Life of a Shock Force Worker

Life of a Shock Force Worker / Slike iz života udarnika

Bahrudin (Bato) Čengić, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Yugoslavia), 1972, 79’

We follow the story of Adem, a miner from Bosnia, the foreman of a shock labor team that can dig up 102 tons of coal in a single shift. The self-sacrificing team becomes a five-point star media sensation; as a reward, they travel first to Bled, then to Moscow, accompanied by orchestras and huge photographs of communist leaders. Life of a Shock Force Worker brings a collection of exceptionally beautiful tableaux vivant and depicts the life of the famous proletarian shock worker Alija Sirotanović, the true Yugoslav version of Aleksey Stakhanov, revealing the huge gap between idealized ideology and the brutal reality of building a communist utopia.

Following the screening, Karpo Godina, legendary filmmaker and director of photography for the film, will present the film and share insights into the creation of this unique masterpiece and the background of its visual language.

The Slovenian Cinematheque presents the film in collaboration with the Kino Otok – Isola Cinema International Film Festival. The Life of a Shock Force Worker was restored as part of the Joint Restoration Project. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Sarajevo Film Center, the Austrian Film Museum, the Croatian State Archives – Croatian Cinematheque, and the Slovenian Cinematheque as part of the European Film Archives Association’s Classic Film Season program, with financial support from the Creative Europe – MEDIA.

We prepared the programme in cooperation with BETRIB – Festival of Industrial Culture.