olan mevcut eksikliği tamamlayabilmek amaçlanmaktadır., Cinema, providing opportunity to be abstracted from daily life practices with each of its arguments and considered as the most attractive branch of art with its magic, is imprinted on memories by places on which characters and stories are described. Cinema, making people dream with gorgeous decorations and magical spaces and question the life with realistic images, uses symbolic expression ways such as ideology, enactment and form and enriches the world of thoughts. Bearing projection of social references, cinema creates a visual perception for individuals and societies with power of the story and expressions of performers by means of real or imaginary, ideational clues, and addresses to the eye of mind. In this study, historical course of Yugoslav Cinema (1945-1991), acting with the statements “we make cinema for humanity, for the future; our movies are for humanity struggle; we do not have any criterion” and having a different value among cinema disciplinary, has been examined and view of government of that time into the art of cinema and its expectations, effects of social and political events occurring under the conditions of such period on cinema disciplinary, opposing approaches of cinema producers against the government as loyal and opposing manner. As of the breakup of the Yugoslavia, within the period since 1992, situation of the art of cinema in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been tried to be determined. The study has been prepared by mutual interview technique. The mutual interview was carried out with the Director Danis Tanovic, one of the most powerful representatives of BosniaHerzegovina cinema; the study includes detections of Danis Tanovic related to Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Danis Tanovic cinemas. With the study, it is aimed to complete current deficiency in Yugoslavia Cinema.

Biljana Belić, Divna Jovanović, Bojana Vujanović (Belgrade), Tatjana Ivančić (Zagreb) and Dunja Ivanišević (Split) were one of the few women experimental filmmakers active between 1960s and 1980s in the former Yugoslavia, and are accordingly rarely mentioned within the mainstream discourse on this practice. Their films, characterized by sexuality, lyrical subjectivity and diarist approach in which they sometimes appeared themselves, stepped outside of the general tendencies of cinema-club production of those days. That made them "hard to evaluate" and accept within the established aesthetical and theoretical understandings of alternative film. However, if making movies means being an active player who controls ones own destiny (Levi), thus "film becomes a process of self-realization" (Sitney). In that sense their films, which weren't acts of conscious or intentional feminist critique, were most likely motivated by the desire to create and re/establish themselves as authors and persons. In this presentation I will show how these pioneering female experimentalists utilized the visual language of cinema to articulate their unique female experience, and mention the difficulties they faced within this field of "male" art practice. Precisely because of it's non-commercial character imbued with highly valued spirit of discovery, inquiry and innovation, experimental films could be treated as the backbone of the society. That made – and still makes – them an ideal space and tool for re/articulation, expression and research of female identity, experience and knowledge.

THE PUBLIC INTEREST. DO WE HAVE A DUTY? The results of a poll recently published in Romania indicated that 50 % of the population is not interested in understanding the activities of the political police under the communist regime. The poll also showed that 67 % do not want to find out if somebody in their family worked for the Securitate. These figures only confirm what we already knew: there is an obvious refusal to take responsibility for the criminal activities of the regime. More than ha...

While the very first non-communist government in Polish post-war history “demonstrated the truism that only revolutionaries are able to impose austerity,” its executives declared that austerity measures would bring fruits only when all links with the past were broken. The Prime Minister announced in his inaugural speech the need to draw a “bold line” between the inglorious past and the brighter future, and the technocratic finance minister justified the drastic dismantling of socialist indust...

Exhibitions on the communist past are scarce in Romanian museums. In contrast to this scarcity, the commemoration of the “communist tragedy” through memorials, monuments and the hybrid species of memorial-museum is disproportionately present. Only a very skilled and determined museumgoer will be able to discover the few places where aspects of the communist past are permanently exhibited in Romanian museums. In Bucharest, the visitor should be prepared to go underground to find the only perma...

Since the collapse of Communism, three major museums dealing with the recent past have been established in the capital cities of the Baltic states. Two of these—the Museum of Occupations (Tallinn, Estonia, established in 2003) and The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (Riga, 1993)— linked the Nazi and Soviet periods together to present a history of continuous national subjugation and suffering at the hands of foreign powers, lasting from 1940 to 1991. The third—the Museum of Genocide Victims...

