''Agram, die Hauptstadt Kroatiens'' ( hr, Zagreb, glavni grad Hrvatske, ) is a short documentary film directed by

Oktavijan Miletić Oktavijan Miletić (1 October 1902 – 17 August 1987) was a Croatian cinematographer and director. His avant-garde work in the period from 1928 to 1945 remains as one of the foundations of Croatian film. Miletić was one of the founders of the ...

in 1943 in the

Independent State of Croatia The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist It ...

. It was produced for

Tobis Film Tobis Film was a German film production and film distribution company. Founded in the late 1920s as a merger of several companies involved in the switch from silent to sound films, the organisation emerged as a leading German sound studio. Tobis ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

and showed cultural activities in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

, as well as the main monuments of the city. The film was rediscovered in 2008, after being considered

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

for more than 60 years. The film was first announced in September 1941 and was due to appear in theaters by the end of that year. Jakov Gotovac was scheduled to compose the music. However, the editing was completed only in 1943 and, for reasons unknown, narration and music were never made. It appears that the production company lost interest in the documentary, while Miletić was by that time preoccupied with '' Lisinski'' (1944), his feature film debut. The unfinished film was sent to the German

Reichsfilmarchiv The Reichsfilmarchiv ("Reich Film Archive") was the state film archive of the Germany of the Third Reich. It was first German national film archive. It was opened in 1935, and based in Berlin. It ceased to exist in 1945, when its film stock was eith ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. After the fall of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, the film came into the possession of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

which confiscated the archive, along with the documentation. In 1990, the film material was returned to the Bundesfilmarchiv. However, the film had been misfiled as ''Pressburg, die Hauptstadt Slowakei'' (''Bratislava, the Capital of Slovakia''), and remained unknown until 2008, when Croatian film archivist Daniel Rafaelić discovered it in the archive. The restored film premiered at, and opened, the 2008

Zagreb Film Festival Zagreb Film Festival (ZFF) is an annual film festival held since 2003 in Zagreb, Croatia. Focusing on promoting young and upcoming filmmaker, the festival is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential cultural events in Croa ...

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Agram, Die Hauptstadt Kroatiens 1943 films 1943 short films Croatian black-and-white films 1940s rediscovered films Croatian short documentary films 1943 documentary films 1940s short documentary films Documentary films about Yugoslavia Documentary films about Croatia