Ivan Martinac – a monologue with film

The author explains the specificities of Ivan Martinac’s auteur poetics. Martinac is the central figure of the Split amateur film circle (gathered in the Split cinema club), a director who has influenced other authors (Ante Verzzoti, Lordan Zafranović, etc.) and who tried his hand at professional cinema (some film critics compare his only feature film The House on the Sand to Stanley Kubrick’s works). In the amateur film context, Martinac stands out as a strong individualist who, using his architectural background, sees film as a visual (or rather, audio-visual) structure, completely independent from narration and other dominant cinematic categories. This is quite obvious in films such as Monologue on Split, Rondo, All or Nothing and Armageddon or the End. Explaining the value of Martinac’s work, his precise editing, complexity of associations and richness of film form, the author points out that Croatian film studies have not dealt with Martinac sufficiently although quite a number of texts have been written following the Martinac’s death. Although he started directing during his stay in Belgrade, Martinac linked most of his films to the Split film community and the City of Split, its cultural traditions and visual (for example, architectural) structures. From this perspective, Martinac’s work seems like an interesting segment of Croatian film history.

Silvana Dunat