Želimir Žilnik

Želimir Žilnik (; ; born 8 September 1942) is a Serbian film director best known as one of the major figures of the Yugoslav Black Wave film movement of the 1960s and 1970s, having won several awards, including the Golden Bear 1969 and the Teddy Award 1995 at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Early life Žilnik was born in 1942 in the Gestapo-run Crveni Krst concentration camp near the city of Niš in southern occupied Serbia. Both of his parents were Communist activists who would end up executed while he was still an infant. and posthumously honored as a Yugoslav People's Hero.

As a youth, Žilnik was the editor of a communist magazine called Tribina Mladih. As a student, he was chosen to take part in an international cultural exchange program in New York City, where he was first exposed to films that dealt with social and political criticisms. Upon his return to Yugoslavia, he took part in a cinema club and was hired as an assistant in a film by the director Dušan Makavejev.

Career

Beginning in 1967, Žilnik became involved with the Neoplanta film production company. The company paved the way for a significant change of Yugoslav cinema with the production of films that explored socio-political criticisms, eventually leading to the Yugoslav Black Wave of film-making.

By the time Žilnik made his third short film Nezaposleni Ljudi (The Unemployed) in 1969 he had already become a recognized filmmaker. Nezaposleni Ljudi was criticized by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for its portrayal of workers and the unemployment situation in Yugoslavia.

In 1969 Žilnik released his feature film Early Works (Rani radovi). The film, which was an allusion to Karl Marx's early writings, critiqued the Yugoslav communist regime and depicted the murder of a young woman named Jugoslava by her comrades after their revolutionary ideals failed to be implemented.

In 1994 he co-wrote (with the leading actor Dragoljub Ljubičić) and directed Tito's Second Time Among the Serbs (Tito po drugi put medju Srbima). His 1995 feature film Marble Ass (Dupe od mramora) was a look at the myth built around the masculinity of the male as a warrior and leader. It was entered into the 19th Moscow International Film Festival.

Legacy

Žilnik is considered one of the most renown directors of the Yugoslav Black Wave movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Mann (2010) says that Žilnik "stands freely and independently as a humanist not bound to any political system or state, not bound to the formalities of the industry, and not bound to any conventional form of artistic expression" and that "from the beginning onwards, his films have been defiant, shameless, exaggerated, blatantly ironic, erotic, gory, anti-romantic, antiideal, whistle-blowing, highly taboo-breaking, low-budget, and highly controversial". The scholar Roland Hsu of Stanford University writes that "there is probably no filmmaker who has explored the dynamics of postwar European politics, economy and culture with more persistence and vigor" than Žilnik. His particular style of directing is recognized as pioneering the docudrama or "docu-fiction" genre.

In 2019 Žilnik was given a major career retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris, which included a commission for a new work. Near the end of 2019 Žilnik was also given a late-career survey at Close-Up Film Centre in London.

Selected filmography