Biography

Marijan Butkovic was born in Rijeka (Susak) as the youngest child of Katarina and Luka Butkovic. His father Luka owned an electrical installation shop, and his mother was a housewife and took care of Marijan and his sister and two brothers. He finished elementary and gymnasium in Bjelovar. After finishing high school, he continued his education in Zagreb at the Faculty of Philosophy - Department of History of Art. His love for the theater takes him to the newly founded Student Experimental Theater (SEK) led by Bogdan Jerkovic, the actors are newly enrolled academics Vanja Drach, Marija Kohn, Drago Bahun, Spiro Guberina to name a few. Marijan Butkovic successfully plays leading roles and travels with SEK all over Europe and is rewarded with great reviews and awards. In 1956, he met his future wife Nada, whom he married 9 years later. He got a job at ZORA film and started working on documentaries, of which "Zaigrane osovine" (1960) and "Rijecka luka" (1960) stand out. Until 1962, he worked as an assistant director and organizer in the film companies "Zora", "Zagreb" and "Dubrava". In 1964, he was an assistant director on Rudolf Sremec's short film "People on Wheels". In 1965, the first TV company opened in Zagreb, and he moved to it as an assistant to Ivan Hetrich with whom he filmed the TV movies "Tonkina ljubav" and "Mala nocna muzika", next he assisted the director Fadil Hadzic. In the 1970s, he became a TV director in a television documentary program. The first independent direction was a reportage about the chess grandmaster Tigran Petrosjan. Then the numerous shows "Yesterday, today, tomorrow" and reports about Sudan followed. He filmed a very successful TV adaptation of Gogol's "Kartasi" in cooperation with the theater from Varazdin. He collaborated for many years with journalists and editors Franjo Erceg and Drago Antoniazza on programs about tourism, documentary reports with Drago Flego, Stanko Ederer, Branko Krovinovic, Anto Panjkota, Mihail Ostrovidov, Silvio Huma, Goran Varosanec, Juro Orlovec, and worked on numerous live television broadcasts. In 1974, he began directing the then popular weekly series of the editor and presenter Mladen Trnski "Everyone is unique in defense", "Nothing should surprise us" and "Today for tomorrow". "All unique in defense" brought him on several occasions to the school ship "Galeb", where a reportage with the working title "Galeb brod mira" was broadcast on 9/9/1976, in 1977 the documentary film "Brod Galeb" and "Galeb 1982" was filmed. " aired 1/8/1982. At the end of his career, he directed and wrote the script for the documentary film "100 years of Mirogoj", for which he received the award of the City of Zagreb and his TV House.
- IMDb mini biography by: Nina Butkovich-Budden