1st Edition

Animation in Croatia Zagreb School and Beyond

By Midhat Ajanović Copyright 2025
    208 Pages 69 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    This book provides a comprehensive account of Croatian animation history, as well as an analysis of background factors such as political and social circumstances and cultural heritage that influenced the great international success of Croatian animators between the 1960s and 1980s. 

     The book focuses on the history of the Zagreb School of Animated film, which produced dozens of extremely significant animated films between the 1960s and 1980s, which constituted an important epoch in the development of film animation as an artistic form. It provides a case study of three important films: Dnevnik by Nedeljko Dragic, Don Kihot by Vladimir Kristl and Koncert za masinsku pusku by Dusan Vukotic. The book also covers modern Croatian animation developed after the independence of the country.

     This book will be of great interest to academics, students, and professionals working and researching in the field of animation.

    Introduction. Chapter 1- Some introductory thoughts on modernist animation. Chapter 2-Little man at the turn of the worlds. Chapter 3- Central European humour in regional animation. Chapter 4- The view from the glass dome. Chapter 5-The tradion of intermingling between comics and animation in the Zagreb School. Chapter 6- The new wave of Croatian animation. 

    Biography

    Midhat Ajanovic is a writer and film scholar born in Sarajevo (Bosnia) in 1959. He studied journalism in Sarajevo and practiced film animation in Zagreb film Studio of Animation (Croatia). Since 1994 he has lived in Gothenburg where he obtained a degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film Studies. He teaches storytelling, history, and aesthetics of cinema animation at University West in Trollhättan and writes regularly about film and animation.