FROM THE HISTORY OF CROATIAN CINEMA

Life in a beauty

On the occasion of Vlado Kristl’s retrospective in Munich Filmmuseum (Munich, September - October, 2003), Göttler screened Kristl’s short films made in Croatia and Germany. Comparing him with Schlöndorff, Herzog, Wenders and Kluge, he finds his early films to be filled with ’unattainable charm’, displaying an excellent rule of the technique, and the energy seen only in young Eisenstein’, and concludes: ’Beauty, liveliness, confusion. The work zooms and strums, there is liveliness and faltering, here and there, zooming and schwenking, vibration that disturbs the viewer, leading to anxiety, exhausting, motivating the idea of escape. A communication device announced by Kafka, and later on analysed by Deluze and Guattari.«

Fritz Göttler