Radmila Djurica

The film Projections/Projekcije premiered on Pula Film Festival in August, drawed to my attention is a brand new film by Croatian film director Zrinko Ogresta. Primarily, text is written by a Croatian screenwriter Lada Kaštelan and contains spatial and temporal unity, with the element of some content. A camera kind of films these days are rare and are considered as an experimental films. And such films are actually one adopted from the theatre play. In addition, the script for the film Projections/Projekcije was at first written for the theatre.  “A key moment in the film where I began to see so to speak was when I became aware that you are the only true and suggestive way the recording subjective camera. The camera throughout the film always cleaned and individual character standpoint, and that in this way the relationships between the characters even more intensified. The subjective camera is trying to achieve and I become a spectator and participant sessions because the actors speak directly to us. So that we as the viewer part of the one circuit and it seems to me that in this way increasing the overall suggestiveness of the content,” stressed the author of the film Zrinko Ogresta.

The entire movie Projections/Projekcije was made in one room at the training sessions of a group therapy, where participants talk to each other or argue while waiting for a “teacher” who is late. Late for whatever reason intentionally or accidentally? Are the students’ parts of the experiment? That is the question, which is suggested with occasionally inserted images on control cameras. There are questions here that remain open: but the point is already in something else. Ogresta reveals basic human need to be guided in life, to have authority and certain order in life, without which people may come to a frustrations and conflicts. Moreover, here is when this film comes to a certain “forbidden zone “for filmmakers. For me Ogresta’s film is successfully decomposed into a number of subjective frames: his characters in drama give a visual dynamism, but audience may as well come to some manner to be confused by the characters and personal objections and attitude of their authority. All due to a society that changed and lost their previous socialistic society authority figures as well as trust, starting from beginning of 90s. The story that follows gives us insight to learn more about characters and the nature of their relationship in order to compensate missing parts.

In a group of eight participants, the best-portrayed characters are characters interpreted by for instance Polona Juh Slovenian actor and as well Croatian actors such as Ksenija Pajić, Jelena Miholjević, Ksenija Marinković or Bojan Navojec etc.

 Projections/Projekcije is an experimental film worth seeing and it is pretty powerful and courageous work. The sessions called by professional education of psychiatrist, psychotherapist, therapists, educators last long time in real life, sometimes 4 years. What this expertise has led to the further education of their professional ambitions and world-renowned American professor's time? It is the experimental hall at a local music school, soundproof, without window and one door. The claustrophobic room triggers action caught and mostly quite turbulent relationships between the characters, along with a psychiatrist himself who is much more successful in the professional than personal life. Are we living in time when the professional success is more important then personal and does one excludes each other, giving the time people spent at work?  However, collective psychotherapy is not the subject of this film, it is the means by which to reach somewhere in the film.  The story has content and a form, reluctant to film but all of the expressive in a meaning and it is a striking minimalist study group psychology: it offers opportunities for pretentious reading of that something intimate. In fact, if we are talking about eight socially, economically and culturally disparate individuals connected by a figure of the authoritarian leader who disappears, shows up and disappear again. The story may reflect the society as well: meaning the leaders are here- they show up but they also disappear and what we are going to do without our leaders, the bellwethers. Are we just another generation of misguided sheep?

Film director of Projections/Projekcije is Croatian filmmaker and University professor Zrinko Ogresta student of another ex Yugoslavian film director Golik and the one even more known Babaja for which, according to Ogresta, he had the most of the influence today. His movies, according to his own statements always mirrored his personality and we are all living in time shaped by our personality. Ogresta’s decision to make a film in full spatio- temporal continuity, which occurs in only one room, without practically no scenography, mise en scene is a challenge that has set itself when it came to the template, which inspired him. Eight participants of the training course open type psychiatric gather at the regular session, but as their teacher unexpectedly and inexplicably delayed, the attendees have an opportunity to interact between themselves, so they start digging into other people's frustrations. Eight actors and the camera locked in an empty hall just less than an hour and a half, where he coped by using purely subjective personnel. The scenes always look at it from a viewpoint of the protagonist with only a few breaks through completely neutral personnel security cameras without black and white tones. The strategy itself makes subjective frames for achieving immersion in camera events and more emotional charge. It is meant to be effective because the viewer loose neutral third party position, Ogresta remained consistent until the end of the process mapped out.

Interesting!