Mimitsa, Vatroslav

Vatroslav Mimica was born in 1923 in the city of Omis of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Having received secondary education, he entered the Department of Medicine of the University of Zagreb . In 1942 he joined the Union of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia. Since 1943 he fought in the units of the Yugoslav partisans . After the war, Mimitsa continued his studies in medicine, but in his free time he founded the first student newspaper in Zagreb , where he published his critical articles on literature and cinema ^[2] . In 1950, he began his cinematic career, when he, having an impeccable biography (from the point of view of the communist leadership of the country), was invited to the Jadran Film Studio as one of the directors. However, two years later, Mimitsa left the company due to disagreement with her creative concepts. His debut as an independent director and screenwriter was the film "Into the Tempest" ( chore . U oluji , 1952) with then-beginning actors Velko Bulajić and Mia Oremovich . In the second half of the 1950s, Mimitsa became interested in animation and became one of the leading directors of the Zagreb school of animated films.

In 1960, Mimitsa moved away from animation (although his last work in the animation was the film “Firefighters”, ch. Vatrogasci , 1971) and turned to the production of full-length feature films. In 1961, together with Italian colleagues, he removes the historical drama " Suleiman the Conqueror " ( Italian: Solimano il conquistatore ). His film “ Prometheus from the Isle of Wishevice ” ( Croatian Prometej s otoka Viševice , 1964) receives the main prize “The Big Golden Arena” for the best film of the Pula Film Festival , as well as a special diploma of the IV Moscow International Film Festival ^[3] . His next film, Monday or Tuesday ( Ponedjeljak ili utorak , 1966) also won the Big Golden Arena for the best film, and Mimitsa himself won the Golden Arena for best directing. These tapes of him are often compared with the works of other East European directors of the same period, to which Mimitsa himself responds as follows ^[2] :

Having made three films in the style of the “new wave”, Mimitsa again returned to more traditional films. The first of these is The Case of Horv. Događaj , 1969) about the farmer and his grandson: the boy, having lost his father, lives in constant fear that he might lose his grandfather. The next work - the film "Fattened" ( Horv. Hranjenik , 1970) again returns the audience to the theme of the Second World War . Reflecting the events in the concentration camp, Mimitsa refused in her accusations of only fascism as a phenomenon, and tried to analyze evil as one of the aspects of human nature, the nature of totalitarianism outside of a specific historical situation. The authorities of the communist country did not accept such a metaphor, the film and its director were not allowed at any subsequent film festival ^[2] . The director began filming historical costume dramas: “Peasant Uprising of 1573” ( ch. Seljačka buna 1573 , 1975) and the television series “Anno Domini 1573” about popular unrest in Croatia , “Banovic Strahinja” ( chore . Banovic Strahinja , 1981, in the Soviet box office it was called the “Law of Love”) on the aggression of the Ottoman Empire against Serbia at the end of the 14th century . In 1981, Mimitsa, at the age of 58, left the cinema forever, so far refusing to comment on this step.

In 2001, at the Pula Film Festival, Mimitsa received an award for his contribution to cinema throughout his career ^[2] .

• Vatroslav Mimitsa on the Internet Movie Database