A brief History: Jedna seoska srpska svadba


(A Serbian Country Wedding)
Production date: 1911

In Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century, cinema producers were often theatre owners.  In December of 1908, producer Svetozar Botoric opened the country's first permanent cinema in his Paris hotel in Belgrade. Then in 1911, he hired a cinematographer whose alias was Louis de Beery (a Hungarian, whose real name was Lajos Zoltan Arpad Pitrolf) to film features and documentaries about Belgrade, Serbia and Serbian topics.

 

In this traditional wedding, the strength of the images came from the rare and often highly tenuous details like the intimacy of a house or the presentation of the different castes of the age:  politicians, intellectuals, farmers…The camera also lingers on a group dance in a circle:  the kolo. Many kolos are part of the traditional dances of the Balkan countries.

 

This Serbian ethnological documentary was screened for the first time in 1912, in Botoric’s Paris cinema, together with the newsreel about the sinking of Titanic.

 

A brand new 35mm copy was recently made based on the original nitrate negative from the fabulous collection belonging to the Austrian film maker and cinema owner from Osijek, Ignaz Reinthaler.

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