Directed by Bahrudin “Bato” Čengić in 1972, Life of a Shock Force Worker represents Karpo Godina’s inaugural employment of the tableau in a narrative fiction feature. The film dramatizes the accomplishments and travails of all-star proletarian Alija Sirotanović—Yugoslavia’s answer to the USSR’s propaganda hero Alexei Stakhanov—through a collection of exquisitely composed static frames. Insurmountable chasms separating official ideology and actual lived experience emerge out of vivid, darkly saturated depictions of coal miners in their subterranean netherscapes. Godina, as director of photography, recorded the film almost 2,000 feet underground, using battery-powered mining lamps as the only light source. The film’s sooty color palette continues to astound today thanks to a recent digital restoration overseen by Godina himself. Upon the film’s original release, it encountered censorship and hindered distribution; both Čengić and Godina were given a ten-year directing ban, which neither of them fully obeyed.

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