On March 7, 1970, an unusual accident occurred in the village of Stružec, near Zagreb, Croatia. During the screening in local cinema, cinema operator Drago Rošin noticed a commotion in the audience. There have been restless situations during the screenings before, but this time people held their heads and left the hall in a panic. Reports say that 55 people were hospitalized due to a gas leak in the hall, which was only 15 minutes away from death. However, the public response to that accident was minimal or almost non-existent. Allegedly, the reason for this is that the locals agreed and swore a vow of silence in fear of consequences, punishments and unclear legal-property relations in the cinema. Fifty years later, cinema operator Rošin (84) talks about the incident, which was not the only case of poisoning in that home; just a few months earlier, several members of the amateur firefighting acting troupe were also poisoned… Are two cases connected in the media into one, what actually happened? In the documentary film, which is a collage of archives, photographs, film journals from the 1950s, 1960s treated as “found footage”, we learn that it is no longer known for sure about the whole case what is true, what is myth, but we use the case to anecdotally recall the time when the cinema replaced television, when the screenings depended on whether the cinema operator would “play around” in the pub, whether the operator deliberately or accidentally skipped a roll, how cinemas in small places went down in history…
directed, written and edited by:
arsen oremovic
producer:
ivan maloča
cinematography:
marinko marinkic
music:
srdan sacher
color correction and mastering:
marinko marinkic
sound mixing:
hrvoje prskalo
assistant editor:
adam miškovic
technical leader:
marko đurđan
production supervisor:
ana kruljac
post production supervisor:
ivana fijala
duration:
22'
DRAGUTIN ROŠIN
participant
VERA ROŠIN
participant




