ND/NF ’24: Lost Country

People conveniently forget the genocidal Slobodan Milosevic was formerly a Communist Party official in the unified Yugoslavia and he was the leader of Serbia’s Socialist Party. Stefan’s single-mother Marklena Nikolic was certainly aware of that fact, because she serves as a high-profile Socialist Party spokesman in Vladimir Perisic’s Lost Country, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Even in Serbia, the name “Marklena” is unusual, so she must often explain it is a contraction of Marx and Lenin. Not surprisingly, she is a Socialist—and she sternly informs her teenage son Stefan that he must always be one too. However, as the 1996 protests against Milosevic and his Socialists intensify, Stefan finds it is not such a fun time to be a Socialist at school, especially when his friends’ relatives start disappearing.

Stefan pretends his mother is another “Marklena Nikolic” and not the hated woman on the government broadcasts, but with a name like that, nobody believes him. With his peers freezing him out, Stefan increasingly lashes out their slights and insults. He must believe they are lying about her and her role in the Socialist Party, but the more he sees and overhears, the harder that gets.

Lost Country illustrates how the crimes of socialist regimes compound in tragic and unexpected ways. This is ultimately a bracing and profoundly sad film, but Perisic’s severe aesthetic might put off some viewers. His pacing is slow, but the intimate focus has a hypnotic effect on those who are open to it.

Rampart: Fractured Memories of Belgrade

Everyone who still has their VCR tapes from the 1980s and 1990s is probably holding a real time capsule of the era (the fashions, the hairstyles, the commercials). That was true of filmmaker Marko Grba Singh, who grew up in Belgrade during the Kosovo War. Returning to his family’s former apartment, he found a box of tapes that he transformed into the experimental documentary Rampart, which screens tomorrow and Saturday in New York.

For the pre-teen Singh, his family’s apartment was like a fortress (hence the title). As the fighting intensified, the extended clan clearly came together, with the intention of shielding the children as best they could. In fact, the camcorder footage, mostly shot by Singh’s grandfather, often has the vibe of a family reunion or a sleepover.

However, it is clear everyone is trying to herd the kids (and the pets) towards the interior of the flat. Obviously, this was a time to stay in-doors, which gives Rampart additional resonance in the days after the Wuhan-inspired Covid lockdowns. Yet, the Belgrade stores were still open and buying advertising time, as some of the commercials Signh incorporates will duly attest.

Regardless, we know what it is like to be stuck inside. They had better reason in 1999 Belgrade. However, they still were not in the sort of peril Sarajevo experienced, when it was terrorized by Bosnian-Serb separatist snipers, as Sejla Kameric dramatized in the experimental 1395 Days Without Red (because color would draw the shooters’ attention). Ironically, both films would pair well together, due to their roughly one hour running times and avant-garde sensibilities.

Sundance ’19: The Witch Hunters

Milica is not necessarily wrong to suspect her father’s new girlfriend Svetlana is a witch, because the strange woman’s apartment is filled with all sorts of weird New Age organic remedies that can’t possibly work according to science. She has enlisted her school friend Jovan the dispel the witch’s mojo, but at least they don’t intend to burn her at the stake in Rasko Milijkovic’s The Witch Hunters, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Jovan is shy and standoffish in school, because he is insecure about his physical condition. However, Milica, the brash new girl, looks past all that. At first, Jovan is aghast when she starts inviting herself over, but he eventually starts to appreciate her tomboy attitude and self-assurance. Soon, Milica confides in Jovan she suspects Svetlana has cast an enchantment on her hapless father. It turns out, a video-game playing expert on all things super-hero like Jovan is just the ally she needs to take on Svetlana, assuming he can work up the confidence to take the bus by himself to carry out phases of their mission.

Frankly, the key-art for Witch Hunter looks much more genre than the film really is. Basically, it uses fantastical elements in much the same way Ian Fitzgibbon’s Death of a Superhero did, but it takes the audience to a far happier place. Marko Manojlovic & Milos Kreckovic’s screenplay is achingly well-intentioned, but it skews considerably younger than a family film like the nifty ghost story, Room 213.

