alternative film archive belgrade. an overview from 1958 to the present day

The Filmkollektiv Frankfurt has invited the Academic Film Center in Belgrade to present, for the first time in Germany, an insight into the treasures of the largest collection of avant-garde films in the former Yugoslavia. This event provides a unique overview of the long and turbulent history of avant-garde film production in the Balkans from the 1960s to the present day. In cooperation with exf f., the program curated by Ivan Velisavljević will present a selection of 36 short films in three blocks, most of which will have their German premiere. We are particularly pleased to welcome one of the young generation artists, Milan Milosavljević, to Frankfurt, with a special focus on his work.

Academic Film Center in Belgrade was founded in 1958, in what was then the socialist Yugoslavia, under the name of Academic Cineclub (Akademski kino klub). Throughout its long history it became one of the most prestigious and most awarded film clubs in Yugoslavia, thanks to the original work of its numerous film and video artists. The cineclub movement in Yugoslavia was a site for gathering film amateurs. These enthusiasts would soon explore the boundaries of the film medium and define the experimental and avant-garde cinema in the country. In 1976, the Academic Cineclub became a department of the Student City Cultural Center, a government-funded public institution for student culture. It was renamed to Academic Film Center (AFC). Soon after, in the late 1970s, many avant-garde/experimental filmmakers gathered in Split and decided they would rather call themselves alternative than experimental, let alone amateur filmmakers. They rejected the label of amateurism under the patronage and rules of the international organization UNICA and developed a specific notion of alternative film. One of them later stated, “every experimental film is also an alternative film, but not every alternative film is an experimental one.” Their goal was to expand the term to both non-conventional documentaries and fiction films that have an alternative quality – whose meaning was of course often indefinable and subjective, certainly a term of dispute to this day. In 1982, AFC founded the Alternative Film Archive to preserve its film and video heritage, which now includes over 800 films and videos produced by AFC and over 2000 films produced outside of the AFC. That same year, AFC started Alternative Film/Video festival, today one of the oldest festivals in the Balkans dedicated exclusively to experimental and alternative filmmaking. AFC is still an open space for experimental filmmaking of all types, especially for students and young authors, for whom it runs various practical and theoretical workshops. In addition to the regular monthly programs and screenings, AFC hosts a residency program for international film and video artists, and a film festival of European animated films, Balkanima.

In three segments, the program presents an overview of more than 60 years of the AFC's production from the 1960s until today. It includes some of the best films from the Alternative Film Archive, and notable examples of contemporary AFC production.

( Ivan Velisavljević )


Curated by the archive’s curator Ivan Velisavljević (Academic Film Center), who will introduce all the programs, and organized by Svetlana Svyatskaya (Filmkollektiv Frankfurt e.V.).

wed 04/09 18:00 | pre-opening: alternative film archive belgrade pt. 1: metaphors & structures (screening at dff)

Academic Cineclub (Akademski Kino Klub, AKK) in Belgrade became, during the 1960s, a gathering place for filmmakers who were influenced by the avant-garde Soviet and European cinema, the "kinesthesia" theories of Slavko Vorkapić and his successor Vladimir Petrić, and the unconventional aesthetics and radical experiments promoted by the Genre Film Festival (GEFF), organized in Zagreb. This group of authors, referred to in the literature as the "First Generation of" AKK, created several essential works of Yugoslav experimental film and laid the foundations of aesthetic issues that were explored until the end of the 1980s. The typical aspiration of the most important authors of the Belgrade circle in the early 1960s was to create a metaphor with certain metaphysical points exclusively through audio-visual means, without narration. They searched for the "essence of film"; cinema stripped off literature and theater elements, often in the genre that P. Adams Sitney calls psychodrama. Others have made structural films, which in Yugoslavia at the time were called anti-films, or "the films of fixation and reduction". Authors gathered in the Academic Cineclub in the early 1970s ("Second generation") continued some of these explorations, but with various personal differences, with aspiration towards visual poetry, elements of humor, social critique, oneirism or pop cultural references.

