A Portrait of the Artist as a Political Dissident
The Life and Work of Aleksandar Petrovic
Distributed for Intellect Ltd
366 pages
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10 halftones
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7 x 9
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© 2013
In the liberal West as in socialist Yugoslavia, the films of Aleksandar Petrovic dramatize how enforced dogmatism can corrode any political system. A case study of the oft-overlooked Yugoslav director’s colorful and eventful career, A Portrait of the Artist as a Political Dissident explores how Petrovic developed specific political and social themes in his films. A response to the political vagaries of his time, these anti-dogmatic views were later to become a trademark of his work. Although interest in socialist Yugoslavia and its legacy has risen steadily since the 1990s, the history of Yugoslav cinema has been scarcely covered, and this book marks a fresh contribution to a burgeoning area of interest.
Graham Petrie, McMaster University
"Vlastimir Sudar’s study of the films of the late Serbian film director Aleksandar Petrovic is a valuable addition to the still relatively small amount of information in English about this award-winning filmmaker’s career and his place as a prominent figure, both in the history of the cinema of the former Yugoslavia and in international cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. Though Sudar rightly concentrates on Petrovic’s films of this period, he provides detailed information about the director’s life and overall career, together with careful analysis of his major films. His book should take its place beside Daniel Goulding’s Liberated Cinema as an indispensable contribution to the history of East and Central European cinema."
Daniel J. Goulding, Oberlin College
"Vlastimir Sudar’s book is the most ambitious and comprehensive attempt thus far to bring into bold relief Aleksandar Petrovic’s role as a world-class film artist, political dissident, and a major figure in bringing about the Yugoslav new film or black film period of the 1960s and early ’70s. Using an innovative and updated version of auteur theory as a major strategy of film analysis, Sudar discovers and persuasively articulates four basic thematic political paradigms that cut across all of Petrovic’s major films. His analysis is further deepened by a remarkable variety and scope of relevant source materials—historical, biographical, cultural, and political—that he critically brings to bear to substantiate and provide a context for his film analysis."
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