Regardless, Mihajlo Milavic and Silma Mahmuti are enormously sincere and appear quite genuine on-screen as Jovan and Milica, respectively. They have a nice, believable rapport together. Most of the adults a well-meaning dunderheads or cold figures of scorn, but Jelena Jovanova shows some screen presence as Svetlana.

Nice is definitely the word for Witch Hunters, with everything it implies, good and bad. There are some nice messages about inclusion here, but nothing you couldn’t find elsewhere. Mostly pleasant, but certainly not essential, The Witch Hunters screens again today (2/2) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

SFFILM ’18: The Other Side of Everything

Alas, revolutions often fail and one fallen regime usually just begets another that is equally corrupt, or worse. Those are the archly fatalistic observations of Prof. Srbijanka Turajlić—and she ought to know. She was a prominent leader in the Otpor resistance that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. Before that, her family was branded suspicious bourgeoisie class elements by Tito’s Communists. In fact, her subdivided family townhouse still bears the witness to the Communist era of appropriation and plunder in Mila Turajlić’s highly personal documentary, The Other Side of Everything (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

For Turajlić the personal is inescapably political, due to her mother’s activism. She stood shoulder to shoulder with her students, because she refused to be as passive as her parents had been when confronting injustice during the Communist era. It started when a jackbooted internal security agent arrived unannounced, consigning the large family to two rooms in their fashionable building. For decades, their own neighbors spied on them through peep holes within their [formerly] own home. As late as the mid 2010’s, Rada the nonagenarian is still holding on, in the two grubby rooms right behind Srbijanka Turajlić’s walls.

Although Other Side is ostensibly about family history, it is a remarkably helpful document for making sense of the current Serbian political climate. Partly, it is because Turajlić and her family have had such a unique vantage point to observe Serbian and Yugoslav history. In fact, her grandfather was a signatory to the original document creating Yugoslavia as a unified political entity, decades before Tito’s rise to power. Nearly a century later, he will play a small part in a tellingly ironic and symbolic development when a grand oil painting of the ceremony is discovered, walled up in the national legislature.

Most of the time, Other Side should not even be described as a two-hander, because Turajlić the filmmaker does her best to keep herself behind the scenes. However, Prof. Turajlić is an undeniably forceful personality, who easily commands the screen. Despite her disappointments, she is still razor-sharp and actively engaged socially and politically (despite her claims to the contrary).

Almost perversely, Prof. Turajlić will absolutely charm viewers, yet leave them deeply pessimistic regarding the prospects for free, democratic civil society in Serbia. She will never bore you, that’s for sure. Given its personal focus, Other Side represents a radical departure from Mila Turajlić’s previous documentary, Cinema Komunisto, but together they provide remarkably compelling, fully contextualized understanding of the Serb and Yugoslav national experience over the past eighty-some years. Very highly recommended, The Other Side of Everything screens today (4/0), tomorrow (4/11), and Thursday (4/12), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

FCS ’16: No One’s Child

In 1988, a feral child literally raised by wolves had even less of an understanding of the Balkan conflict than Bill Clinton (how did that whole arms embargo thing work out again?), but he will be assigned his respective side just the same. It is baffling to the boy and perverse to the viewer, but it is as natural as gravity to the both the kids and adults around him. His belated education and socialization will come with a bitter dose of irony in Vuk Ršumović’s No One’s Child The Record Man (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Film Comment Select.

Discovered by Serbian hunters in central Bosnia, the boy who will be randomly named Haris Pucurica as an acknowledgement of his presumed Bosnia ethnicity is taken to Belgrade for their own convenience. Consigned to an orphanage, the uncommunicative Pucurica is considered little more than an animal. Periodically, junior staffer Vaspitac Ilke tries to reach the wild child, but only the somewhat older and cooler Zika succeeds in breaking through Pucurica’s animalistic shell.

