Dušan Makavejev


Dušan Makavejev was a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s—many of which belong to the Black Wave. Makavejev's most internationally successful film was the 1971 political satire , which he both directed and wrote.

Career

Makavejev's first three feature films, Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator and Innocence Unprotected, all won him international acclaim. The latter won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1970 he was a member of the jury at the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1991 he was a member of the jury at the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.
His 1971 movie was banned in Yugoslavia due to its sexual and political content. The political scandal surrounding Makavejev's film was symptomatic of an increasingly oppressive political climate in Yugoslavia that effectively ended the director's domestic career and resulted in his leaving Yugoslavia to live and work abroad in Europe and North America. Makavejev's next film, Sweet Movie, was the first feature work that the director produced entirely outside of Yugoslavia. Sweet Movie's explicit depiction of sex together with its bold treatment of the more taboo dimensions of sexuality reduced the size of the film's audience and also resulted in the film's being censored in several countries.
After a seven-year hiatus in feature film production, Makavejev released the comparatively more conventional black comedy entitled Montenegro. The director's next feature film, The Coca-Cola Kid, which was based on short stories by Frank Moorhouse and featured performances by Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi, is arguably his most accessible picture.
Makavejev appears as one of the narrators in the 2007 Serbian documentary film Zabranjeni bez zabrane, which gives profound insight into the history and the nature of Yugoslav film censorship through its investigation of the country's distinctive political-cultural mechanisms for unofficially banning politically controversial films. The film contains original interviews with key filmmakers from the communist era.
He published two books of selected articles: Poljubac za drugaricu parolu and 24 sličice u sekundi.

Views

In 1993 Makavejev wrote and appeared in a half hour televised Opinions lecture in Britain, produced by Open Media for Channel 4 and subsequently published in The Times. Makavejev speaks of himself as a citizen of the world but "of the leftovers of Yugoslavia too". He cites Jacques Tourneur’s Hollywood horror classic Cat People as one of the rare films in the history of the cinema that mention Serbs, "a people from an obscure region who were haunted by evil; when hurt they turn into ferocious cats, like panthers, and killed those whom they thought to be the source of hurt of rejection". He comments on the division of Bosnia on ethnic lines:

Filmography

;Feature films
YearFilmDirectorWriterAwards / Notes
1965Man is Not a Bird
1967Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator
1968Innocence UnprotectedSilver Berlin Bear and FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival
1971Gold Hugo at Chicago International Film Festival
1974Sweet Movie
1981MontenegroAudience Award and Mostra Special Award at São Paulo International Film Festival, Palme d'Or nominee
1985Coca-Cola KidPalme d'Or nominee
1988Manifesto
1992Gorilla Bathes at Noon
1993Hole in the Soul
1996Danish Girls Show EverythingCo-author, Anthology film

;Short films