ABSTRACT
An overview of Yugoslav cinema would have done well to focus on individual directors and the importance of particular films. Post-Yugoslav cinema shares the general fate of the “ex-communist” Eastern and Central European cinemas and, to a degree, the cinema of the Soviet Union. Yugoslav cinema since 1945 established an admirable international reputation for daring innovation in film language as well as in highly personalized narrative visions with critical socio-political implications. The development of a made-for-video film market of cheap, swiftly shot genre movies as in Greece, for instance. Since the mid-1980s, however, Yugoslav cinema’s outlook became far less optimistic. Emir Kusturica is an important force in the “novi” Yugoslav cinema in part because he is a Bosnian film maker and therefore outside the three major filmmaking centers: Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana. Much of Yugoslav cinema of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s bears the same trademark of quality productions about important issues that have long appeared on Yugoslav screens.