Unfortunately, Zika’s own unstable family situation will cut short his friendship with Pucurica as well as his courtship of the pretty Alisa. Unfortunately, Pucurica’s acclimation to human society also comes with his first taste of human tragedy. As the years pass and the War ignites, Bosnia will claim their presumed countryman, but Ilke fears for the boy’s safety in the besieged nation.

We know right from the start Pucurica will be better off with the wolves than navigating the war. Still, Ršumović manages to make his points without completely bashing viewers over the head. Frankly, No One’s Child, along with Mirjana Karanovic’s A Good Wife represent the hopeful stirrings of a revisionist trend towards national self-examination in Serbian cinema. There is no way either would ever be possible under the bitterly remembered Milosevic regime.

Denis Murić is rather remarkable as Pucurica. He is indeed suitably wild when necessary, but his performance is also acutely sensitive and surprisingly disciplined. He really does not need language, because Murić has a knack for displaying his inner feelings on his forehead. As Zika and Alisa, young and charismatic Pavle Čemerikić and Isidora Janković show loads of future star potential, but it is Miloš Timotijević who really keeps the film grounded as the decent but not necessarily noble Ilke.

It is hard to miss the drastic change in tone when a more-or-less gang of Bosnian-Serbs are admitted to the orphanage and proceed to engage in wanton thuggery. It would be very healthy for the region if No One’s Child were widely screened and debated in the Srpska district, but it won’t be. Recommended for those who appreciate tough-minded drama, No One’s Child screens this coming Monday (2/22) as part of the current edition of Film Comment Selects, now underway at the Walter Reade.

Sundance ’16: A Good Wife

To Serbia’s credit, they ousted Slobodan Milosevic on their own, unprompted. However, there is still a general defensiveness whenever people ask questions about the 1990s. This is particularly true in the case of Milena’s husband Vlada. She is about to discover why, but it is not clear she can handle the truth in Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic’s directorial debut, A Good Wife, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Vlada is a prosperous contractor, so obviously he has no scruples whatsoever. Nevertheless, Milena was able to maintain a willful blindness, despite Vlada’s sneering curses at the war crimes investigators on the evening news. One day she comes across an old VHS tape while cleaning and watches just enough to see too much. She tries to ignore her new reality, but when the drunkard Dejan, Vlada’s junior paramilitary colleague, starts making veiled threats of blackmail, it is impossible for Milena to live in denial.

Milena also has her own issues, like her recently discovered tumor. The parallels between Milena’s breast cancer and Serbia’s cancerous history are impossible to miss, but Karanovic shows a good sense of restraint, resisting the urge to drive the point home with a pile-driver. If you can’t get it from her matter of fact approach, you never will, but the film never feelsl lectury or contrived.

A Good Wife is really a slow burn that gives the others issues in Milena’s life nearly equal weight as her struggles with Vlada’s war crimes (though they arguably all interrelated). If you are lucky, you will recognize Karanovic from Darko Lungulov’s wonderfully wise and world weary romantic comedy Here and There. Yet, in many ways A Good Wife is the antithesis to that film, which clearly implies everyday Serbs deserve a return to normalcy and a break from the international guilt trips. Not so fast say Karanovic and co-screenwriters Lungulov and Stevan Filipovic, arguing if Serbia does not face up to its not-so-distant past, it will continue to fester and metastasize.

Karanovic also set herself up with the sort of role that is a perfect awards vehicle, which she duly knocks out of the park. Karanovic and company do not merely present a simplistic conflict between doing the right thing and protecting a comfortable life. We also see all the small, possibly more pernicious little compromises she makes just to get through the day.

A Good Wife and Here and There are about as far apart as two Serbian films can get, but they both showcase Karanovic’s warm yet sophisticated screen presence. It is a quiet, patient film, but it directly challenges Serbs to look inside the dark corners of their national psyche. Frankly, she is pretty darn gutsy on both sides of the lens. Respectfully recommended for international audiences and rather more forcefully so for those in Srpska and Serbia, A Good Wife screens again tonight (1/26), tomorrow (1/27), Friday (1/29), and Saturday (1/30) as part of this year’s Sundance, in Park City.

