Our director Mina Radović curates the international retrospective Black Wave to White Ray: Yugoslav Film of the 1960s at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 7 to 21 September 2023 in New York City.

“When the critic Vladimir Jovičić coined the term “Black Wave” in 1969, he meant it as a dismissive nickname for a Yugoslavian national cinema that had become, in his opinion, unhealthily fixated on the dark side of human experience. Filmmakers such as Dušan Makavejev, Aleksandar Petrović, and Živojin Pavlović dealt with once-taboo topics like sex, war, and social alienation with a distinctive dark humor and brilliant formal invention. Although many of these films were banned or censored by the country’s socialist government, they attracted enough international attention to achieve a measure of freedom unthinkable in the other Eastern Bloc countries. Unfortunately, many of these films disappeared from distribution when the national government collapsed amid the civil wars of the 1990s. This 15-film program is a preliminary attempt to reclaim some of that lost work, as selected by film historian Mina Radovic with the gracious cooperation of the Yugoslav Cinematheque and Delta Video of Belgrade, the Croatian State Archives – Croatian Cinematheque, the Slovenian Film Centre, Cinematheque of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Cinematheque of North Macedonia.” -MoMA

The programme represents the first comprehensive exhibition of Yugoslav cinema and invites rediscovery of this major cinematic tradition and the pioneering work of Dušan Makavejev, Aleksandar Petrović, Živojin Pavlović, Boštjan Hladnik, Vatroslav Mimica, Dimitrie Osmanli, Bahrudin Čengić, Đorđe Kadijević, Marko Babac, Vojislav ‘Kokan’ Rakonjac, Jože Babič, Miroslav ‘Mika’ Antić, Mladomir Puriša Đorđević, Jovan Živanović and Miodrag Popović.

The retrospective combines brand new restorations and classic 35mm prints, film chapters on each film written by Mina Radović, and the world premiere of the 2K digital preservation of the filmThe City (Marko Babac, Živojin Pavlović, Vojislav ‘Kokan’ Rakonjac, 1963), the only film officially banned by courts in Yugoslavia and unavailable for decades.