Noticias

Dušan Makavejev was born on King Milutin Street in Belgrade on October 13, 1932. This was about nine years before the city was occupied by the Nazis, at which point the Chinese embassy across the street became the headquarters of the German Chief Command of the Southeast. As a child, he watched German officers go in and out of the building, one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, would later become the Secretary of the United Nations—though of course the young Makavejev didn’t know this at the time. Following the Second World War, it was under Tito's Communist, but anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia that Makavejev first emerged as a major Eastern European filmmaker, initially associated with the loosely defined Novi Film (new film) movement. His eclectic career, the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Anthology Archives, garnered praise from the likes of Amos Vogel, Robin Wood, Stanley Cavell, Jonas Mekas, and Roger Ebert,...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 18: Dušan Makavejev Free Radical.

About the films:

There’s never been another filmmaker quite like Dušan Makavejev. Even in the 1960s, when all of cinema’s rules seemed to be breaking down and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were dissolving the boundary between fiction and documentary, Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald. Across these, his wild, collagelike first three films, Makavejev investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love, death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels and strongmen.

Top Croatian winners are Number 55, The Reaper and Happy Endings; Concrete Night wins international competition.

The 61st Pula Film Festival handed out its awards in the city’s stunning amphitheatre last night (July 26), with Kristijan Milić’s Number 55 winning best Croatian Film.

The jury said its award went to “the film produced according to highest professional standards and the film that achieves an authentic and emotional presentation of a true event from the Croatian War of Independence.”

The winning packages includes €10,000 worth of post production services from Teleking.

The film swept a number of prizes in the Croatian competition, including best screenplay and best director.

Set in 1991, Number 55 is based on a true story of a small group of Croatian soldiers who are ambushed while on patrol and have to hide from rebel Serbs, the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Special Forces.

The Reaper, about a lonely man coming to terms with his past crimes, won the two...

Top Croatian winners are Number 55, The Reaper and Happy Endings; Concrete Night wins international competition.

The 61st Pula Film Festival handed out its awards in the city’s stunning amphitheatre last night, with Kristijan Milić’s Number 55 winning best Croatian Film. The jury said its award went to “the film produced according to highest professional standards and the film that achieves an authentic and emotional presentation of a true event from the Croatian War of Independence.” The winning packages includes €10,000 worth of post production services from Teleking.

The film swept a number of prizes in the Croatian competition, including best screenplay and best director.

Number 55 is based on a true story in 1991, when a small group of Croatian soldiers on patrol are ambushed and have to hide from rebel Serbs, the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Special Forces.

The Reaper, about a lonely man coming to terms with his past crimes, won the two...