Submitted by Serbia: See You in Montevideo

Uruguay hosted the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. It was a full sixty-five years before Sepp Blatter joined the international sports organization, but the fix was still in, nonetheless. The Yugoslavian National Team will bear the brunt of the tournament’s dubious officiating, but they will make history just the same in Dragan Bjelogrlić’s See You in Montevideo (trailer here), which Serbia has selected as their official foreign language submission for the upcoming Academy Awards.

It was not easy getting to Uruguay. It took an entire film (Bjelogrlić’s Montevideo: Taste of a Dream, submitted in 2011) for poor earnest Aleksandar “Tirke” Tirnanić and roguish Blagoje “Moša” Marjanović to unite their team and win the honor of representing Yugoslavia at the World Cup. The transatlantic passage was no picnic either, entailing much seasickness. Even when they arrive, the Yugoslavian team still can’t get any respect. Expected to go one-and-out, they are booked in a divey hotel, while the rest of the field will stay at palatial resort. Nobody gives them a puncher’s chance when they draw Brazil in the first round, but since they face-off halfway through the film, it might be safe to assume they have an upset in them. However, impartial officiating goes out the window when Yugoslavia is matched up with the host nation in the semis.

The National Team’s 1930 run is still the best international showing for both Yugoslavian and Serbian football-soccer to date and it is a pretty good sports story. However, two films both clocking in with a running length of about two and a half hours hardly seems economical. Frankly, each could have easily come in under ninety minutes, but they love the all Serbian 1930 Yugoslavian team in Serbia, so Bjelogrlić takes his time.

This time around, Bjelogrlić and his co-writers Ranko Božić and Dimitrije Vojnov prospect for more laughs and pile on the subplots. Sometimes they do not make much sense, like that featuring the game Armand Assante as Hotchkins, an American looking to sign players for some sort of American soccer tour, which would have gone over like a lead balloon in depression-era America. However, Tirnanić’s romance with Dolores, a Uruguayan beauty, is rather sweet and appealing, even if her lunatic brother’s subplot to the subplot is way too over-the-top.

Regardless, Petar Strugar convincingly transitions Marjanović from dashing cad to world-weary sportsman. Assante chews scenery like he hasn’t eaten since American Gangster. It is a head-shakingly odd performance, but strangely enjoyable. Elena Martínez generates plenty of heat as Dolores and forges some respectable screen chemistry with Miloš Biković’s otherwise plodding Tirnanić. However, Branko Đurić is defiantly shticky and manipulative as Paco, a Croatian expat who befriends Mali Stanjoe, the team’s young Dickensian mascot.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the second Montevideo installment is the nostalgia for Yugoslavian identity. While the previous film often expressed pride in the team’s Serbianess, the players explicitly demand respect for Yugoslavia this time around. Despite the weirdness of Assante’s Hotchkins, the film also portrays the American team in a consistently favorable light, suggesting they were good sports, much like Jackson Scholtz in Chariots of Fire. In fact, the conclusion serves as a cool example of sportsmanship and old fashioned love of the game.

Evidently, there is even more to the team’s story that was chronicled in a companion television series. One of the smaller sports networks ought to pick-up the entire Montevideo franchise, because the sport is growing in popularity here, but 1930 still represents America’s peak World Cup performance, so far (just as it does for Yugoslavia and Serbia). It certainly deserves a wider international audience than the FIFA-bankrolled United Passions. Easily one of the most accessible films of this year’s foreign language submissions, See You in Montevideo had a special screening in Los Angeles this Monday, hosted by Deadline’s AwardsLine. Recommended for sports fans who do not mind a little sentimentality, it will screen again soon at the 2015 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

TIFF ’12: Clip

Never a wise policy, censorship sometimes elevates the importance of a work that would otherwise not have received much international attention.  That was a risk Putin’s loyal censors were willing to take when they gave the preemptive hook to an explicit new Serbian teen drama.  As a result, Maja Miloš’s Clip (trailer here) will probably make far more eyes pop when it screens during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.

