Film director Karpo Godina to be presented at MoMA
New York, 8 October - A retrospective of films by Slovenian director, cinematographer, editor and screenwriter Karpo Godina will be on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) between 19 and 25 October.
Nova Gorica
Film director Karpo Godina.
Photo: Daniel Novakovič/STA
A film about Godina by Matjaž Ivanišin, entitled Karpopotnik, and two films where Godina was the director of photography and cameraman, Occupation in 26 Pictures by Lordan Zafranović and Black Film by Želimir Žilnik, will be screened, according to the Slovenian cinematheque, which set up the presentation.
Godina is labelled on MoMA's website "an essential figure of Yugoslav cinema", who infused the radical Black Wave of the 1960s, a new wave in the Yugoslav film, with an "irrepressible expressive freedom-squarely targeted against all forms of repression-and thrived long after the end of Titoism and the breakup of Yugoslavia in civil war."
For more than 30 years, the Slovenian-Macedonian filmmaker has brought a "playfully anarchical spirit to the poetics and politics of film, moving breathlessly between fiction and nonfiction in his avant-garde shorts of the 1960s and '70s and his feature films of the 1980s and '90s," the museum says.
Godina frequently collaborated with Bahrudin "Bato" Čengić, Želimir Žilnik, Lordan Zafranović, and other pioneering members of the Black Wave, and he has since worked comfortably in the former Yugoslavian republics as a director, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor.
This will be Godina's first career retrospective in the US. It coincides with the exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980.
Born in Macedonia, Godina graduated in directing from the Ljubljana Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. He has a distinct film voice, combining socially engaged attitude with a unique film aesthetics, the Slovenian Cinematheque says on its website.
Godina shot to art cinema fame in 1980 with The Medusa Raft, the first of what would only be three feature films. His films, most notably Red Boogie (1982) and Artificial Paradise (1990) are considered an important part of Slovenian and European heritage.
His films toured the world's leading festivals and earned him more than 40 prestigious Slovenian and foreign awards, including the Prešeren Prize for life-time work and achievements in 2006.