What is Jugokino?

My name is Christian Axboe Nielsen, I am a Balkan historian, and I teach Southeast European Studies and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) - the language(s) formerly known as Serbo-Croatian - at Aarhus University in Denmark.  In my teaching and research, I focus predominantly on the former Yugoslavia.

This blog is about my mission to watch every feature film made in Yugoslavia after the Second World War, starting with "Slavica," the first film made in socialist Yugoslavia.  Quite simply, I want to combine my interests in movies and in the former Yugoslavia in order to share with readers of this blog the many fascinating and often forgotten gems of Yugoslav cinema.  Today, movie audiences around the world have heard about a select handful of famous former Yugoslav directors such as Emir Kusturica and Goran Paskaljević.  Few, however, have seen such stirring movies as "Ciganka" (1953) or light comedies such as "Lito Vilovito" (1964).

In my free time, I am a voracious watcher of movies and a particularly devoted fan of the magnificent Criterion Collection.  My long relationship with Criterion started in 2002 when my old college roommate gave me the Criterion edition of Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress." Ever since, I have been pursuing the Sisyphean task of collecting and watching as many of Criterion's movies as I can.  Every time I visit the US, I return home with a suitcase stuffed with Criterion goodies, and I scour sites on the internet in order to find out-of-print titles.  In my own way, I am as obsessed with Criterion as Matthew Dessem, the author of the delightful and completely unpretentious Criterion Contraption blog.

One of the things I like about Matthew Dessem's blog is that he states his aim clearly and simply at the outset: "I'm going to watch every last DVD in the Criterion Collection."  My mission statement explicitly paraphrases this.  I want to watch every single feature film made in Yugoslavia after the Second World War.  This blog is not primarily focused on contentious issues in Balkan history or politics.  Sooner or later a variety of such issues will inevitably pop up, but I am not intending to let this spoil what should just be a long and enjoyable journey through one of the most vibrant European film industries in the second half of the twentieth century.

Some quick parameters: this blog will only focus on feature films - called igrani or cjelovečernji/celovečernji igrani filmovi produced on the territory of Yugoslavia after 1945.  So there will be no documentary films or notes on short features - of which there were hundreds, if not thousands.  Although most of the films will be in Serbo-Croatian, I of course include films in Slovenian and Macedonian.

The internet has made it possible to find and watch many films which were unavailable for decades, and which were only rarely shown even in the former Yugoslavia.  I hope that this blog will become a place where aficionados of Yugoslav film can not only discuss these films and provide information, analysis and trivia about them, but also help each other locate long-lost films.

I hope for commentary from any and all who share my ecumenical interest in Yugoslav cinema.  I will be posting in both English and BCS, and comments in all languages are welcome.  So, as they said in the old days: "Nema odmora dok traje obnova!"