NEW SERBIAN CINEMA

New Serbian cinema: wave, movement or just an assumption?

The text examines the history and issue of the syntagm “New Serbian Cinema” as a rather accepted operative term in filmological circles and among the public for a group of mainly debut films by young filmmakers produced in Serbia and originating from the period between 2007 and 2011. Arising from the initiative of a critic, Dimitrij Vojnov, that was supposed to “direct practice”, without the support of the filmmakers themselves and without a sufficient number of films for a movement or wave to be recognized and defined in the first place, the term “New Serbian Cinema“, through time, and because of the fact that, since the emergence of the term, there had been some twenty debut features films that were conditionally similar to Vojnov’s preconditions, began to be widely used in polemics, at roundtables and in interviews and has, to a great extent, lost its connection to the critic who promoted it. The official resistance to this classification that the directors offered, in interviews and public appearances, changed and lead to a new situation: some directors and screenwriters have accepted the term New Serbian Cinema and the classification of their films as belonging to this “wave”, and their reservation relating to a generational determination has declined. Nevertheless, the text holds the view that, despite some indications, there actually are not enough arguments to believe that “New Serbian Cinema” is more than an idea and cultural assumption. The text pleads to redirect critic attention from classification to the more detailed analysis of new films.

Ivan Velisavljević