Aleksandar Petrović (film director)

Biography

After making several short films, Petrović gained international recognition when his second feature film, And Love Has Vanished, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Four years later, he received his first Academy Award nomination when Three was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards.

Petrović's next film, I Even Met Happy Gypsies (also called Feather Gatherers), would turn out to be one of his most important. It was the first film that depicted the quotidian aspects of Romani society and everyday life. Most of the actors were themselves Romani, and it was the first feature film in the Romani language. Petrović was inspired by his experiences with the Romani in his youth, saying, "As a child, I observed them and saw in these people faith and irrationality." The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1967 Academy Awards and won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. It also received a nomination for a Golden Globe. In 1967 Petrović was a member of the jury at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.

Petrović's next film, It Rains in My Village, earned him another Palme d'Or nomination and is one of his most well-known movies. Petrović found inspiration for the film in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed. He followed it with another literary adaptation, The Master and Margaret, which he adapted from the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. The Italian-Yugoslav co-production was Yugoslavia's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 45th Academy Awards.

Like Bulgakov, Petrović soon found himself the target of state repression. In 1973, he was forced to leave his post at the Belgrade Film Academy after being accused of holding anti-communist views by the government of Yugoslavia. In late December 1989, he joined the founding committee of the Democratic Party in Serbia, the first opposition anti-communist party in Serbia.

Petrović also wrote hundreds of articles and several books over the course of his career, including Novi film I: 1960-1965 and Novi film II: Crni film (1965-1970).

He died in Paris on 20 August 1994.

Filmography

References

References

1. "The 39th Academy Awards (1967) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org.
2. "Biography - Aleksandar Petrovic".
3. "The 40th Academy Awards (1968) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org.
4. "Winners & Nominees 1968".
5. "Berlinale 1967: Juries". berlinale.de.
6. "BICE SKORO PROPAST SVETA".
7. [[:hr:Bit će skoro propast svijeta]]
8. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
9. Vlastimir Sudar, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Political Dissident: The Life and Work of Aleksandar Petrović" (Bristol: Intellect, 2013; {{ISBN. 978-1-84150-545-9)
10. Đerić, Zoran. (2009). "Poetika srpskog filma". Besjeda.