W.R. - MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM

In 1970, director Dušan Makavejev realized the surreal striving to visualize suppressed psychological sides of society in a film about freudian, marxistic psycho analyst Wilhelm Reich. Part one documents the life, persecution and death of the scientist whose theory and practice of a sexual freedom as a basis for social freedom was condemned – by stalinists as well as by the civil conservatives in the USA of the McCarthy era. Part two takes place in the Yugoslavia of 1970 and shows the attempt of „sexually freed“ Milena to agitate the stalinist dogmatic figure skater Vladimir Ilyich (a reference to Lenin) in a ”Reichian” way. The film’s structure follows the principle of the surrealistic collage: Fragments of diverse origin show how the initially socialist utopia was perverted by stalinist and poststalinist totalitarism, with an emphasis on the suppression of society by sexual discipline – a position obviously unbearable also in Yugoslavia’s “more liberal” functionary society: The film was banned for a long time.