Home Movies, 1970s-1990s

Vukica Đilas’s naked body cuts towards Andy Warhol’s flower paintings. Images of baby chickens that run through the living room. Billboards in New York, bridges in Paris. On TV, Looney Tunes and archive footage of the Olympics. Through a mix of stop motion and long takes, Vukica Đilas compiles an encyclopedia of the mundane, spanning almost thirty years and filled with memories of loved ones, travels, and sociopolitical sidelines. 

More than once, it is those loved ones who turn the lens towards her own body and life as well. Unlike her politically militant parents, Đilas stays far away from any social commentary. Her observations are like those of a child, awed by her surroundings and the details they reveal. Through her eyes, her mother isn’t a revolutionary, but a frail, knitting old woman. 

During her lifetime, Đilas moved in Yugoslav avant-garde circles as a journalist and art critic, not as a filmmaker. The remnants of her personal time capsule are discovered only after her death in a repository where she also kept some texts of Jonas Mekas, her great inspiration. Such as: “I make home movies—therefore I live. I live—therefore I make home movies.” Dilas’s intimate archive, re-edited here by her dear friend and filmmaker Slobodan Šijan, and accompanied by newly recorded piano music, shows her passionate embrace of Mekas’s credo. This was her only film.