"Black Film" / EARLY WORKS

ABOUT THE FILMS:

“Black Film,” 1971, Dir. Želimir Žilnik, 14 Mins, Yugoslavia

In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.

One night, Žilnik picks up a group of homeless men from the streets of Novi Sad and takes them home. While they enjoy themselves in his home, the filmmaker tries to “solve the problem of the homeless” carrying along a film camera as a witness. He speaks to social workers, ordinary people. He even addresses policemen. They all close their eyes in front of the “problem.”

FORMAT: DCP

EARLY WORKS, 1969, Dir. Želimir Žilnik, 87 Mins, Yugoslavia

In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.

In an allegoric manner, EARLY WORKS recounts a story of young people who took part in student demonstrations in June 1968 in Belgrade. Three young men and a girl, Yugoslava, defy the petit-bourgeois routine of everyday life. Wishing to “change the world,” inspired by the writings of young Karl Marx, they go to the country and to factories to “wake up people’s consciousness,” to encourage them in their fight for emancipation and life worth living. Being in field they face primitivism and squalor, but they show their own limits, weaknesses, incapacity and jealousy. They get arrested. Frustrated because the planned revolution has not been realized, the three young men decide to eliminate Yugoslava, who is the witness of their impotence. They shoot her, cover her with the party flag, burn her body and a dark pillar of smoke going up into the sky is the only thing that remains of the intended revolution.

FORMAT: DCP