Sojusz artystyczno-cyrkowy w filmie "Tratwa Meduzy"

The film The Raft of the Medusa (1980, directed by Karpo Godina) attempts a recreation of a short part of the day in the life of avant-garde artists belonging to the “Zenit” group. The director aims to re-create the energy of artists‘ actions, and to analyse the reasons behind the movement‘s downfall. Central to the plot is the question of the possibility of revolutionary art in the remote, muddy plazas and roads of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His search for an answer to that question eventually turns into a stance in the fierce discussion on the independence of art and its right to interfere in politics, which raged in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia at the time of the movie‘s making. The figure of the athlete Alojz Žnidaršič is of particular importance to the message of the movie. As a symbolic type, he needs no external justification – his self-sustaining artistic act has a direct, if limited, impact on reality.