Nothing really counts to Jasna’s generation, unless they record a clip of it on handheld devices (hence the title).  Either directly or indirectly, they have absorbed the values of hip hop and pornography, leading to wanton hedonism and pronounced friction with their parents.  Viewers will see a lot of her and her friends drinking, partying, and engaging various forms of unprotected sex.  On the other hand, we will not see much of them working, studying, or even helping out around the home.

What plot there is revolves around sixteen year-old Jasna’s pursuit of Djole, the slightly older son of a former family friend.  There is nothing he can ask that she will not do, because she never finds any of it deviant or humiliating.  This is normalcy to both her and him.  Yet, just like all those cautionary warnings mothers used to give their daughters about giving away free milk, Jasna’s relationship with Djole (if it can be called that) will take a dark turn.  Meanwhile, she remains unmoved by her mostly likely dying father’s slow deterioration, much to the consternation of her mother.

Isidora Simijonovic is absolutely fearless as Jasna—and not just in terms of the film’s lurid content.  It is quite an emotionally naked performance as well.  As her ailing father, Jovo Maksic brings a sense of dignity and gravitas to the Clip’s few quiet moments.  The rest of the kids though, are nearly interchangeable, which might be intentional.

Frankly, you do not have to be a Philistine or a Neo-Soviet bureaucrat to think Clip borders on pornography.  The sex is graphic, but thoroughly unappetizing (pay-per-view porn sales will probably decrease in festival hotels on the nights it screens).  According to the end titles, no minors were filmed simulating sex acts, but Miloš sure makes it look otherwise.  Despite the many body (and organ) doubles she employed, there is something very unclean about it all, in a Larry Clark kind of way.  Regardless of their respective merits, sexually provocative films like Elles and Nuit #1 were nowhere near as explicit, yet they never feel stifled by self-censorship.

Much has been made about Clip with respects to the Kremlin’s campaign against the all-girl punk rock band Pussy Riot, which some consider to be at the behest of the Putin-supporting Patriarch Kirill I.  However, it is hard to believe the Orthodox Church is that current on below-the-marquee film festival selections.  Considering how thoroughly the Russian regime has co-opted the younger generations (as Lise Birk Pedersen documents in the ever more timely Putin’s Kiss), it is more likely they would simply conclude a film that challenges young peoples’ unexamined complacency is just bad for business.

Indeed, there is a very real point to Clip, much like the old public service announcements: “it’s eleven o’clock, do you know where your children are?”  This is a brutally naturalistic look at alienated youth in a place of social and historical uncertainty.  Jasna’s parents lived through the war.  Call them the Clinton Generation, who witnessed and perhaps participated in atrocities.  The youngest of their ranks would join Otpor, overthrowing the Milošević regime.  They would be the Bush Generation.  Jasna and her  friends (for lack of a more fitting word) therefore belong to the entitled Obama Generation, who want to party all night and expect someone else to pay for it all.

As grim and oppressive as the Socialist housing projects it was shot in, Clip will never be able to live up to the notoriety the Russian government has granted it.  It is a serious movie, but it needlessly pushes the boundaries of art cinema propriety.  Though not recommended (except for hardcore Putin critics), the curious may still want to see it for themselves when Clip screens Monday (9/10), Wednesday (9/12) and next Sunday (9/16) during this year’s TIFF.

Submitted by Serbia: Montevideo—Taste of a Dream

In 1930, Yugoslavia’s national football (a.k.a. soccer) team had quite a run during the very first FIFA World Cup. If you think Serbia still remembers with pride that celebrated team consisted entirely of Serbians, you would be correct. The story of how a team of underdogs played their way into the tournament, in spite of a Croatian boycott, is dramatized in Dragan Bjelogrlic’s historical sports drama Montevideo: Taste of a Dream (sometimes also subtitled as God Bless You, trailer here), which has been officially submitted by Serbia for Academy Award consideration as the best foreign language film of the year.

