Women on the Cutting Edge

Editing in Yugoslav Film, and the Authorship of Olga Skrigin

Abstract

This paper discusses the vast but heretofore rarely acknowledged or properly historicised contributions of women film editors in Yugoslav cinema. As in many other film industries, editing was frequently considered ‘women’s work’ in Yugoslavia’s film industry. In the context of socialist Yugoslavia this phenomenon needs to be examined in its own cultural, political and historical context in a way that pays close attention to the postwar development of a thriving film industry under state socialism, the country’s foundational goals of both class and gender equality, as well as deep roots in antifascism and non-alignment. Moreover, I am interested in further contributing to the scholarship that considers women’s editing as a form of film authorship in its own right (Kaganovsky 2018, Hole & Jelača 2019). In particular, the essay focuses on one of the most important editors in Yugoslav film – Olga Skrigin (1927-1997) – whose editing career almost perfectly spanned and bookended the socialist country’s existence (she edited her first film in 1948, and the last one in 1992). Over the course of her accomplished career, Skrigin edited all of the film work of her spouse, photographer and filmmaker Žorž Skrigin, as well as nearly all the films by one of the most lauded auteurs of the Yugoslav Black Wave, Živojin Pavlović. Additionally, she was the co-editor behind Bato Čengić’s montage-driven masterpiece Life of a Shock Force Worker (1972) and some of the most significant films of Goran Paskaljević. My feminist historiographic research seeks to reclaim Olga Skrigin’s editing work as a foundational authorial contribution to the richness of both socialist Yugoslav cinema and women’s film history writ large.