YU GO Bandits!

In his film THE DECLINE OF THE CENTURY: TESTAMENT L.Z. Lordan Zafranović says: "When opening a box of films from the past we open a book of infinite wisdom." The YU GO Bandits! film program shown in conjunction with the exhibition Spaceship Yugoslavia –The Suspension of Time (at NGBK from September 24 – October 30) talks about the pages of this book, about the treasures of a country and its history, even after its demise. Although at the beginning, film production in Yugoslavia was largely dictated by the communist regime and had to serve "agitprop" purposes, some very significant films emerged from this era. The Yugoslav partisan films reached their peak at the end of the 1960s and have since had their place in spectacular epic cinema. No other nation has translated the national liberation struggle into so many different genres, applying special authorial approaches and looking at the subject from so many different perspectives. In this season, the partisan films are supplemented by works of the "Black Wave" and by more recent films that deal with Yugoslavia from today's perspective. The terms "New Yugoslav Film" or "Black Wave" established themselves in the 1960s and the work of significant auteur-dissidents such as Dušan Makavejev and Želimir Žilnik soon won international acclaim. They described and criticized the shortcomings of society, demanded more socialism for the people and created filmic masterpieces. These directors are ideological partisans or bandits (as the fascists liked to call the partisans), and in their revival of the anti-fascist point of view their films are still pertinent today. This season invites viewers to reconsider this and the whole complexity of socialist Yugoslavia. All the films will be introduced by the curator Vedrana Madžar.