Serbia is a long way away from Uruguay. With the memories and repercussions of WWI still very fresh for the newly formed country of Yugoslavia, the team requires a serious patron to underwrite their journey, like the king. He will need some convincing. Unfortunately, the national team is a motley bunch, largely overlapping with Belgrade’s sort of-kind of professional club, conveniently owned by their chairman. There is hope though when they sign the poor but cocky Tirke Tirnanić, who can do just about anything with a soccer ball (from here on, we’re sticking with the American vernacular). Still, he has a good heart, always looking out for the film’s Oliver Twisty narrator, Stanoje, a street urchin who must wear a leg brace.

Naturally, Tirnanić has a rival on the team, the comparatively well-heeled Mosha Blagoje Marjanović. Initially, they clash over differences of style and then over two women: Rosa, the good girl barmaid and Valeria, the vampy artist. It is pretty clear who should be with whom, but somehow they get mismatched.

Montevideo might be an Oscar long shot, but a forward-thinking art-house distributor should snap it up fast. It is easily one of the most commercial films in contention. Soccer continues to grow in popularity with Americans and fans tend to be rather internationalist in their outlook (so subtitles should be no problem). As sports films go, Montevideo has plenty of on-field action to satisfy enthusiasts, as well as two beautiful women. Of course, it is also totally manipulative. It is a sports film, after all.

Despite his baby-face, Petar Strugar makes a convincingly dashing rogue as Marjanović. While Miloš Biković’s nice guy right-winger (that is his position) comes across as something of an earnest stiff, such is the nature of sports movie protagonists. On the other hand, Nina Janković is downright fascinating as the nuanced troublemaker, Valeria.

A lovely period production, Montevideo captures all of Belgrade’s old world charm. Nemanja Petrovic’s design team’s attention to detail shows in every frame, while cinematographer Goran Volarevic gives it all a lush, nostalgic look. Still, given recent history in the Balkans, the occasional flash of nationalism remains a little scary, as when the crowd spontaneously bursts into the Serbian anthem after a pivotal game.

While a tad long at one hundred forty minutes, it is quite entertaining in a pleasingly old-fashioned way, with an appropriately hot and swinging-ish soundtrack. Considerably better than last year’s best foreign language Academy Award winner, Montevideo ought to have a further distribution life regardless of what Oscar does.

Serbian Love Connection: Here and There

It’s love, Serbian style. But not for Robert, a New York jazz musician, who has hit rock-bottom. He is only the groom. Love, music, and furniture moving all collide for the distinctively coiffed tenor-playing protagonist in director-screenwriter Darko Lungulov’s Here and There (trailer here), the winner of the Best New York Narrative Award at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, which finally opens theatrically in New York tomorrow.

Robert is not making it in New York. He has only cut one poor selling record in his career and he has not even touched his horn in months. When evicted from his apartment, he calls Branko, a cut-rate Serbian mover. When Robert explains his situation, Branko offers him the strangest wedding gig of his career: fly to Belgrade, marry his girlfriend, and legally bring her back to Branko in America. Having burned all his other bridges, Robert reluctantly agrees.

In Serbia, Robert stays with Branko’s divorced mother, the still attractive Olga, who only knows he is a friend of her son. While waiting for Branko to come through with his money, Robert discovers Belgrade is a much nicer city than New York to be down and out in, despite many of the locals’ obvious defensiveness regarding recent Serbia history. There is also no denying the charm of Branko’s mother, who even convinces Robert to start playing his tenor again. However, the nature of Robert’s arrangement with Branko looms over his tentative new romance.

As Robert, David Thornton gives a well-modulated performance, expressing the world-weariness and desperation of a flawed, but not utterly unlikable character. Thornton’s hair will be instantly recognizable to audiences for his many supporting performances in both film and television, including the recurring role of slimy defense attorney Lionel Granger on Law & Order: SVU. He is perfectly balanced by veteran Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic, who brings a memorable warmth and dignity to the role of Olga.

