Resident, Zhelimir

Zelimir Zilnik was born in 1942 in the Crveni Krst concentration camp, where his mother Militsa Zilnik was imprisoned - a staunch anti-fascist and a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ^[2] . The newborn was saved by other prisoners during the escape and handed over to relatives, but the mother was soon shot. Father Slobodan "Konrad" Zhilnik - an activist of the Serbian partisan movement, in March 1944 captured and shot by the Chetniks .

Zelimir grew up in the family of his aunt, grandmother and grandfather in the city of Novi Sad , Serbia. He graduated from high school in 1960, worked in the local youth creative association, where he became interested in cinema. In the Novi Sad Film Club, he began making short experimental films. Throughout the entire early stage of creativity, the goal of Zhelimir Zilnik was to achieve “coarse”, almost anti-artistic aesthetics.

At the University of Novi Sad he was interested in sociology, but due to the lack of a relevant course, he entered the law faculty. In 1965 he began working as an assistant at the Avala film studio in Belgrade, and in 1967 he acted as the second director of the group Dusan Makaveeva in the film “A Love Story or a Tragedy of a Telephone Operator ”. Subsequently, both directors will maintain friendly and business relationships for many years.

In 1967, Zhilnik staged his first short-length documentary film “Journal of a Youth Village in the Winter”, which won the prize of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Union of Youth and the prize of the national film magazine Ekran. In 1968, he released a short documentary film “Unemployed” about migrant workers, those who are trying to find work both at home, in Yugoslavia, and abroad. The film won the Grand Prix at the film festival in Oberhausen in Germany. In 1969, he received another nomination for the prize in Oberhausen for the film “Movement in June”, which dealt with student demonstrations in Belgrade in 1968, which occurred immediately after the May events in Paris . This documentary has become a vivid picture of the turbulent period of European history and the harbinger of Zelimir Zilnik's debut in the full-length movie - The Early Works . Critics often call this film one of the main works expressing the artistic features of the Yugoslav black wave: unconventional presentation of the plot and presentation of the video, consideration of pressing social problems, often from an opposition point of view to the existing power, black humor , fatalistic finals ^[2] . Despite the presentation of the Golden Bear Berlinale to the film, the authorities reacted extremely negatively to the film. Beginning in 1969, against all directors who expressed these principles in their works, the persecution began from impartial criticism to direct harassment in the media, and from 1972 to direct threats of physical violence. One of the director’s acquaintances showed him an official letter to the newspaper’s editorship, which ordered not to mention in any articles the names of Makaveev, Petrovich , Pavlovich and Zhilnik, except for the cases of publication of the obituaries about their sudden demise. Zelimir Zhilnik went to Germany the next day.

During the German period of his creative work, he continued his research in the direction of consciously “ugly”, “unprofessional” aesthetics of the presentation of material. The complexity of the perception of these works largely influenced their low commercial success and a certain elimination of the director from the world cinema process ^[2] . In the late 1970s, Zhelimir Zilnik used the opportunity to return to Yugoslavia.

In 1989, his film "So Steel Hardened" was nominated for the main prize of the Moscow International Film Festival , but gave way to his picture " Soap Kidnappers " ^[3] . The tape " Marble Ass " was more successful and received one of the prizes of the Berlin Film Festival ^[4] .