International Day of Audio-Visual Heritage in Tuškanac

On the occasion of this year’s International Day of AV Heritage, the Croatian Cinematheque, in collaboration with the Croatian Film Clubs’ Association, has organized a program of banned Croatian films. On this day, we will show three films that were banned and only shown for the first time several decades later.
There are two films in the first part of the program. Both are film adaptations of then popular plays with one act from the Kerempuh’s Jolly Theatre. Besides the two films that we are showing, Tajna dvorca I.B. and Iz Kerempuhova dnevnika, there was the third film Profesor Budalastov, which is believed to have been lost (the character of the professor appears also in the film Iz Kerempuhova dnevnika; it is actually one of the three episodes brought to us by Kerempuh). All three films are a satirical portrayal of Yugoslavia’s strained relations with the USSR and the rest of the communist bloc. In fact, they were not made with the idea of criticizing the government but rather in support of the official politics of the day, as they are more critical of the USSR and the elements of the ruling structure that leaned towards Stalin. The cause for their censorship was probably the strict and rather closed cultural climate, so a strong satire, even if it was at the expense of the enemy, was potentially too dangerous.
In the second part of the program we will see the humorous Ciguli Miguli, which was, according to the director, officially censored. It is a rather “innocent” and almost well-meaning critique of the bad characteristics of certain segments of the bureaucratic system. Ivan Ivanović is an incompetent and vain but also extremely ambitious manager who comes to a provincial town and, without any sympathy for the local community, brusquely implements the envisioned reform of the town’s cultural life. He experiences resistance from the townsfolk as well as all the other worst traits that are to be expected from the small town mentality. Besides that, there is a group of young people who are building the new Cultural Home and represent all the positive sides of the new system. After its initial viewing by censors, the film had parts added in which there was a more direct critique of the provincial ways of life, but in spite of that the film didn’t premiere until 1977. Most likely the reasons were similar to the case of the first two films from this program.
Even though these films were actually banned, they were not made with the intention of being serious critiques of the system and its ideology, but rather as an attempt to offer a mildly ironic and critical point of view, which were blessed and even desired by the government. Evidence to support this is the fact that the authors themselves were surprised when their films got banned. Moreover, the fact that the entire system of filmmaking was oriented towards financial support from the government, the main form of censorship was self-censorship. (Lucija Zore, film archivist)