Lordan Zafranović

Documentary about the life and work of Ivan Martinac (1938-2005), avant-garde & experimentalist filmmaker from Split, Croatia.

Compressing one idle day in the life of a young artist by rotating the camera through his room, a sort of a self-portrait of Lordan Zafranović resembles a one-shot film, its grainy photography and moody music suggesting a meditative atmosphere characteristic for Split authors of his generation.

The Focus is the film about easy death on the Mediterranean sun.

Experimental short.

We encounter the controversial Croatian film director Lordan Zafranovic in voluntary exile in Prague. The film follows his rise from a talented outsider to the celebrated Yugoslav director of the acclaimed war film, 'An Occupation in 26 Pictures'. His life story is an unconventional depiction of a rise and fall that reveals compromises made in order to survive artistically during communism, as well as the missed opportunities and miscalculations that led to his inability to adapt in later years. Is the charismatic Zafranovic a national traitor or a victim of historical circumstances in which the only thing he wanted to do, in his own words, was to be himself and make films?

SEVEN THOUSAND SOULS is a documentary - a feature film about the suffering of Serbian and Russian soldiers and interned civilians in Austro-Hungarian camps on the territory of today's Czech Republic, Jindrihovice and Broumov. The camps had about 500 facilities where there were about 60,000 prisoners of war. Extremely difficult working conditions, no food, no shoes and clothes, winter and infectious diseases, all this affected the fact that 7,100 Serbs did not survive the camps. There is a mausoleum in Jindrihovice where the remains are victims of these camps - 7100 Serbs and 189 Russians. It is the second largest Serbian tomb in the world.

A couple meet and walk down the streets of Split all the way to the shore. This is the second film Zafranović ever made and the oldest preserved.

An experiment with 'anti-language' in detail (in composition, in changing plans, in exposition, etc.). Proof that the general rhythm and those miraculous 'pixels' that are not seen in the projection really mean a lot, if not everything.

Predrag Popovic, Goran Markovic, Srdjan Karanovic, Rajko Grlic and Lordan Zafranovic talk about the Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Students from the Prague Academy of Film (FAMU) talk about their life in Prague. Filmed in Prague in 1968, a few months before the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.