“Those who here spoke about the [partisan] war by way of the celluloid did not scold history, they beautified it, but in a most disgusting way. In Yugoslav cinema, various form of un-truth permanently replace each other. Quasi-poetics replaces quasi-epics, quasi-drama replaces quasi- psychology, and quasi-mythologization of history replaces quasi-documentation. Instead of art about the revolution, we have revolutionary kitsch.”
——With those words Živojin Pavlović expressed the political and aesthetical discontinuity that characterized the new cinema movement that spread in Yugoslavia during the 60’s. Frequently referred to as the “golden age” of Yugoslav cinema, from the late 60’s until the early 70’s, Yugoslavia saw a true outburst of creativity regarding cinema. The decade witnessed a proliferation of films by talented young authors who, working under the sign of individual expression and aesthetic experimentation, broke out socialist state and lead to a new path of visual expression.
——Finding both inspiration and support for their artistic inclinations among the abundant innovative tendencies of the recent international cinema (some of them the Italian neorealism and some other the French Nouvelle Vague) but re-shaping them in a completely innovative and original way, Aleksandar Petrović, Boštjan Hladnik, Živojin Pavlović, Dušan Makavejev, Ante Babaja, Vatroslav Mimica, Kokan Rakonjac, Krsto Papić, Matjaz Klopčić, Bato Čengić, Želimir Žilnik gave birth to what would be called “novi jugoslovenski film” (New Yugoslav Film): a movement that was subsequently - and as a result of an ideological campaign launched against some of those filmmakers by political-cultural establishment - became widely known as “The Black Wave”.
——The Yugoslavian Black Wave can be considered a unique movement in the history of cinema, interesting from both its political implication as a critical voice toward Yugoslavian state socialism of the 60’s and its aesthetic form with a visual freedom that is nowhere to be found even in the context of European experimental cinema of that decade (even in the reference of the Nouvelle Vague). Even though it is nowadays almost half forgotten in the western part of Europe and the United States, from that “new cinema” something completely different emerged that challenged not only the ideological and aesthetical apparatus of the then Yugoslavian state but that it is still preserving a challenging stance to our contemporary approach to visuality.