It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black.

- The Rolling Stones, 'Paint It Black', 1966

It is usually said that Želimir Žilnik is one of the most prominent directors of the Black Wave, a tendency in Yugoslav film that emerged in the wake of the political and economic liberalisation of the country in the 1960s and 70s, and presents the best that Yugoslavia had produced culturally in its short-lived history.¹ But what does it actually mean to be a protagonist in this cultural story from the communist past? To what does 'black' concretely refer in the phrase the 'Black Wave'? Let us start with this last simple question.

The newspaper article from 1969 in which the notion of the 'Black Wave' was first introduced opens from a curious perspective.² The author looks at the reality of Yugoslavia from the perspective of several decades on - thus from today's present - and argues that this future will not be able to find 'our true picture'. That is, the authentic picture of Yugoslav society of that time is not in the 'yellowed yearbooks of the contemporary daily press', for 'this informative level stored in the archives and computer brains will fade into oblivion', but instead in the art made at the time. The future, as he states, will not believe those who had directly witnessed the actual reality but rather the 'condensed and suggestive artistic story and picture that this reality produced'.³ In his view, this is why the future will have a black picture of Yugoslav society of the 1960s and 70s