Oktobar Film

The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater explores the position of an artist in the Socialist FR Yugoslavia, focusing on the political and social climate that used public platforms to condemn the film WR: Mysteries of the Organism, under the auspices of the Communist Party.

The central theme of this feature-documentary film is a question related to the life and work of Petar Lubarda, one of our most eminent Serbian and Yugoslav painters of the twentieth century. How did this painter, who represented the highest reaches of post-war art in socialist Yugoslavia, acquire the status of state artist, while his biography emphasizes the romantic archetype of the haunted painter, pentre maudit, behind whom are misfortune, illness, fate and death?

In 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited, for the first time, Romania. Its communist regime gave him, as present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: 'The Leafless Forest'. In the 60s, a young art critic, Radu Bogdan, decided to elaborate a monograph dedicated to the great painter, including reproduction of the painting given to Tito. After countless problems, he obtained the permission to photograph the painting. The moment they took the painting off the wall, they found - a microphone. Somebody was spying on Tito...