Želimir Žilnik: grandmaster of Serbian avant-garde cinema

Želimir Žilnik was born in 1944 in a Nazi concentration camp near Niš, now Serbia. He lost his parents, both devoted communists, during the war. Raised by his grandparents, Žilnik grew up in Tito’s socialist Yugoslavia.

And so, from the very beginning, ideology was inescapable for Želimir Žilnik; a fact that is reflected throughout his later body of work. The grandmaster of Serbian avant-garde cinema consistently centers the perspectives of people on the margins of society.

Žilnik’s debut film Early Works (1969), shot in the aftermath of the 1968 student protests, is a satire about the gap between idealism and communism. The film was soon banned in Yugoslavia, but went on to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It was also the catalyst for the coining of the term Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema. Though originally intended as a negative label by socialist film critics, Black Wave Cinema grew into an influential film movement throughout the 1960s and 70s. Inspired by Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, Black Wave Cinema is characterized by its depiction of explicit violence, low-budget production and open criticism of the socialist system.

This critical stance made it impossible for Žilnik to continue working in Yugoslavia, so he temporarily moved to Germany. There, he portrayed the lives of people on the margins of German society, such as newly arrived migrant workers in Inventur – Metzstrasse 11. Žilnik’s return to Yugoslavia in the late 70’s marked a highly productive period, during which he created numerous television films.

Some directors utilize the camera as a paintbrush, to decorate; Žilnik uses the camera as a scalpel, to peel back the layers of society in an attempt to analyze what lies beneath

Cineaste

In 1994, Marble Ass was released – a film about the life of Merlinka, a trans sex worker in Belgrade. It is considered to be the first queer film in Yugoslav cinema and was awarded the Teddy Award in Berlin. At its premiere in Belgrade, the film received both loud applause and a barrage of apples and eggs.

Its exemplary of the subversiveness of Žilnik’s work, in which he always chooses to side with the underdog. Not stylised but consciously anti-esthetical, gritty and with the focus on common life. Žilnik’s films are characterized by the blending of fiction and documentary, often with non-professional actors in the lead. 

Želimir Žilnik has made over fifty films and remains active to this day. His latest film, Eighty Plus, a playful and poignant portrait of the process of restitution in post-socialist Serbia, will have its Dutch premiere at De Balie.