Pression

“Ljubomir Simunic appears in Belgrade’s Avant-Garde film scene in the early 1970s. He was born in 1942 and started as an actor in films by Slobodan Sijan and Dragomir Zupanc. His first films are realized in co-operation with painter Kosta Bunusevac in 1970. Then a period of intense interest in the documentary follows, his interest is the street, or the women in the street.[...] In one of his interviews he says: “By the end of 1971 I started to think of double exposure. I have always been impressed by the night lights in the city. Shop windows, neons, highway lights, the charming excitements as you run through the unknown city in a hi-fi taxi-cab.” Ever since, this night atmosphere is to be found in all his films like Pression and Gerdy, the Wicked Witch. In 1975, together with his friend Dragan Taubner, he founds the company Moon. Later on the scope of his interest expands. A voyeur by nature, he grabbed the camera as a weapon aimed at attaining mental violence. The Wo-Man in an action of Brain-Striptease”. [...]
(From MovieWorld, 1978-79)

Movie World of course does not exist, the 5 page article, including a full cover page and a two page filmography, was made up by Simunic himself. Luckily, Simunic does exist, even though hardly anyone outside Belgrade has ever heard of him or his work. Simunic produced his work outside the Serbian film clubs frameworks. He showed them only in private screenings among friends and only twice were they shown outside the country. The first time was at the influential Festival International du Jeune Cinema de Hyeres, established by Marcel Maze, where three of the above four films picked up the Critics’ award in 1979 (shared with Stuart Pound) by a jury including Takahiko Iimura and Howard Guttenplan and competing against greats such as Babette Mangolte and Slobodan Valentincic. The four works on show here, shot and edited on camera, are as he describes them: the work of a voyeur, yet this is not the first reading. Initially Pression (1970- 1975) or Gerdy, The Wicked Witch (Gerdy, zlocesta vjestica,1973-76) overwhelm with their abundance of imagery and musical rhythm. The images are painstakingly edited-in-camera over a period of 3 to 5 years, during which Simunic kept his double 8mm camera in the fridge to prevent the undeveloped celluloid from expiring. Found footage of the most amazing strength is hand-picked from his television set, becoming a document of viewing in mid-70s Yugoslavia as well as a train of thought, superimposed on his spaced out “taxi rides”. With Summer Dreams (1976-1978) and Slavica’s Expected Life Traps (Sta Slavicu ocekuje u zivotu, 1978) the scopophilia becomes explicit but not unelaborate. Simunic is a reclusive artist and his gaze seems equally inverted. He is almost visible through his own voyeurism and this beautiful element is not an unintentional one. VB