Prominent American film essayist and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum initiated this international project with the topic of movie/cinephilia mutations and the changing map of world film/cinephilia, which researches the phenomenon of the vanishing of movies/cinephilia/movie theatres. He is intrigued by similar tastes in movies and the sensibility of four movie theorists born in the 1960s in different parts of the world: Nicole Brenez (Paris), Kent Jones (New York), Alexander Horwath (Vienna) and Adriana Martin (Melbourne). He is interested in the generational closeness between strangers that surpassed national and language barriers and that is connected to his interest in the phenomenon of “global simultaneity” between movie researchers and directors who do not know each other and work in different parts of the world. His programmatic letter started an extensive exchange of letters that were later published in the French movie magazine Trafic, which was founded in 1991 by Serge Daney and Raymond Bellour. These letters-essays started a lively discussion in other countries as well and in 2003 were published in the book Film Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin).


Movie mutations in Zagreb join the research of the specific movie mutation, by connecting film theory essays with films that inspired them. These mutations make up one of the many parallel histories of film and try to create a map of change in film and film culture. Wim Wenders devoted his film “about the death of film” Im Lauf der Zeit to the remaining local movie theaters along the West and East German border. At the same time Kubelka/Mekas Invisible Movie Theater vanished as well. Thirty years after Im Lauf der Zeit old movie theaters in Zagreb were replaced by smaller halls in multiplexes. The beginning of the end was marked by the extinction of cinematheque programs in the 1990s and the closing of movie theatres all over the country. Therefore, in this part of the world, “children of the sixties” are the last “cinematheque children” as well.


The six-day-long festival-symposium about invisible film in Tuškanac will host film theorists Rosenbaum, Horwath, Bellour, Brenez, Jones, and Martin as well as their guests. A symposium on the mutation of film as well as discussions about mutations, tendencies and the "archaeology of the possible future" of the film medium and of contemporary foreign and Croatian film will take place at the Journalists' Home.



Organizers: Bijeli val, Croatian Film Clubs’ Association, Community Art

Producer: Nikola Devčić

Art director: Tanja Vrvilo

Selectors of the film program: Tanja Vrvilo, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Raymond Bellour, Alexander Horwath, Nicole Brenez, Adrian Martin, Kent Jones