On the 21st of March, a new film promotion will be heading to Supermercator’s Amsterdam space. Lux Alterna will be screening a short movie, followed by a feature from “one of the most important movies” from the Yugoslav Black Wave era.
A blanket term for a Yugoslav film and broader cultural movement starting from the early 1960s and ending in the early 1970s, Yugoslav Black Wave films are known for their non-traditional approach to filmmaking, dark humour and critical examinations of socialist Yugoslav society. Among the movement’s most notable auteurs is Dušan Makavejev – and Lux Alterna will be featuring his international breakthrough, WR: Mysteries of the Organism.
A movie that “could have only been made in this time, and frankly only by this director” the organisers describe the feature as “a mix of drama, documentary, social commentary, eroticism, politics, satire and so, so much more”.
“In a way it is an ode to the American psychologist Wilhelm Reich and his ideas on sexuality and sexual repression,” they add. “But it is linked to the Yugoslavian reality at that time in a way that only Makavejev is able to, by adding another story of two women in Yugoslavia, one a nymphomaniac, the other a devout communist. As in most of his other work, the boundaries between documentary, drama and fantasy become blurry, but this is always accompanied with Makavejev’s typical black sense of humour and that kind of anarchistic ‘fuck you‘ attitude of the 70’s.”
Before that, the night will kick off with the screening of a short movie written and directed by Jovan Jovanović and Miodrag Milošević. Fitting with the genre-busting nature of the feature, Kolt 15 Gap is an award-winning film which also assumes a pseudo-documentary format – following a Yugoslavian worker to portray several aspects of his life, often in a comic way, via a hand held camera, something “typical for the Yugoslav Black Wave.”
Doors to Lux Alterna’s first screening at Supermercator open at 19:00 on March 21st, with tickets on sale on the door for €5. Soup will also be served ahead of the films.