author Bozidar Zecevic / Korak od sedam milja u istoriji filma / 2024 / Article

Graphic Editor / Author of the composition on the persistence of two times in the same place

How the film screen stopped being “recorded theater” and soared into unimaginable realms, with the first film ride (or camera ride) in the history of cinema taking place in Belgrade, on Knez Mihailova Street.

At the end of its “golden age,” between 1904 and 1914, Serbia made a “step of seven miles” in the youngest, seventh art, by putting the film camera on wheels, which marked the beginning of a new era in the rise of moving images, the art of the modern age. The film screen ceased to be “recorded theater” and soared into unimaginable realms. On August 24 (11th in the “old” or Julian calendar) 1913, the first film ride (or camera ride) in the history of cinema took place. Along almost the entire length of Knez Mihailova Street in Belgrade, the author (or “inventor”) of this ride—now referred to as a “travelling shot,” “tracking shot,” or “dolly shot,” and locally known as “far,” from the German “fahraufnahme”)—was, evidently, the first Serbian cinematographer, Slavko Jovanović (1887–1962), who conducted a test filming by moving backward to capture a parade of the Serbian army—with a moving camera!

…From a filmological perspective, the event is all the more significant because there is no comparable example of a real and continuous camera ride on a wheeled platform in the entire world of cinema before the end of 1913. A shot for history and the pride of a European culture! Using this “far,” every detail of Knez Mihailova Street from 111 years ago can be reconstructed, a project that Dušan Nađević, a digital artist, has already begun. His composition on the persistence of two times in the same place, at the beginning of Knez Mihailova Street, stands at the forefront of this work.

For the rest of the text, please see page… Korak od sedam milja u istoriji filma