How do museums and cinema shape the image of the Communist past in today’s Central and Eastern Europe? This volume is the first systematic analysis of how visual techniques are used to understand and put into context the former regimes. After history “ended” in the Eastern Bloc in 1989, museums and other memorials mushroomed all over the region. These efforts tried both to explain the meaning of this lost history, as well as to shape public opinion on their society’s shared post-war heritage. Museums and films made political use of recollections of the recent past, and employed selected museum, memorial, and media tools and tactics to make its political intent historically credible. Thirteen essays from scholars around the region take a fresh look at the subject as they address the strategies of fashioning popular perceptions of the recent past. "Books on the CEE transformations that deal with media and popular cultures should be welcomed. Past for the Eyes belongs to this extraordinary breed. The book is devoted to the visual representations of the socialist / communist past and the forms they took. The interconnected processes of visualization of the past, and the collective memory sedimentation are the main focus. The book brings together perspectives of linked but still distinctive ways of enquiry: visual studies, cultural studies, area studies, museum studies and contemporary history with its passion for ethnography and oral evidence.

Since the late 1980s, when the changes in Eastern and Central Europe seemed overwhelming and access to previously restricted information grew exponentially, this region could safely claim an unpredictable past. Today, almost two decades after the fall of communist regimes, scholars working on the recent past are paradoxically challenged by the abundance of memory and the variety of witnesses’ accounts, which confront the professional historical narrative with the simple claim “I was there and...

One can look back at the footprints left in the sandand see them as a road.Zygmunt Bauman, From Pilgrim to Tourist From a growing temporal distance, the Soviet historical “episode” seems to entail an emphatic beginning and a somewhat less spectacular but equally distinguishable end. The present article sets out to review the films of the last twenty years dealing with the Soviet period. Despite the declared break with the past, characteristic of transitional societies, a closer look at the so...

More than fifteen years have passed since the change of the political regime in Eastern Europe, but the countries of the former Soviet bloc still face the fundamental challenge of how to deal with the events of their recent past, how to come to terms with the legacy of Socialism and its local versions. There are countless ways of approaching these issues, but I will focus on the possibilities of interpretation provided by creative documentaries. The material for my analysis is Péter Forgács’s...

THE UNFINISHED PRESENT: INTERPRETATIVE CONFLICTS OF MEMORY AND HISTORY “Budapest is a city without time. If you visit here, you will not feel that you are in the nineties. (…) Here the politicians want to win World War I in Parliament.” This remark by Jenő Menyhart, underground musician and emblematic figure of the 1980s in Hungary, uttered in his subjective, sarcastic style, explicates the symbolic battle for possession of the past in post-socialist Hungary. Labeling the historical conscious...

Péter Apor (b. 1971) is a research fellow at Pasts Inc., Center for Historical Studies at the Central European University. His dissertation on communist representations of history in Hungary was defended at the European University Institute in Florence in 2002. His main research themes include the politics of history and memory, popular culture, and the history of historiography. Gabriela Cristea (b. 1980) is a research assistant at the Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest. She received her MA ...

The “Velvet Revolution” in November 1989 brought about enormous changes in the political and social environment: the communist -regime was abolished and after forty-one years democracy was reestablished in Czechoslovakia. In art, the most important change brought by the Revolution was the end of censorship. Since 1989 artists have been allowed to do as they wish—as long as they can find the funding. Film in socialism was funded exclusively by the state, but since about 1990 the state has not ...

The visual record of Hungary’s transition to democracy is marked with comfortably familiar (if not canonical) images of key events and personalities. No visual representation of the Hungarian transition which takes its topic and itself seriously is complete without the black-and-white film of Imre Nagy, the prime minister of the 1956 revolt, listening to his death sentence, followed by the images of the immense crowd at his reburial ceremony before the catafalque on Heroes’ Square. The story ...

About 60 km from Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, lies a small town which currently represents the primary case of what can be described as a “museum of Socialism in the country.” The town has nothing that can be compared to Budapest’s Statue Park, nor is it a place where the heritage of the socialist period is put on display, decontextualized and recontextualized in a post-socialist mode. It would be wrong to suggest that the town was once the location of a labor camp or a prison for the socialist...

…history-as-problem has much less of an audience thanhistory-as-dream, history-as-escapism, than History. This article explores the ways the national past of ex-Yugoslavia is cinematically remembered, with particular focus on the role played by the combination of documentary and fictional material in the creation of diverse cinematic memories in mainly but not exclusively post-Yugoslav cinema. The primary issue I address is the role of documentary “interventions,” the use of remembrance and m...

It was a cold Monday in early December 2006. On the way to work I passed a tram stop. A black and white poster with heavy red lettering “Thou Shalt not Kill” hung on the wall of a tram shelter. It hung between two colorful posters, one with a girl saying “I am looking for a mummy and a daddy”—part of a social campaign for adoption—and another “Apocalypto by Mel Gibson”—a movie advertisement. My first idea was that the black and white poster must relate to the fairly controversial antiabortion...