Angel Reyes L&S Arts & Humanities
Labor and Materiality in Vlatko Filipović's Early Documentaries
Marx’s theory of alienation marks a worker’s estrangement from the material world under capitalism. How, then, can a socialist artist both overcome this alienation and reveal the labor it embodies? My project investigates how Yugoslav director Vlatko Filipović’s early short documentaries– U zavjetrini vremena (1965), Punta velikog mora (1966), and Hop Jan (1967)– reimagine the relation between worker and material across diverse natural resources and geographical conditions in Yugoslavia. Drawing on Soviet avant-garde cinematic concepts, I utilize Sergei Eisenstein’s theories of montage and Dziga Vertov’s cinematic “truth,” with labor choreography and material sensations. Through close readings of key scenes, I argue that Filipović’s documentaries do more than show labor: they reorganize spectatorship so that viewers experience work as reciprocal and material relation rather than an alienated one. Bringing these films from socialist Yugoslavia into the present—marked by the legacy of nationalist wars and continuing ethnonationalism—suggests how archival images of work can reframe the past and imagine collective belonging.
Message To Sponsor
As an aspiring academic, I am truly grateful to be able to develop my skills in film analysis, further investigating my interests in Soviet cinematic avant-garde, documentary, and labor—research that will eventually culminate in my Senior Honors Thesis. My interests in film have always been in relation to visibility; with the help of your funding I am able to expand this inquiry and develop research within broader questions of labor and its salience.