Early Works

Synopsis

In an allegoric manner "Early Works" recount a story of young people who took part in student demonstrations in June 1968 in Belgrade. Three young men and a girl, Yugoslava, defy the petit-bourgeois routine of everyday life. Wishing to "change the world", inspired by the writings of young Karl Marx, they go to the country and to factories to "wake up people’s consciousness", to encourage them in their fight for emancipation and life worth living. Being in field they face primitivism and squalor, but they show their own limits, weaknesses, incapacity and jealousy. They get arrested. Frustrated because the planned revolution has not been realised, the three young men decide to eliminate Yugoslava, who is the witness of their impotence. They shoot her, cover her with the party flag, burn her body and a dark pillar of smoke going up into the sky is the only thing that remains of the intended revolution.

Director Biography

Želimir Žilnik (born in Niš in 1942; currently living and working in Novi Sad) has written and directed numerous feature and documentary films which have reaped many awards at domestic and international film festivals. Žilnik is renowned as an initiator of the "docudrama" genre.