Dušan Makavejev’s Nevinost bez zaštite (1968) gravitates around the eponymous first Yugoslav sound film, supposedly shot in 1941 by the acrobat and cinema enthusiast Dragoljub Aleksić. Mimicking documentary practices and subjecting them to a playful deconstruction, Makavejev reuses footage from Aleksić’s never-released melodrama, combining it with interviews with surviving cast and crew members and World War II newsreels. At an early stage of the project Paranational Cinema — Legacies and Practices, Nevinost bez zaštite became an important reference point, raising questions of authorship and censorship, mythmaking and national identity, the status of archival material, and the cinematic medium. The existence of a 35 mm print with German voiceover in the Arsenal Archive also hints at the specific challenges and material conditions of “unarchiving paranational cinema.”

Kino Arsenal, 30 September, 12:00
Introduction by Petra Belc Krnjaić (University of Klagenfurt, VERN’ University in Zagreb)