20-Feb-2011
Dry Summer
There are some interesting connections between Hanka (1955) by Slavko Vorkapic and Dry Summer (1964) by Metin Erksan.
Both take place in a rural community. In Hanka it is a village in Bosnia & Herzegovina dominated by the timber industry. In Dry Summer it is a farming village in Turkey. Both of these locales ground their respective films in a very lush naturalism that comes to bear its effects on thematics and formal aspects.
14-Jan-2011
I don’t feel Sweet Movie is full of death, in the sense that this may be the overpowering conceit of the film. However, the fact of the matter is that “the world is full of corpses” as Sailor Potemkin says. Director Dusan Makavejev shows you this world. He shows it to you through the actuality footage of the Katyn massacre. His characters are given the power of life over death in the fictional strand of the film. The Katyn massacre is ours in reality. These victims refuse to stay buried. And life still prevails, even in the face of a massacre. Note the personal objects that are recovered from the corpses. Pictures of smiling, happy families that remain eternal.
Why do we need to wallow in this? To remind ourselves that we must think of these things always and speak of them ALWAYS, in opposition to the wishes of the British minister. Otherwise a succession of Katyns occur. Why are the only things we taste in the film sugar and excrement? Because that is all there is. There are only two tastes: sweet and sour. Either pleasant or unpleasant. What happens when the traditional unpleasantness becomes a source of pleasure and the traditional pleasantness becomes a source of death? This is the postulate Makavejev attempts to exercise. He is a destructive artist who is all about upending traditional values.
03-Dec-2010
The Wall of Memories directed by Vlada Petric is a personal DV essay that has been over a decade in the making — the work of a lifetime. The lengthy video (over two hours) details the professional and personal history of Professor Petric, who was the founding curator of the Harvard Film Archive and who also taught film studies courses at Harvard University from the 70s until his retirement in 1997.
01-Dec-2010
The Auteur Film Festival in Belgrade serves up a sampling of the best in contemporary international art cinema, in addition to special programs and sidebars. This festival is organized and run by a council that includes film directors and film critics with a young energy that is palpable in everything from the films selected to the marketing and design of the festival materials. It is one of the more exciting festivals in Serbia and has the feel of a concise, well-programmed endeavor.
12-Sep-2010
It didn’t seem possible to shock more than The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (by Mladen Djordjevic, 2009) but A Serbian Film (by Srdan Spasojevic, 2009) did it. Obviously these films are companion pieces. They actually form a trilogy with the film Made in Serbia by Djordjevic, which is sort of a documentary prequel to his The Life and Death of a Porno Gang.
Needless to say these films are cries of despair and one must ask the question “what’s going on in Serbia?” Has it become a masochist society, so used to being raped that it is now self-perpetuated? Has it reached the nadir of a state of moral decay? Will it continue to be punished by foreign powers and orphaned from civilization?
28-Aug-2010
Category : Cinematic Arts, Documentary Film, Yugoslav Cinema
I was very happy to see Cineaste, probably the most important American film magazine (along with Film Comment), run an extended interview with Želimir Žilnik in their Fall issue. Žilnik is a filmmaker that has been in need of “rediscovery” for more than 40 years now, dating back from when he won the Berlin Golden Bear in 1969 for his debut film Rani radovi/Early Works. Since then Žilnik has maintained his dedicated path through the history of cinema, turning out a number of powerful, socially-incisive works that have all but slipped through the cracks in the meantime.
Želimir Žilnik
The interviewer seems to know a great deal about Žilnik and the larger history of Yugoslav cinema; the introduction to this interview is a useful primer. Unfortunately the writer did not go into detail on the experimental “amateur” phase of Žilnik’s career in the 60s, though this segment is even more unknown than his larger career in general. Likewise, more attention could have been given to all of Žilnik’s documentary shorts of the 60s as they are key in understanding the growth of his “documentary approach.” Films like Pioniri maleni/Little Pioneers (1967) which exposed the condition of homeless children living on the streets of Yugoslavia and Crni film/Black Film (1971) which treated the same condition among adults (and also commented ironically on the notion of the “Black Wave”) would have been of interest here.
