New publication by Vesi Vuković: Yugoslav (Trans)national Memory on Rural Spaces

ZeMKI member Vesi Vuković recently published an article in “Iluminace – The Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics” titled „Yugoslav (Trans)national Memory on Rural Spaces: Short Documentary Films Girls Without Boy(friend)s Girls Without Boy(friend)s (1963) and The Best Husband The Best Husband (1968) by Woman Filmmaker Vera Jocić“.

ZeMKI member Dr. Vesi Vuković recently published an article in “Iluminace – The Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics” titled „Yugoslav (Trans)national Memory on Rural Spaces: Short Documentary Films Girls Without Boy(friend)s Girls Without Boy(friend)s (1963) and The Best Husband The Best Husband (1968) by Woman Filmmaker Vera Jocić“.

Abstract

Women directors were scarce in Yugoslav feature-length fiction film production, with only seven of them active throughout the existence of the cinema of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), which spanned roughly from 1945 to 1991. In contrast, the court métrage production was somewhat more welcoming for women directors, who seized their opportunity to make short films, including fiction, experimental works, animation, and, especially, documentaries, in professional or amateur cine-club spheres. Vera Jocić was one of them. Her professional short films include the documentaries Girls Without Boy(friend)s (Devojke bez momaka; 1963) and The Best Husband (Najbolji muž; 1968). I will closely analyze them, with particular attention to medium-specific traits, as camera work, framing, editing, and sound. Through examination of form and narrative, I will tackle gender aspects of these films, and their setting in the rural environment. Moreover, I will look into sociological aspects, that is, the lives of Yugoslav women in rural areas. By doing so, I identify research gaps on Yugoslav women filmmakers and Yugoslav documentary cinema and contribute towards closing them.

I seek to understand why Yugoslav women filmmakers are largely overlooked. My findings indicate several reasons, such as: historical revisionism, gender inequality in Yugoslav film industry, festival circuits, and film criticism, the canonization of male auteurs and their works, numerical underrepresentation of Yugoslav women behind the camera, scholarly neglect, and lack of digitization and viewing access. This paper aims to raise awareness of the importance of researching, screening, curating, and digitizing films directed by Yugoslav women filmmakers.

The full article is available here