Zvonimir Berković

Born 1928-03-21 · Belgrade

Died 2009-06-09

Zvonimir Berković was a director and script writer, author of "Rondo", one of the key films of so-called auteur cinematography in Croatia and Yugoslavia. He studied violin under Stjepan Šulek and theatrical direction at Theatre Academy in Zagreb. He worked in puppet theater and wrote theatrical and musical criticism. He began working on films in 1954. As the first dramatist in Jadran Film he soon begins to write scripts. For the scenario of the film "H-8" (1958, d. Nikola Tanhofer), co-written with Tomislav Butorac, he won The Golden Arena and the audience award at the Pula film festival. His directorial debut was "Moj stan" ("My Home", 1962), which won awards in Belgrade and Cannes. In 1966 "Rondo" was his full-length debut. The film won six awards in Pula and a prize for the script in Atlanta. The second film, "Putovanje na mjesto nesreće" ("The Scene of the Crash") was made at the beginning of the seventies. "Ljubavna pisma s predumišljajem" ("Premediated Love Letters", 1985), his third film, is one of the most important Croatian films of the eighties, and "Kontesa Dora" ("Countess Dora", 1993) is considered to be one of the finest works of Croatian cinematography of the nineties. For many years Berković was a professor of film script writing and dramaturgy at ADU (Academy of Dramatic Arts) in Zagreb. In his final decade he intensely commented on the social reality, and was a regular columnist in several magazines. Throughout the nineties he garnered attention with humorous, ironically intoned political-cultural column "Zvonar katedrale duha" ("The Bellman of the Cathedral of the Spirit") in the weekly magazine "Globus" ("The Globe"). He died in 2009 in Zagreb.