Pekić's Theater, Film, TV and Radio Plays

Pekić distinguished himself in the 1970s as one of the best Serbian contemporary dramatists. He regularly wrote radio-plays for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, as well as Sueddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart. Of the 27 plays written and performed in Yugoslavia, 17 had their first production in Germany. Many of them were transformed into theatre and/or TV plays, and received a number of prestigious awards. Sixteen were published in his Odabrana dela (Selected works, 1984) and his play “Generali ili srodstvo po oružju” (The Generals or Kinship-In-Arms, 1969) can be found in any anthology of Serbian contemporary drama.

Pekić's theatre plays were widely acclaimed and popular, the most famous being “Korešpondencija” (Correspondence 1979), which was based on the fourth volume of The Golden Fleece and ran for 280 performances and 23 years at the Atelje 212 Theatre in Belgrade.

Throughout his career, Pekić worked on numerous films, writing both original screenplays and adapting some of his novels. “The Time of Miracles” was selected to represent Yugoslavia at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, where it won an award, and later at film festivals in Glasgow and Montreal. “The Devils Heaven” (The Summer of White Roses) won an award at the film festival in Tokyo in 1989, and was selected the same year to represent Yugoslavia at film festivals in Montpellier (France), Pula (Croatia), San Sebastian (Spain), and Los Angeles and San Francisco (USA).

As a part-time commentator at the BBC World Service in London (1986-1991) Pekić read his ‘Letters from London’ every week; these were subsequently printed in Yugoslavia as Pisma iz tudjine, Nova pisma iz tudjine, and Poslednja pisma iz tudjine (Letters From Abroad, 1, 2 & 3, 1987-1991). Each book was made up of 50 letters with witty and inventive observations about England and the English people. The letters were broadcast for listeners in Yugoslavia, for whom Pekić particularly enjoyed making numerous humorous comparisons between the English and his fatherland’s governments, country and people. For these books he received the “Jasa Ignjatović” award (Hungary) in 1991.

Pekic also ran a series on the same program at the BBC about the history of Great Britain, which was published posthumously - Sentimentalna povest Britanskog carstva (A Sentimental History Of The British Empire, 1992), for which he received the yearly “BIGZ” award. The book was published numerous times enjoying a huge success.