The Makavejev Case Or Trial In a Movie Theatre

Makavejev's film "WR - Mysteries of the Organism" won acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971 and yet a little later, after a screening in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, the director saw himself widely vilified, with the film accused of undermining socialist morality as well as blasphemy towards the icons of socialism. In the film Makavejev applied himself to the theories of the psychoanalyst and sex researcher Wilhelm Reich in a pot-pourri of documentary and feature film sequences, as well as archive recordings, in the process mixing politics with sexuality. The screening thereof was subsequently banned in Yugoslavia. Makavejev left the country. Recently, four tapes of the public debate surrounding the film emerged. Radovanović uses them to reconstruct what happened to a symbolic backdrop: he plays the tapes in the presence of people connected to Makavejev's film. Words and exemplary film clips speak for themselves. NaF