Thornton’s real-life wife Cyndi Lauper also appears in a cameo role, as a friend fast losing patience with the self-destructive Robert. She also contributes an original, but forgettable, song to the film. However, the rest of Dejan Pejovic’s soundtrack is quite distinctive, incorporating jazz, traditional Serbian Guča-style brass band music (featuring those crazy sideways Balkan trumpets), and some lush romantic mood music.

Sensitively helmed by Lungulov, H&T conveys a strong sense of both cities. In fact, with the majority of its dialogue in English, it should be accessible to those easily intimidated by foreign films. Unfortunately, it was disqualified by the Academy when Serbia officially submitted it for the best foreign language Oscar, for that very reason. Impressively, H&T is a truly rare romantic comedy that almost completely avoids any form of sentimentality. Yet, it still has a romantic heart buried in there somewhere. Highly recommended, it opens at the Quad tomorrow (5/14).

Tribeca ’09: Here and There

Its love, Serbian style. But not for Robert, a New York jazz musician, who has hit rock-bottom. He is just the groom. Love, music, and furniture moving all collide for the distinctively coiffed tenor-playing protagonist in Darko Lungulov’s Here and There (trailer here), which screens during the Tribeca Film Festival.

Robert is not making it in New York. He has only cut one poor selling record in his career and he has not even touched his horn in months. When evicted from his apartment, he calls Branko, a cut-rate Serbian mover. When Robert explains his situation, Branko offers him the strangest wedding gig of his career: fly to Belgrade, marry his girlfriend, and legally bring her back to Branko in America. Having burned all his other bridges, Robert reluctantly agrees.

In Serbia, Robert stays with Branko’s divorced mother, the still attractive Olga, who only knows he is a friend of her son. While waiting for Branko to come through with his money, Robert discovers Belgrade is a much nicer city to be down and out in, despite many of the locals’ defensiveness regarding recent Serbia history. There is also no denying the charm of Branko’s mother, who even convinces Robert to start playing his tenor again. However, the nature of Robert’s arrangement with Branko looms over his tentative new romance.

As Robert, David Thornton gives a well-modulated performance, expressing the world-weariness and desperation of a flawed, but not utterly unlikable character. Thornton will be instantly recognizable to audiences for his many supporting performances in both film and television, including the recurring role of slimy defense attorney Lionel Granger on Law & Order: SVU. He is perfectly balanced by veteran Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic, who brings a memorable warmth and dignity to the role of Olga.

Thornton’s real-life wife Cyndi Lauper also appears in a cameo role, as a friend fast loosing patience with the self-destructive Robert. She also contributes an original, but forgettable, song to the film. However, the rest of Dejan Pejovic’s soundtrack is quite effective, incorporating jazz, traditional Serbian Guča-style brass band music (featuring those sideways Balkan trumpets), and some lush romantic mood music.

Lungulov conveys a strong sense of both cities in Here and There. It is a truly rare romantic comedy that almost completely avoids any form of sentimentality. Yet, it still has a romantic heart buried in there somewhere. While nimbly avoiding the clichés of the genre, Here and There is still a very satisfying film. It screens again today (4/26), May 1st and May 2nd.

NY Gypsy FF: Guca

“Music and sport make a nation” says a fan at the Guča trumpet festival. Those who excel in each are uniquely capable of making emotional connections with scores of people they will never meet. Once a year, there are a whole lot of connections made at the Serbian music festival, as recorded in Milijov Ilic’s documentary, Guča: the Serbian Woodstock, an Untold Story (trailer here), screening as part of the New York Gypsy Film Festival.

The music of the Guča festival is the traditional brass band music of western Serbia and the more Roma influenced Sevdah music from the Southern and Eastern provinces (as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina). With the Sevdah music considered freer and more spontaneous than the western Serbian style, one of member of the festival jury likens the differences between the two forms to the distinction between Dixieland and genuine New Orleans style jazz.

