| Karađorđe | |
|---|---|
Karađorđe advertisement published in 1911. |
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| Directed by | Čiča Ilija Stanojević |
| Written by | Ćira Manok |
| Starring | Jovan Antonijević Teodora Arsenović Vitomir Bogić Mileva Bošnjaković Milorad Petrović |
| Release date(s) | 1911 |
| Running time | 80 min. |
| Country | Kingdom of Serbia |
| Language | silent film Serbian endtitles |
Život i dela besmrtnog vožda Karađorđa (Serbian Cyrillic: Живот и дела бесмртног вожда Карађорђа, English: Life and Deeds of Immortal Vožd Karađorđe) or simply Karđorđe (Карађорђе) is a 1911 silent film with a claim to fame of being the first Serbian feature film and the first in the Balkans.
It was directed by Čiča Ilija Stanojević who also acted in it. The historical war film portrays the life of Karađorđe Petrović, First Serbian Uprising leader. It is full of crimes and shootings among the Serbs or in the vicinity. Karađorđe is an early and very rudimentary film, basically a filmed theater.
The film was shot during summer 1911 and had its premiere in Belgrade on 23 October 1911.
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In 1928 Karađorđe was screened for the Serbian immigrant community in the United States after which it went missing for decades. The film was found and identified in 2003 in the Austrian film archives by Yugoslav Film Archive's employees Aleksandar Erdeljanović and Radoslav Zelenović. The Austrians kept it as part of the Ignaz Reinthaler Foundation (Reinthaler was a cinema owner from Osijek who donated his entire collection to the Austrian archive). In Cine lab in Rome, Erdeljanović and Zelenović transferred the film from the flammable positive prints.[1] Since the original film probably did not have intertitles, Erdeljanović and his associates added them using the biographical material on Karađorđe. The restored film was screened in Belgrade in February 2004 at the 200th anniversary of the First Serbian Uprising.
Erdeljanović then set about restoring the film digitally.