This event was held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live. 

Click here to register for the event. Click here to view the YouTube Live stream.

Please join the Njegoš Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture and the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for the virtual US premiere of Goran Radovanović’s feature documentary The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater (2019) and an online discussion with the director. Moderated by Aleksandar Bošković, Lecturer in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian and co-director of the East Central European Center.

The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater (2019) is a story about the public forum following the screening of Dušan Makavejev’s film W. R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), the discussion that will lead to the isolation of the director, his creative exile from ex-Yugoslavia, and the blacklisting of one of the most radical and innovative films emerging from Eastern Europe throughout the second part of the twentieth century. It is a story about the era of late socialism when, in spite of some encouraging signs and increased civil liberties in Yugoslavia, it gradually became evident that the system would continue to curb creative expression of artists and filmmakers.

Goran Radovanović (b. 1957 in Belgrade) is a writer and director of both feature and documentary films. He holds an art history degree from the University of Belgrade. Between 1977 and 1980 he sojourned in Munich on a scholarship awarded by the Goethe Institute. He is a member of the European Film Academy, Berlin and Film Artists Association of Serbia. He was a guest professor at EICTV (International Film and Television School), San Antonio de los Banos, Cuba, VGIK; Moscow, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA, ESAP – Escola Superior Artística do Porto, Portugal, DFFB, Berlin, Germany. Retrospectives of his documentary films were held in Barcelona (2006), Mexico City (2007), Havana (2010), and Vienna (2011).

Selected Filmography
1991 Terasa | The Terrace (short)
1994 Columba Urbica (doc)
2001 Otpor: The Fight to Save Serbia (doc)
2003 Casting (doc)
2005 Pileći izbori | Chicken Elections (docu-fiction)
2009 Hitna pomoć | The Ambulance (feature)
2012 Con Fidel, pase lo que pase | With Fidel Whatever Happens (docu-drama)
2015 Enklava | Enclave (feature)
2019 Slučaj Makavejev ili Proces u bioskopskoj sali | The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater (docu-fiction)

Director’s Statement