Although not jazz at all, the music of Guča should be readily accessible to jazz ears, particularly those who follow the New Orleans brass band scene or frequently hear Slavic Soul Party at Barbès. Again like jazz, there seem to be definite notions of authenticity regarding the music. An ethnomusicologist who serves as the film’s expert commentator clearly favors the most traditional bands and is critical of past champion Boban Marković for diluting his music with commercial elements.

Sports comparisons are particularly apt for Guča, because this is not just an exhibition, but most certainly a competition. The Golden Trumpet audience award, the jury’s First Trumpet award, and several other prizes are at stake. As documented by Ilic, it seemed the bands of the 2005 festival are near evenly matched, making it difficult to forecast a winner.

More than anything, Guča looks like a heck of a party. The usually sleepy rural Serbian town attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors, including Miles Davis one year, to dig those crazy sidewise looking Dragačevo trumpet. Ilic captures that festival spirit, filming revelers passed out on park benches and the hoods of cars. Clearly, the music and carnival atmosphere has a restorative effect on those in the troubled country who attend.

While actors are allowed to occasionally phone one in for a pay check, whenever musicians and athletes take the stage, they are expected to perform at the peak of the abilities. In Guča, everyone seems well satisfied that indeed happened. It screens again Tuesday night at the NY Gypsy FF, which has extended its run through Wednesday the 16th.

Retrospective Love for Paskaljevic

Some directors’ films are marked by signature themes and motifs. For instance, many of Goran Paskalvejic’s films conclude with running sequences. The Serbian director’s films also tend to take a jaundiced look at the powers that be in his fractious homeland. He is now the subject of an overdue retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Pasklavejic (henceforth abbreviated GP) is best known for Cabaret Balkan (1998, a.k.a. The Powder Keg). It is probably his bleakest, most unrelentingly naturalistic picture, reflecting his horror at a Serbia that could commit the atrocities of the Bosnian War. GP was one of the few Serbian filmmakers to speak out against the Milosevic, soon finding it prudent to relocate in 1992. Cabaret Balkan presents a vision of a Belgrade where mundane encounters can quickly escalate to senseless violence. Introduced by an androgynous nightclub host, it makes Cabaret look like Gigi.

Though his earlier works are not nearly as dark, they do show recurring anti-authoritarian themes, often tweaking the Yugoslav Communist authorities. The NYT misleading writes that GP “worked under dictators as philosophically opposed as Tito and Milosevic.” He certainly lived under both regimes, but as both were Communists, how are they opposed?

Perhaps GP’s most explicit critique of the Communist state came in post Berlin Wall-era 1990 with Time of Miracles. GP regular Miki Manojlovic plays the local Communist strongman, who commandeers the town church, painting over its frescoes to convert it into a new school. What the school teaches sounds more like propaganda than education in a masterfully absurd satirical sequence. However, when the frescoes miraculously reappear despite constant whitewashing, the Party enforcer panics. Things get downright Biblical when the school teacher Lazar appears to be resurrected by a mysterious bearded stranger (look, this is a great film, but maybe not a subtle one). As a result, the local Communist leader resorts to desperate measures to protect Party authority.

GP’s earlier films also offer hints of criticism of the Communist apparatus. Special Treatment projects a surprising amount of physical comedy, while painful, even sinister emotions lurk under the surface. As the story of a martinet doctor overseeing a controversial alcohol addiction program that includes public confessions, it is easy to read wider allegories into the film.

However, GP has helmed some gentle films with heart, like his The Elusive Summer of ’68. It is all about young love and how boring it is to study Marxism, particularly during the summer when an all-women orchestra is visiting provincial Yugoslavia/Serbia from Prague. It is sweet and funny, but the significance of 1968 hangs over the film. In a way, it is a Serbian precursor to the Czech movie musical Rebelove.

GP has a fascinating body of work, which has certainly grown darker in recent years. Do not look for any of it at Netflix though, because none of his films are available on DVD in America. However, MoMA shows the love. The retrospective continues through the month, so check them out on a big screen instead. (Elusive screens again the 30th, Miracles screens again the 31st, and both conclude with running scenes.)