The beginnings of film in Croatia

The first screenings of moving images in Croatia were recorded very early, on October 8, 1896 in Zagreb, which was less than 10 months after the first public screening in Paris. This event marks the beginning of cinema history in Croatia — “living photographs”, as these early films were called at the time, attracted the attention of the audience and encouraged the spread of the new medium.

Shortly after that, from 1897, so-called traveling cinemas began operating in large Croatian cities – mobile cinemas that brought film shows to places that did not have permanent cinema halls. The first permanent cinemas opened at the beginning of the 20th century: the Zagreb and Pula cinemas opened their doors in 1906, and the following year cinemas appeared in Split, Zadar and Rijeka, and in 1908 cinemas also opened in Dubrovnik.

However, despite the enthusiasm of the audience and the rapid spread of cinema as an institution, the first domestic film production was delayed. At first, there was no great need to make domestic films – imported films from Vienna and Trieste were relatively cheap and easily available, so cinema owners preferred to show imported titles. But local enthusiasts did not wait for films to be made abroad: camera owners and travelling cameramen began to document local scenes – they filmed landscapes, events from the life of towns and villages, often very short shots, thus contributing to the creation of the first film fragments of Croatian everyday life.

One of the key figures of those pioneering years was Josip Karaman, a cinema owner from Split, who filmed the first domestic scenes from Split in 1910. Another important pioneer was Josip Halla, who filmed reports from Zagreb in 1911, and later, as a war correspondent during the Balkan Wars, worked for the French company Éclair, whose material was included in the film chronicles of the time.

It is important to point out that the first “full-length” narrative film, as we understand it today, was not created immediately in those pioneering years, but rather domestic production only gradually developed, and in the beginning short depictions of everyday life and documentary footage dominated, while the full feature film form was still a long way off.

As the cinema infrastructure expanded and strengthened, other important institutions of film life also developed: in 1907 the first Croatian distribution company was founded in Zagreb, and in 1913 the first film magazine was published in Bjelovar. These steps showed that the film medium had become part of the domestic cultural and social reality, and not just exotic entertainment in imported theaters.