I can rightly say that we are especially proud that on the very 70th anniversary of the film FROSINA, we are presenting you the new Blu-ray edition of the first Macedonian art film.

70 years later, we can look at FROSINA in a new digital version, which is especially significant because FROSINA is a reading for all times and ages, for everyone interested in our history, political and cinematic.

If in 1952, the undertaking of shooting a film seemed difficult and demanding, it was quite clear that it would represent an event that marked a new era in Macedonian cinema. To have a fruitful cultural scene, after the devastating war in the middle of the last century, means progress – success of the people, and thus getting closer to the world. It is no coincidence that the feature film appears at the end of the first five-year plan, i.e. the five-year plan for the development of the new socialist society in the People’s Republic of Macedonia. The feature film as the crown of industrialization and electrification (as the basic prerequisites that were supposed to take us to communism).

Recently, reviewing the written material for this film, especially in that year 1952, through the daily newspaper “Nova Makedonija” I was able to peek into the daily news that was current in that year 1952 and feel the spirit of that time. The daily newspaper reported on the premiere of the first Macedonian film FROSINA, which was attended by the leaders of that time, and at the same time new roads and railways were being built in the new country, illiteracy was eradicated and hygiene was introduced in the city and among the population, the fight against infectious diseases… The new times brought new endeavors, and this slowly spilled over into all spheres of society, including culture. With unprecedented enthusiasm. Enthusiasm characteristic of a society emerging from the ruins of a great world war. In that year 1952, the echoes of the war in Korea were felt, but in general the world was not shaken by crises like 10 years before.
And in such conditions of growth and flight, the first Macedonian art film was created. Maybe too late, maybe anachronistic, maybe ten years after CITIZEN KANE, with a socialist realist aesthetic, but still the first Macedonian art film that begins the Macedonian feature film production that after only 42 years will reach its current peak.

This blu-ray edition is an opportunity to re-view, but also to re-evaluate the first “Macedonian art film”, to compare it with the achievements of its time, to put it in a local and global historical context. Because FROSINA remains not only the first Macedonian feature film, but also a document of a time.

Download: FROSINA BOOKLET