The Time Machine: The Coral Princess

The earliest history of Croatian film is a very fruitful field, as it offers the interested parties a range of unexplored issues that require a systematic approach. In the period between the two World Wars, very few domestic films were filmed, and even less were preserved. However, this does not mean that no films were made. If the domestic film crews could not film, foreign crews arrived.
In this year’s edition of Cinematheque, within the Time Machine project, we are bringing back a German-Yugoslavian co-production, the 1937 film The Coral Princess, and we are screening it from 35 mm film. It is a fun film that was shot in Split, Hvar, and mostly on the Island of Zlarin. The then famous foreign workers in Germany, Ivan Petrović and Ita Rina, play the leading roles, and the music was composed by the Split composer Ivo Tijardović. That same summer, Tijardović also composed the music for Song of the Adriatic, which we will also be bringing back to the Adriatic, after eighty years.

This year’s Pula PROfessional also presents the promotion of the booklet The Coral Princess, an almanac of filmography papers about the filming in the Adriatic in 1937. Film archeologists Dejan Kosanović, Daniel Rafaelić and Stanko Ferić analyse The Coral Princess, and Leon Rizmaul analyses Song of the Adriatic.

The biography of famous actor Ivan Petrović, the main driver of filming in Dalmatia, is written by Aleksandar Erdeljanović, and musicologist Irena Paulus presents the music by Ivo Tijardović.

Moderators: Leon Rizmaul and Daniel Rafaelić
The Coral Princess and Song of the Adriatic will be screened at Valli Cinema on Saturday, 11 July 2017, at 7 p.m.