“Film Festivals as an Arena for Political Debate – Yugoslav Black Wave in Belgrade and Oberhausen Film Festival, 1967-1973”

This paper examines the recognition that Yugoslav polemical short films gained at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen with the acknowledgement they received at home at the Yugoslav Documentary and Short Film Festival in Belgrade at the end of the 1960s. By analyzing texts published in the Yugoslav press on documentaries by Želimir Žilnik, one of the leading filmmakers of the period, the paper investigates how local journalists and film critics supported state censorship through their reporting on the so-called “Black Wave.” Arguing that the campaign against the Black Wave had characteristics of a struggle for political influence rather than those of classical censorship, the paper offers an overview of press reports on Žilnik’s short documentaries The Unemployed (Nezaposleni ljudi, Neoplanta film, 1968), June Turmoil (Lipanjska gibanja, Neoplanta film, 1969) and Black Film (Crni film, Neoplanta film, 1971) – three films from his first period that were screened at both festivals, all of them award-winners at Oberhausen.