26-May-2010
3rd Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb
Pavle Levi of Stanford University delivered a lecture entitled “Machines and Machinations: Towards a Politics of the Kino-Apparatus” on the final night of the theoretical component of the festival. He dealt with the political underpinnings of certain obscure cinematic relics as well as the political content of new video documentaries produced in the context of youth workshops. Complex and interesting, hopefully this presentation will be organized into a written study of some sorts.
This presentation gave way to the third in the three-part roundtable “Yugoslav Film Affair,” this one moderated by Miki Stojanovic of Film Center Serbia and again including Italian critic Sergio Grmek Germani, the filmmakers Lazar Stojanovic, Veljko Bulajic, Slobodan Sijan, Djordje Kadijevic, Krsto Papic and professors Pavle Levi and Hrvoje Turkovic. The discussion continued on Yugoslav “Black Wave” films and again the conversation was passionate and provocative.
26-May-2010
3rd Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb
Dilizansa snova/The Stagecoach of Dreams (1960) by Sofija-Soja Jovanovic, the first female feature film director in Yugoslavia, was screened at the beautiful Kino Tuskanac. This was a period piece with a comedic tone about a poet/philosopher (Slobodan Perovic) who falls in love with a woman and pursues his object of desire passionately. The narrative of the film was a bit off and oftentimes it was difficult enough to sit through. It seemed to be a rather disjointed attempt that was lacking in comedy or even interesting characters. Though Jovanovic holds an important place in the history of Yugoslav cinema, one would hope that her reputation rests on a better film than this one.
The next film that screened, Suncani krik/Sunny Whirlpool (1968) by Bostjan Hladnik, proved to be a treat. Another comedy, this one mildly surreal in its formal approach, Hladnik crafts a whimsical story about an irresistible boy (Bojan Mark) who gets a job as a photographer working in an all-girl’s design school. Soon enough the girl-crazy boy is pursued by hundreds of boy-crazy girls who wear him down, each one taking their turn to win his affections. Crossed with this plot is a sub-plot about a pair of bungling robbers who are looking for hidden money in one of the model refrigerators, and who think the boy is guilty of stealing their hard-earned stolen goods.
25-May-2010
3rd Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb
The 3rd Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb (Croatia) was held throughout the entire month of May 2010. Each year the festival selects an organizing theme–this year’s was socialism. Socialism, its representations and theoretical musings, was explored on film through a Glauber Rocha retrospective, a retrospective of the Zagreb School of animation from1951-90 and the centerpiece of the festival: a retrospective of Yugoslav film from 1955-90. A series of roundtable discussions, lectures and book promotions was also presented.
Overall, this festival was extremely well-produced. The immense amount of rare films screened in outstanding prints was impressive, as was the festival program booklet, which was a brilliant work of editing and presentation in its own right. It seems, judging from the previous festival booklets that were given out to attendees, that this is a film festival that gathers a wonderful amount of creativity, and is clearly something not to be missed in the future.
02-Mar-2010
Three films took home awards at the 38th Belgrade International Film Festival (Fest); two from Israel, demonstrating the overall strength and versatility of Israeli cinema as represented at the festival. The film Levanon/Lebanon by writer/director Samuel Maoz won the FIPRESCI prize. Well-deserved for an already accomplished film, whose tale of the horrors of war and the humanitarian costs certainly hit home in Serbia.
The Belgrade Film Journalists and Critics Association bestowed their “Nebojsa Djukelic” Award on the film Einaym Pekukhot/Eyes Wide Open by director Haim Tabakman. Yet another fine Israeli film, to go along with writer/director Keren Yedaya’s Kalat Hayam/Jaffa, which certainly looks the part of a powerful masterpiece. Both films examine transgressive sexual relationships; the former a homosexual affair, the latter one that crosses religious and national boundaries. Both films end ambiguously, casting an uncertain light on the opinions of the directors as to the viability of these relationships. In Eyes Wide Open one of the partners is forced to leave town, the other seen submerging himself underwater in the film’s final mysterious shot. In Jaffa the final image is a high angle wide-shot of the Palestinian father on one edge of the frame, the Israeli mother on the other and their mixed-heritage daughter walking carefully along a wall in the middle – before the camera zooms in to a medium shot of the daughter, ultimately concluding in a freeze frame on her. The silent expressiveness of this shot speaks volumes, its mise-en-scene a masterful construction.
