Nevinost bez zaštite

Dušan Makavejev’s NEVINOST BEZ ZAŠTITE gravitates around the eponymous first Yugoslav sound film, supposedly shot in 1941 by the acrobat and cinema enthusiast Dragoljub Aleksić. Mimicking documentary practices and subjecting them to a playful deconstruction, Makavejev reuses footage from Aleksić’s never-released melodrama, combining it with interviews with the surviving cast and crew members and World War II newsreels. 

At an early stage of the project “Paranational Cinema,” (see panel 10) NEVINOST BEZ ZAŠTITE became an important reference point, raising questions on authorship and censorship, mythmaking and national identity, the status of archival material, and the cinematic medium. The existence of a print with German voiceover in the Arsenal Archive also hints at the specific challenges and material conditions of “unarchiving paranational cinema.”

Petra Belc Krnjaić is a researcher, curator, and lecturer whose work focuses on amateur and experimental cinema, feminist film historiography, and audiovisual archives. She has published widely on Yugoslav film culture and has led several archival and restoration projects dedicated to amateur film heritage. She teaches film theory and avant-garde film practices at the University of Klagenfurt and VERN’ University in Zagreb.