( Ivan Velisavljević )

Ruke ljubičastih daljina (Hands of Purple Distances)

D: Sava Trifković, 16mm to digital, b&w, sound, 10 min, 1962

Pravac (Straight Line)

D: Tomislav Gotovac, 16mm to digital, b&w, sound, 7 min, 1964

Kompozicija (Composition)

D: Vjekoslav Nakić, 16mm to digital, b&w, silent, 6 min, 1970

Putovanje (Journey)

D: Bojana Vujanović, 16mm to digital, color a. b&w, sound, 2 min, 1972

Gavran (Raven)

D: Nikola Đurić, 16mm to digital, b&w, sound, 6 min, 1973

Iszdah (Exhale)

D: Ivan Obrenov, 16mm to digital, b&w, sound, 14 min, 1976

Krik (Scream)

D: Ivko Šešić, 16mm to digital, color, sound, 10 min, 1978

Organon ili tražili su od meine (Organon or They Have Asked of Me)

D: Zoran Saveski, super 8 to digital, color, sound, 9 min, 1980

Poslednji tango u Parizu (Last Tango in Paris)

D: Miodrag Milošević, super 8 to digital, b&w, sound, 5 min, 1983/2012

Pogledaj šta činim zbog tebe (Look What You've Made Me Do)

D: Miloje Radaković, 16mm to digital, color, sound, 4 min, 1986

Sava Trifković - Ruke ljubičastih daljina (Hands of Purple Distances, 1962)
Sava Trifković - Ruke ljubičastih daljina (Hands of Purple Distances, 1962)
Nikola Đurić - Gavran (Raven, 1973)
Nikola Đurić - Gavran (Raven, 1973)
Ivan Obrenov - Iszdah (Exhale, 1976)
Ivan Obrenov - Iszdah (Exhale, 1976)

thu 05/09 16:00 | alternative film archive belgrade pt. 2: colors and politics (screening at pupille)

Throughout the 1980s the AFC production of experimental works grew, especially with the Alternative Film/Video festival and the Alternative Film Archive being founded in 1982, and AFV being one of the first festivals in Europe to include video with film in the competition program on equal terms, as early as 1985. In this period, AFC became the most important regional institution for alternative culture, not only films, but also music, visual arts, performances… Celluloid years were not over, authors made Super 8 and 16mm films as well, but video-art flourished and the Third Generation produced films and videos that dealt with media, pop-culture and political symbolism. Sometimes focusing on colors, shapes and patterns, sometimes on the decay of communist symbols or the power of capitalist influence on our perception. In terms of international relevance, the quantity and quality of events, programs and esthetical debates, the 1980s look like the golden age of alternative film in Belgrade. The 1990s were tough, though: with the breakup of Yugoslavia, war and social havoc, AFC reduced its production and in 1992 canceled the Alternative Film/Video Festival, which would not be renewed until 2003. The Third generation of video artists saw the demise of their careers, either leaving the country or trying to survive the hard times without much space for cinema. Certain experimental films of the era testify to this atmosphere. However, the first half of the 2000s, marked by the fall of the government of Slobodan Milošević, modest social optimism and the influence of relatively cheap digital technology, brought new life to the Belgrade alternative film scene. A new generation of filmmakers created its films shoulder to shoulder with the cineclub veterans. Their work ranged from low-fi aesthetics and trash cinema to postmodern re-use of formalist and structural experiments. The production grew, the AFV festival was renewed and it became international in 2006. AFC once again became a key hub in the region for networking of curators, filmmakers, historians and archivists of the non-conventional cinema. This selection shows a representative sample of all these tendencies and aesthetics, between video and digital, formalism and engagement. This selection of films shows representative examples of all these tendencies and aesthetics, between video and digital, formalism and engagement, including an international premiere of the digitalization of Grabljivac (Predator).

( Ivan Velisavljević )

Grabljivac (Predator)

D: Petar Milić, vhs to dcp, color, sound, 4 min, 1987

Diabl (Devil)

D: Zorica Kijevčanin, vhs to dcp, color, sound, 8 min, 1989

Olimp (Olympus)

D: Smilja Tadić, vhs to dcp, color, sound, 8 min, 1989

Kako je propao Miloš M. (The Decay of Miloš M.)

