Nikola Đurić (b. 1949) first became a filmmaker as a member of the Belgrade-based “alternative film” circle of the Academic Film Club (Akademski Kino Klub, later renamed Academic Film Center / Akademski Film Centar) in the late 1960s. While there, he was influenced, among other things, by the works presented at the GEFF competitions of the 1960s. He eventually became a professional cinematographer but remained active with the amateur club, chairing it for two years in the 1970s and working since 2011 as the curator of the Alternative Film Archive, which is part of the Academic Film Center.
At the cinema club, Đurić became the creator of several distinguished structuralist films, including Raven. The filmmaker chose the visually striking motif of a flying bird accidentally while testing out a film printer he had made. The film was created slowly through a long process of looking for the kinesthetic properties of the footage, and it conveys the motion of a bird in flight in great detail. Although devoid of literary or narrative dimension, the film also has a poetic and metaphorical charge, which contains contradictory cultural associations evoked by bird flight as the symbol of freedom and the raven as a harbinger of bad news or death. — Diana Nenadić
With thanks to Nikola Đurić and Miodrag Milošević, Head of the Academic Center at the Student City Cultural Center (Akademski Filmski Centar Dom Kulture Studentski Grad), Belgrade, and to the entire staff of the AFC for their help with research and making a screening of this film possible in Washington. With special thanks also to the Film Center Serbia (Filmski Centar Srbije), Belgrade, which generously sponsored the digital restoration of this film shortly before its screening in Washington.