Igor Bezinović belongs to the younger generation of Croatian filmmakers who drew attention to themselves principally with their short films, which are exceptionally mature and original works that have done well at festivals. Bezinović, who was born in Rijeka, graduated in comparative literature, sociology and philosophy from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and in film directing from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. He is a great film connoisseur who shares his knowledge as a mentor at numerous workshops, moderates over film events, but in his professional life mostly makes documentary films.
Viewers surely know him best for his The Blockade, a feature-length documentary film about the student protests in Zagreb, but it is in his shorts that we can see most clearly his unique auteur expression which is, despite being diverse and extensive, always also sharp, intriguing and fresh, while echoing the big names of Yugoslav documentary filmmaking. Igor is a director that we constantly sense behind the image on the screen, and it is this seeming presence that makes his films something more than just an audiovisual experience. The sound and picture gain their proper meaning only when they are projected through the last filter, the filmmaker himself, and it is here that the film’s essence and personality are formed by playful framing and editing, unusual narrators and, most importantly, honesty towards the medium, the viewers and the artist himself.
He says of himself that he tries to follow the words of Boris Buden: “We all started as amateurs. But only the best of us have remained ones.” The series of his short films – some of which we will see at Kino Otok – is based precisely on the principle of a quick “actionreaction” response to quite spontaneous events, which is one of the qualities gracing amateur film. We can thus conclude that Igor Bezinović is a great amateur making very professional films. But this does not mean that he is a stranger to professional production. Quite the opposite: with his last film Veruda – A Film about Bojan, produced by the Croatian Radiotelevision, he proved once more that he is an auteur with exceptional breadth and film knowledge who is at home in film expression regardless of the genre, form, technique, topic or production.