D: Miloš Milošević & Jakša Vlahović, vhs to dcp, color, sound, 5 min, 1995

A Trip

D: Olivera Ognjanović Kwaya, vhs to dcp, color, sound, 5 min, 1996

soc.com

D: Incredible Bob, digital, color, sound, 9 min, 2000

Apsolutna pobeda (Absolute Victory)

D: Igor Toholj, digital, color, sound, 4 min, 2000

Koncert za harmoniku i paradajz (Concert for Accordion and Tomato)

D: Dragan Nikolić, digital video, color, sound, 2 min, 2000

I’ll Be There

D: Isidora Ilić, digital video, color, sound, 8 min, 2003

Moonlight

D: Branko Sujić, digital, color, sound, 6 min, 2005

Zid (The Wall)

D: Nemanja Budisavljević, digital, color, sound, 6 min, 2006

Zorica Kijevčanin - Diabl (Devil, 1989)
Zorica Kijevčanin - Diabl (Devil, 1989)
Olivera Ognjanović Kwaya - soc.com (1996)
Olivera Ognjanović Kwaya - soc.com (1996)
Nemanja Budisavljević - Zid (The Wall, 2006)
Nemanja Budisavljević - Zid (The Wall, 2006)

fri 06/09 17:00 | alternative film archive belgrade pt. 3: local images, global currents / artist in focus: milan milosavljević (screening at pupille)

In the 21st century, the Alternative Film Archive collection grew to over 600 films and videos produced by AFC and a large number of avant-garde films and videos by other authors. The main activities of AFC from then to now include film workshops, lectures, two festivals and film production - offering free equipment for students and young authors and the organizational support for getting the funding for their films. AFC produces documentary, fiction, experimental and animated movies that make it to prestigious film festivals around the world, from Berlinale to Hot Docs. In the 2010s, authors from abroad came to AFC for the residency program of the Alternative Film/Video festival, and shot films in Belgrade, thus becoming the so-called fourth or global generation of AFC authors. AFC opened up to the international scene even more and achieved significant success there. This selection combines very recent films by very young and emerging artists with awarded works by more experienced filmmakers, local filmmakers from the region with the ones from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Iran, and USA… Milan Milosavljević, an artist in focus, as the head of AFC is the key driving force behind most of the AFC activities, being an educator, a producer and a promoter of experimental cinema and animation. However, he is also a filmmaker, with short documentaries, fiction, animated and experimental films in his opus. In his avant-garde works, Milan often emphasizes nature, and when he uses found-footage, he adds elements of horror and mystery through sound design. We will screen a selection of his more recent experimental works. With a film talk with Milan Milosavljević after the screening.

( Ivan Velisavljević )

Yugoslavian Home Movies

D: Salise Hughes, 8mm/16mm/photos to digital, color, sound, 12 min, 2014

Molim vas, izletite iz moje glave (Please, Fly Out Of My Head)

D: Nevena Andrejić, digital, color, sound, 2,5 min, 2024

Heterotopia

D: Nikola Nikolić, digital, color, sound, 7 min, 2024

Tron

D: Katarina Bugarin, digital, color, sound, 2,5 min, 2023

Wechselstrom (Alternating Current)

D: Nina Kreuzinger, digital, color, sound, 13 min, 2015

Leopard Man Study

D: Duo Strangloscope, digital, color, sound, 8 min, 2017

Dreamland

D: Allan Brown, digital, color, sound, 13 min, 2018

Sjutra (Tomorrow)

D: Marko Dabović, digital, color, sound, 4 min, 2023

Prijelaz (Crossing)

D: Vedran Šuvar, digital, color, sound, 9,5 min, 2018

Surfacing Images

D: Tara Najd Ahmadi, 16mm to digital, color, sound, 5 min, 2023

dog, moonriver and baudelaire

D: Marija Kovačina, 8mm to digital, color, sound, 4 min, 2018

Prizori tajanstvenog simpozijuma

D: Milan Milosavljević, 8mm to digital, b&w, sound, 5,5 min, 2020

Tišina (Silence)

D: Milan Milosavljević, digital, b&w a. color, sound, 3 min, 2023

Sećanje u kamenu

D: Milan Milosavljević, digital, color, sound, 4 min, 2021

Maska

D: Milan Milosavljević, digital, color, sound, 3 min, 2014

Ouroboros

D: Milan Milosavljević, 8mm to digital, color, sound, 4 min, 2018

Salise Hughes - Yugoslavian Home Movies (2014)
Salise Hughes - Yugoslavian Home Movies (2014)
Vedran Šuvar - Prijelaz (Crossing, 2018)
Vedran Šuvar - Prijelaz (Crossing, 2018)
Milan Milosavljević - Ouroboros (2018)
Milan Milosavljević - Ouroboros (2018)