Post by Bozur on Mar 22, 2010 0:09:32 GMT -5
Yugoslav cinema is still very much alive at Cleveland International Film Festival
By John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer
March 21, 2010, 12:01AM
Director Vinko Bresan's dark comedy, "Will Not Stop There," travels between Croatia and Serbia to tell the story of a Croatian war veteran who falls in love with a Serbian woman living in despair in Belgrade.
Wars. Independence movements. Nationalism.
The last thing anyone wanted to be called was "Yugoslav" as Yugoslavia was being torn apart in the 1990s.
You could be Croatian or Serbian or Slovenian or Bosnian or Macedonian or Montenegrin. But Yugoslav? National identities didn't allow it. Even linguistic similarities were denied, at least in public.
But if a nation is defined as a common experience or past, then Yugoslavia's national cinema is still alive -- even if the country isn't.
This year's installment of the Cleveland International Film Festival features six films from the former Yugoslavia -- the Balkan country that broke up into six countries after a series of wars in the 1990s. Many signal a new cooperation, crossing borders, as joint productions.
The films are part of the festival's Central and Eastern European Film Competition, the only series of its kind on the American festival circuit.
"We started focusing on Eastern and Central European cinema in 1989," says festival artistic director Bill Guentzler. "We looked at the huge immigrant base living in Cleveland but also all these movies that were coming out of the area that had this unique perspective and dark humor."
"Yugoslavia" has been a treasure trove for film during that time -- with the war, and the ghosts of war that linger on, a motif that runs through most films.
This year's stellar entry is "Will Not Stop There." Director Vinko Bresan's dark comedy travels between Croatia and Serbia to tell the story of a Croatian war veteran who falls in love with a Serbian woman living in despair in Belgrade.
Their pasts are intertwined because of the war. And while the wounds of the past bring him to her, they also make going forward seemingly impossible.
Bresan eschews making political statements in favor of finding the humanity amid the wreckage. He focuses on two people whose destinies were shaped by the war and, in a bizarre way, were brought together by it.
Vladimir Perisic's "Ordinary People" explores the inhumanity of it all, focusing on recruits who go from regular people to killers.
The minimalist film doesn't identify the recruits, where they're fighting or what the mission is. It's like some Albert Camus portrait of a young man as a numb killer.
Goran Paskaljevic's "Honeymoons" focuses on two couples -- one Serbian, the other Albanian -- trying to escape societies that have been decimated by war and nationalism.
Paskaljevic, a filmmaker since the 1970s, has been at the forefront of the region's postwar renaissance -- with films such as "Cabaret Balkan," "Midwinter Night's Dream" and "How Harry Became a Tree." (The latter two were Cleveland festival faves in recent years.)
The film wave became an international darling with Emir Kusturica's "Underground."
The 1995 war farce is a throwback to the golden era of European cinema when directors such as Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone would deftly depict the absurdities of uncommon life.
"When it won the Golden Palm at Cannes, a lot of eyes opened up," says Guentzler. "Suddenly, people started asking, 'What's going on over there?' "
A lot. And for a long time, says Harun Mehmedinovic, a Bosnian-born filmmaker who resides in Los Angeles.
"Yugoslavia had a strong film scene going back decades," says Mehmedinovic, who is attending the festival as a juror. "Guys like Dusan Makavejev or Goran Markovic weren't just making films for a local audience -- they were international."
Makavejev's 1971 sex satire "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" became an international favorite, even if it was banned in Yugoslavia. As he said, in a 2000 interview with The Plain Dealer: "Communists don't have a sense of humor, because humor undermines all organized stupidities."
Markovic kicked off the festival's "Director's Spotlight" in 2003. The series marks stellar careers. In Markovic's case, the series celebrated a career that shaped the film scene in Yugoslavia. The Serbian filmmaker came of age in the 1960s and continued to crank out films full of dark humor under communist rule.
His comedy "Tito and Me" was a favorite at the 1993 festival. It told the story of 10-year-old boy who is so smitten with propaganda that he ends up loving Yugoslavia's former dictator Tito more than his parents.
The film marked the end of an era in Yugoslav cinema.
By 1993, the country had collapsed, the themes changed and, as Markovic said in a 2003 interview with The Plain Dealer: "Nationalism had replaced communism, and Yugoslavia became a disaster."
Out of that disaster, there is a new wave of filmmakers telling stories of individuals dealing with the past.
And while Yugoslavia might not exist anymore, they've come together to create a new Yugoslav cinema. Even if no one wants to call it that.
www.cleveland.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/03/yugoslav_cinema_is_still_very.html