Northwest Film Forum

Karpo Godina, one of Yugoslavia’s most talented cinematographers, moved to directing with this wry look at the arrival of the aesthetic revolution in the just-founded “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”—soon to be known as Yugoslavia. In Raft of the Medusa (Splav meduze), Kristina and Ljiljana, two young schoolteachers working in the provinces, fear that they’ll eventually die of boredom until an avant-garde troupe of artists from Belgrade arrives in town. Preaching the gospels of new art movements called Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism—not to mention their own homemade brew, “Zenithism"—the troupe outrages the locals while delighting the teachers. When an epidemic closes down their school, they throw their lots in with the artists. Godina loads his film with echoes of Dadaist and surrealist films, and he powerfully renders both the idealism and naiveté of characters who truly believe that making art is a way of making a revolution.