ABSTRACT
Želimir Žilnik’s film Early Works (Rani radovi) is a rich repository of “raw” images. Released in 1969, the film was a major international success: it won the “Golden Bear” at the Berlinale of the same year. Despite this accomplishment, Early Works faced significant difficulties at home. The film was banned and Žilnik – a lawyer by vocation – defended it in court himself. Although he managed to overturn the verdict, he was expelled from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and he never attained widespread distribution for his work. In order to continue his filmmaking career, Žilnik had to emigrate a few years later; he left Yugoslavia for West Germany, where he once again ran into trouble with the authorities. Upon directing Paradise. An Imperialist Tragicomedy (Paradies. Eine imperialistische Tragikomödie, 1976) – a film alluding to the faked kidnapping of right-wing politician Peter Lorenz by an anarchist terrorist group, which Lorenz used in an electoral campaign (Mazierska 2013, 142) – Žilnik was visited by the police, his apartment was searched, and though he could not be linked to terrorism, he was accused of tax fraud. Alexander Kluge negotiated that the charges against Žilnik be dropped on the condition that he leave the country (Ćurlin, Dević, and Ilić 2020, 68). Upon returning to Yugoslavia, Žilnik first worked for television and then returned to directing cinefilms.
