From »Black Wave« to Schengen Fortress
Zelimir Zilnik's political films at the 2003 Diagonale festival
by Herwig G. Höller

Even though the filmmaker Zelimir Zilnik has never really disappeared completely from the limelight since the seventies, until relatively recently his films were only known by hearsay to the larger German-speaking cinema audience. It can therefore justifiably be said that the comprehensive, although not complete retrospective devoted to the (ex-) Yugoslavian director at this year's Diagonale festival in Graz, during which Zilnik enthusiastically discussed his works with an interested audience, amounted to a rediscovery.

» I am Zelimir Zilnik, 28 years old, 72 kilograms, 176/177 centimetres tall, I am a jurist and interested in film, I have a wife and child, a two-roomed apartment of 48 square metres, we do well, we have an average monthly income of 200,000-300,000 dinars, I already made a film like this about two years ago, but these people are still there.»

That is how Zelimir Zilnik, in what is probably his best-known documentary film, »Crni film« (»Black Film«, 1971), introduces himself to a group of homeless people in Novi Sad, whom he invites to stay in the aforementioned two-roomed apartment for several days. During this time, the director tries, with microphone and camera, to obtain solutions for the problem of homelessness by asking both officials and passers-by. In vain: the police, as well as officials, complain that the laws are not strict enough. But the advice gleaned from passers-by also seems rather unproductive. In short, Zilnik's efforts come to nothing, his efforts turn out to be - as the self-critical inserts in the subtitled German version put it - an »illusion of commitment and compassion«. In the end, the homeless people leave the comforts of the small family home and have to return to the streets of Novi Sad. It was probably the trenchancy of »Crni film« and the film's minimalist title that caused it to become not only the namesake, but also the culmination, of the so-called »black wave« (»crni talas«) of Yugoslavian films d'auteur at that time. But this short film, along with the proclamation of the manifesto »This Festival is a Cemetery« at the Belgrade Festival of Short Film and Documentaries the same year marked the end of Zilnik's early documentary, socio-critical phase, and the director became an official »persona non grata« in Tito's Yugoslavia.

In his first work, »Zurnal o omladini na selu, zimi« (»Newsreel on Village Youth, in Winter« 1967), he paints a rather dismal picture of a rural population that is religious, sings folk songs, and is not averse to alcohol, but does not make clear the political stance of the director. But later documentary works from the year 1968 do not conceal his socio-critical approach at all: »Pioniri maleni« (»Little Pioneers«) portrays neglected children and young people, and in »Nezaposleni ljudi« (»The Unemployed«) he on the one hand shows this social misfortune, while on the other the interviewees for the first time name those responsible (»company chairmen«).

This left-wing socio-critical stance towards socialist Yugoslavia becomes clearly apparent in Zilnik's film about the »July Turmoil« (»Lipanjska gibanja«) - the Belgrade version of 1968, during which students from the »Red Karl Marx University« were very unambiguous in their vehement criticism of party bigwigs. But Zilnik's movie debut, »Rani radovi« (»Early Works«, 1969), does not manage without references to Marx either, for example in the title, which alludes to the latter's early works. A group of young men surrounding the allegorical figure of »Jugoslava« take a trip to the country, enquire into the nature of revolution and preach Marxism. With its then very advanced film language, its documentary and fictional elements, its use of philosophical quotes that remind one of the young Jean-Luc Godard, and its borrowings from body-oriented actionist art, this film, made with official support, was at first positively received in Yugoslavia as well. This changed very suddenly when after a private screening Tito asked laconically what these mad people wanted. After court proceedings instigated by the authorities against the film ended without any sentence being passed, the »Golden Bear« at the Berlinale film festival in July 1969 was the last straw; Zilnik was demonstratively excluded from the party, and the film was »indexed« and not shown again in Yugoslavia until 1982.

Zilnik's time in Germany (1973-1976) also ended with the expulsion of the politically committed director. While the short film »Public Execution« (1974), which presents a scene, also shown on television, of a bank robber being overpowered, depicting it as a staged performance with a fatal conclusion, was not publicly shown in the Federal Republic until 1997, the screening of »Paradise - An Imperialist Tragi-Comedy« (1976) led to Zilnik's summary deportation. In the film, Zilnik satirises the rampant hysteria about the RAF and tells the story of a female company manager who has herself kidnapped to rescue her firm, which is in danger of going bankrupt.

Zilnik's interest in the still relevant questions connected with the subject of migration also began during his period in Germany. While »Inventur - Metzstraße 11« (»Inventory«) examines the bleak living conditions of Yugoslavian foreign workers in West Germany, Zilnik's later movie »Druga generacija« (»The Second Generation«, 1983) concentrates on the difficulties had by the children of foreign workers upon re-migration. Teenaged Pavle is sent by his parents from Stuttgart to the village where his grandparents live, but is unable to fit in. Going to a boarding school in Novi Sad that is attended by numerous »povartnici« (returning migrants) improves Pavle's situation, but his integration only really occurs when he enters a police school and abandons his individual identity. Finally, in 2000, Zilnik made the film »Tvrdjava Evropa« (»Fortress Europe«) for Slovenian television, in which he examines, in a semi-documentary manner, the now globalised issues concerning refugees at the gates of Schengen's Europe, with the concomitant absurdities. A further proof of how topical and relevant his socio-critical gaze remains.

While Zilnik's working conditions remained difficult for decades, and obviously still are, particularly because of an unwillingness on the part of politicians to make compromises, the situation in his native country has changed drastically. This is clearly demonstrated by his political, agitatorial works in Milosevic's Yugoslavia. In »Tito po drugi put medju Srbima«, (»Tito's Second Time among the Serbs«, 1994), he confronts passers-by with a double of Tito, who, quasi posthumously, comes to check on how things are going - and who is received with an ambivalence typical of ex-Yugoslavia: on the one hand »Tito« is personally accused, while on the other his absence, which is really to blame for everything, is lamented. In contrast, »Do jaja« (»Throwing off the Yolks of Bondage«, 1997) rather recalls Zilnik's agitatorial documentaries of ‘68. Even if the rotten eggs are now meant for a »red gang« surrounding Milosevic and the »Red Karl Marx University« is no longer to be defended.

Diagonale - Festival of Austrian Film, 24-30 March 2003, Graz