The Yugoslav Film Archive is celebrating its 75th anniversary since its establishment on June 6th of this year. It will celebrate the anniversary by presenting the Golden Seal, the institution’s most prestigious award for contributions to film, to Serbian actor Predrag Miki Manojlović.
The award ceremony will be held on June 6 at 19:00 in the Makavejev Hall located at Uzun Mirkova 1, followed by the opening of the 26th Nitrate Film Festival. On the same day at noon, the Yugoslav Film Archive will name its library after Mrs. Olga Dobrović (1903-1994), who founded and cared for it for decades. The Serbian Post Office will also issue a postage stamp for the Archives’ anniversary.
“On this anniversary, the Yugoslav Film Archive is giving Predrag Miki Manojlović, one of our most important actors, the award for his outstanding contribution to film. With so many and such high-caliber parts, his resume as an actor is truly remarkable. In our cinematography, this ratio of roles’ quantity and quality is exceedingly rare, if not unique. Miki Manojlović’s acting has had a major impact on the cinema of Serbia and Yugoslavia, and he has also portrayed notable characters in other countries.
Currently, he is continuing to produce work of the same caliber, and it is evident that his acting repertoire isn’t defined by any periods of dormancy. It should also be mentioned that Miki Manojlović developed a unique acting style for our film, often playing the most psychologically complex characters and moving easily between limited and expressive acting”, said Jugoslav Pantelić, director of the Yugoslav Film Archive. A retrospective of Miki Manojlović’s films will be held at the Yugoslav Film Archive in the Makavejev Hall from June 1st to 5th, preceding the awarding of the Golden Seal.
The Nitrate Film Festival, which will take place from June 6 to 16, will feature approximately 40 titles from 23 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America. The main attraction is the amateur documentary film in color from 1937 called Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Brit, John Kinsman, filmed it while traveling from north to south Yugoslavia with a group of French war veterans to witness the unveiling of the monument for the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Kumanovo in Zebrnjak, near Kumanovo. The audience will have the opportunity to view a selection of films, including Williams Wyler’s Hell’s Heroes (1929), Yasujiro Ozu’s There Was a Father (1942), and the most recent restored version of Dziga Vertov’s cult classic, Man with a Movie Camera (1929).
Jugoslav Pantelić, director of the Yugoslav Film Archive, expressed his delight that the library will be named after Olga Dobrović. He noted that “Olga Dobrović not only established and maintained a library but also transformed it into one of the most significant places for film students in our country. She was the link between all individuals who were seeking film knowledge, and the library she oversaw was a place for discussion and exchange of ideas. Like an accomplished connoisseur of film literature, art, and culture in general, she served as an “unofficial pedagogue” to an entire generation of film theorists and authors, including Vlada Petrić, Dušan Stojanović, Branko Vučićević, Dušan Makavejev, Vladeta Lukić, Vladimir Pogačić, and others. Olga Dobrović was the wife of the famous painter Petar Dobrović and his inspiration for a series of portraits.
