A Contagious Program: Viruses - News | Art-kino Croatia

The program Viruses opens with Chris Marker's cult film La Jetée, and brings one of the best Yugoslav disaster and horror films, Goran Marković's Variola Vera starring Rade Šerbedžija.

Invisible killers of epic proportions, viruses, supernatural or real, are certainly one of the greatest and most sinister foes in movie history. This is the cause for a small but contagiously good series of Virus films, which takes place at Art-kino from December 12th to December 14th. The program opens with Chris Marker's cult movie La Jetée (1962) which is one of the most famous short films in general. This science fiction existential drama displays a return to the past in search for the salvation of Earth which is ravaged by nuclear war.

Our next feature is one of many films inspired by Maker's masterpiece, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995) starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in the lead roles. The story begins in Philadelphia in 2035, where humans live deep beneath the Earth's crust because humanity has been plagued by an unknown infectious disease that has left five billion people dead. Authorities are sending an inmate named James Cole in the past to isolate a dangerous virus there, allowing a vaccine to be made in the future.

The second day of the program brings us the film 28 Days Later (2002), the mysterious sci-fi horror made by Danny Boyle, which follows a small number of survivors of a virus that has spread through the United Kingdom and killed the rest of the population. This is a movie that has set a new standard for modern zombie movies with its vibrant, digital video aesthetic.

The last film of the series is the domestic title called Variola Vera (1982) by Goran Marković, genreally defined as a mix of a horror and a disaster movie. The main role is played by Rade Šerbedžija, and the script written by Marković with the help of Milan Nikolić is based on real events, that is, the smallpox epidemic that hit Yugoslavia in 1972. Today, the film is considered as one of the most famous achievements of Yugoslav cinema in the 1980s, and will be shown on a 35 mm tape in Art-kino.

Tickets can be booked via email (tickets@art-kino.org) and purchased at the Art-kino box office every day from 4:00 pm to 8:30 pm or online at ulaznice.hr.