Rudolf Sremec (18 August 1909 – 16 August 1999) was a Yugoslav and

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

. He is regarded as one of the most important Croatian authors of short

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

s. In a career spanning four decades, Sremec directed and wrote some 90 documentary shorts, mainly dealing with various cultural and anthropological topics. Born in

Vinkovci Vinkovci () is a city in Slavonia, in the Vukovar-Syrmia County in eastern Croatia. The city settlement's population was 28,111 in the 2021 census, while the total population was 30,842, making it the largest town of the county. It is a local tr ...

, Sremec graduated from the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences with a degree in

Slavic studies Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or ...

and

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

. Sremec began making films in 1945 after spending some time working as a high school teacher. Apart from documentaries, he directed a handful of live-action

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

s and he also wrote the screenplay for ''

The Substitute ''The Substitute'' is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Robert Mandel and starring Tom Berenger, Ernie Hudson, Marc Anthony, William Forsythe, Raymond Cruz and Luis Guzmán. It was filmed at Miami Senior High School. Pl ...

'' (''Surogat''; 1961), a short animated film directed by

Dušan Vukotić Dušan Vukotić ( Serbo-Croat Cyrillic: Душан Вукотић; 7 February 1927 – 8 July 1998) was a Yugoslav and Montenegrin, with Croatian citizenship, cartoonist, author and director of animated films. He is the best known member of ...

which won the

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year ...

. Sremec spent a number of years working at the

Croatian Radiotelevision ''Hrvatska radiotelevizija'' ( HRT), or Croatian Radiotelevision, is a Croatian public broadcasting company. It operates several radio and television channels, over a domestic transmitter network as well as satellite. HRT is divided into three ...

and directed a 1981 two-part television film ''August Šenoa'' about Croatian writer

August Šenoa August Ivan Nepomuk Eduard Šenoa (; originally Schönoa; 14 November 1838 – 13 December 1881) was a Croatian novelist, playwright, poet, and editor. Born to an ethnic German and Slovak family, Šenoa became a key figure in the developmen ...

. He was also a prolific

film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findin ...

, editor of the ''Filmska kultura'' film magazine and taught courses in

film history The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. There were earlier cinematographic scre ...

and

film theory Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...

at the

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

department of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Sremec was honoured with the

Vladimir Nazor Award The Vladimir Nazor Award () is a Croatian prize for arts and culture established in 1959, and awarded every year by the country's Ministry of Culture. Named after the writer Vladimir Nazor (1876–1949), the prize is awarded to Croatian artists ...

for life achievement in film in 1976.

References

External links

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Rudolf Sremec biography
at Filmski-Programi.hr {{DEFAULTSORT:Sremec, Rudolf 1909 births 1999 deaths People from Vinkovci Croatian film directors Yugoslav film directors Croatian screenwriters Vladimir Nazor Award winners Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb alumni Academic staff of the University of Zagreb 20th-century screenwriters