Introduction

In 1964, the artist and cineast Tomislav Gotovac made what some consider his masterpiece, colloquially known as the Belgrade Trilogy, consisting of three short experimental films: Circle (Kružnica), Straight Line (Pravac), and Blue Rider (Plavi jahač). Gotovac produced these films at the Academic Kino Club (Akademski kino klub) in Belgrade, which was founded in 1958 as an alternative to the increasingly elitist and bureaucratic Belgrade Kino Club. The Kino Clubs were incubated in 1948 by a state-sponsored initiative called Narodna Tehnika, which was designed by the Yugoslav Communist Youth League to put technology in the hands of the masses, encourage their creativity, and foster knowledge. Around that time, the Belgrade Society of Photo Amateurs was founded, which was given the task of developing kino amateurs, eventually resulting in the founding of Belgrade Kino Club in 1951. The latter was the first Kino Club in Serbia to enjoy a degree of acclaim, which brought about a degree of pretention as well. As a collection of amateur cineastes—amateur in the sense that their cine-enthusiasm was not based on professional gain—the Academic Kino Club was open and democratic. If you showed up, you could shoot. That is exactly what Gotovac did, with the help of his cinematographer and editor Petar Blagojević. This general freedom incubated an environment that was both conducive to creative experimentation and free of the pressures of Yugoslav market socialism.