✸ Refle-x-périmental #25 : Kino Klub
Experimental Belgrade, academic amateurism ✸

► This May, Refle-x-périmental turns into a kino klub, featuring a special program drawn from Yugoslav experimental cinema of the 1950s-1970s. In socialist Yugoslavia, the development of experimental film is inseparable from the institution of the kino klub and from amateur practice. Different in many ways from its Western definitions, insofar as it was part of the federation-wide cultural policy, amateur practice was perceived as a vehicle for emancipation through art, a driving force for unfettered formal experimentation. Thus, the idea of "academic amateurism" inherits from the "academy" simply the notion of a propitious educational framework from which cinematic endeavours can unfold. 

A meeting point and a melting pot for students and curious alike, the kino klub forged several generations of filmmakers whose works left an important mark on both the experimental film scene and the Black Wave. Leading filmmakers took their first steps there: this is the case for Dušan Makavejev, whose film The Seal (Pečat), created at Kino klub Beograd just after he completed his psychology studies, opens the program. Ever since its creation in 1958, Akademski kino klub was home to a generation of filmmakers who would shape the experimental spirit of what came to be known as the “Belgrade Circle”: Triptych and The Hands of Purple Distances are the major examples of this style. The influence of GEFF (an experimental film festival based in Zagreb in the 1960s) and of “anti-film” fostered the development of a certain structuralism, represented by Tomislav Gotovac (The Circle) and Petar Blagojević–Aranđelović as cinematographer. Other filmmakers, who pursued an experimental path exclusively within the kino klub, contributed decisively to the Yugoslav avant-garde before eventually turning to television. This was the trajectory of many members of the Klub in the 60s and 70s, notably Radoslav Vladić (Home) and Nikola Đurić, three of whose films (Vowels, The Raven, The Village Road) – combining a conceptual approach, poetic inspirations, and technical innovation – are featured in the program.

Having since become the Academic Film Centre, Akademski kino klub continues its activities today, organising workshops, training for young people and producing experimental and documentary films.

Screening presented by Isidora Lazić (Cinédoc, Master’s in Filmmaking, Paris 8) and Milan Milosavljević (Academic Film Center of Belgrade).

► Screening: 

Samoglasnici / Vowels
Nikola Đurić
1973, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound, 8’

Inspired by the Arthur Rimbaud poem, the author has been using different forms of camera work manipulation and editing to transpose it to the cinema language.

Kuća / Home
Radoslav Vladić
1977, 16mm (digital), color, sound, 8’

“Home” takes us to the journey of the author's personal family spaces, while creating an authentic record and atmosphere of a domestic ethnography.

Gavran / Raven 
Nikola Đurić
1973, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound, 6'

A short structuralist film that follows the motions of a flying bird in which the author juxtaposes the symbolism of a raven with the poetic concept of a bird flying free. Made with an optical printer using a Bolex camera.

Seoski put / Village Road
Nikola Đurić
1972, 16mm (digital), color, sound, 5'

A kinesthetic play of film recordings and a music score, the film was made during one of the first residency film workshops in ex-Yugoslavia, in a village called Nakučani. 

Ruke ljubičastih daljina / Hands in the Purple Distances 
Sava Trifković
1962, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound, 10’

Cult short film “Hands in the Purple Distances” by Sava Trifković presents the inner horror of the main female protagonist, some sort of gradation of a fear, from the fear of empty/open space to the fear of death.

Kružnica / Circle, (Jutkevich - Count)
Tomislav Gotovac
1964, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound, 12'

Gotovac recorded the landscape from atop a building by rotating a camera 360 degrees, capturing the surroundings while simultaneously emphasizing the means of doing so—the film medium itself. 

Pečat / The Seal 
Dušan Makavejev
1955, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound, 17'

A satirical tale about a deceased man who remembers his life while waiting for the coroner's office to seal his coffin. The depersonalization of a person through bureaucracy, whose main criterion of value is the official seal.

Triptih o materiji i smrti / Tryptych on Matter and Death
Živojin Pavlović
1960, 16mm (digital), b&w, sound lost, 9'

A young woman, injured and alone, desperately seeks refuge in an empty house before finding an abandoned train car. Haunted by surreal visions, she repeatedly collapses. At dawn, her motionless form draws the curiosity of local children, leaving her fate uncertain.

Approx TRT: 75 mins