Killbilles: Hicksploitation in Slovenia

Sure, NATO and EU membership were important milestones for Slovenia, but the production of its first homegrown hillbilly horror film is just as significant, if not more so. If there is one thing that inevitably comes with socio-economic development, it is an embarrassed discomfort at the sight of the country’s backwoods folk and a casual willingness to equate them with inbreeding, sadism, and hard liquor. So congratulations to Slovenia for becoming a fully-fledged member of the community of nations thanks to screenwriter-director Tomaz Gorkic’s Killbillies (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and VOD, from Artsploitation.

Zina is getting too “old” and far too self-aware to continue her modeling career, but she always enjoyed working on aging hipster Blitcz’s shoots, so she takes another fateful assignment with him. They will be shooting in the countryside, so we pretty much know where this is going. Zina definitely looks and sounds like “Final Girl” material, whereas her younger, shallower colleague Mia should be an easy kill. As it happens, the deformed hill people who capture them brew the mysterious moonshine that has become so popular in trendy Ljubljana night clubs. What’s in their potent potable? Ever seen Soylent Green?

Gorkic largely plays the exploitative material straight, which is both a blessing and a curse. At least, the Julian Alps (or whatever mountainous tax-credit extending region it was filmed in) certainly look cinematic and Zina is an appealingly assertive hero. However, we have been down this lonesome country road before—and Gorkic never really adds any distinctly Slovenian flourishes.

Still, the novelty of Slovenia’s first native horror film speaks for itself. It also boasts a surprisingly recognizable cast, including Nina Ivanisin (probably best known for A Call Girl) going Ellen Ripley on the inbred freaks and Sebastian Cavazza (Halima’s Path) as the tall, dark, and intense Blitcz, both of whom acquit themselves quite well, all things considered.

It is strangely encouraging to know this exists, but whether you should spend any time with it is a question only you can answer for yourself. Recommended for fans of grisly cannibal exploitation, Killbillies is now available on DVD and VOD platforms (including Vimeo), from Artsploitation.

BHFF ’11: Piran-Pirano

How better to start the 2011 Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival than with a film about the arbitrary nature of geography? Antonio is Italian. Veljko is Bosnian. Yet both have only felt truly at home in a particular apartment in the picturesque Slovenian city of Piran. That is where their paths fatefully crossed during WWII in Slovenian filmmaker Goran Vojnović’s Piran-Pirano (trailer here), the opening film of the 2011 BHFF, currently underway in New York.

Antonio was not a Fascist, but his father certainly was. A school teacher whose lesson plans were little more than hateful propaganda, he decides discretion is the better part of valor when Tito’s forces arrive. Only concerned with his own neck, he leaves his college-aged son behind in their flat. Through sheer fortune, Antonio eludes the Partisans’ initial sweep of the apartment, but he is caught flat-footed by Anica, a young Slovenian woman traveling with the partisans.

Mourning her entire family, the vengeful Anica is in no mood to show mercy to an Italian, yet they reach an uneasy truce of sorts for the night. It is there in the apartment that Veljko discovers them. Like Anica, he has also lost his family, but he is not inclined towards retribution. In fact, he is not much of a soldier at all.

Told in flashbacks when the two men meet again decades later, Piran’s themes of cruelty and compassion in times of war have obvious resonance for Bosnian audiences. It hardly glorifies Tito’s army either, clearly depicting the summary executions ruthlessly carried out by the Communist forces. The commander matter-of-factly accepts the brutal tactics, as well as the potential death of innocents, as the cost of waging war. However, some of his subordinates are more enthusiastic about the dirty business of war.

Perched on the Adriatic, Piran is a remarkably beautiful city, which sparkles all the more through the lush lens of Radovan Cok. It is a finely crafted period production all the way around, but Vojnović maintains a resolutely intimate focus on his three principle characters. It is a strong cast, especially Boris Cavazza, whose Antonio comes across as a fully dimensional, deeply haunted human being, while also largely serving as the spokesman for the film’s circumspect critique of war (even a good war, like WWII). Though somewhat manic and nebbish, Mustafa Nadarević (a prominent Bosnian actor probably best known in America for When Father was Away on Business) is also quite touching as old Veljko.

A profoundly humanistic film, but in a way also a lyrical love story, Piran has real commercial potential on the American art-house circuit. Sensitively produced and honestly rendered, it a first-rate representative of Slovenian cinema (with obvious Bosnian interest). Indeed, Piran was an excellent selection to launch this year’s BHFF, one of the friendliest and most provocative New York festivals, which concludes today (5/14) at the Tribeca Cinemas with three diverse programming blocks.

BIFF ’09: Landscape No. 2

Unlike the Balkan states, Slovenia’s independence from Communist Yugoslavia was nearly bloodless. However, Slovenian history was not always so peaceful. During WWII, Slovenia was wracked by civil war, which culminated in the notorious Bleiburg Massacre immediately following the triumph of Tito’s Communist partisans. The discovery of the 383 mass graves continues to haunt the country, appearing as the omnipresent focus of Slovenian media in Vinko Moderndorfer’s dark crime drama, Landscape No. 2 (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Criminal improvisation is always a bad idea. Veteran thief Polde and his young apprentice Sergej have a good racket going. They steal art plundered from the national museum by the former elites of the old regime, only to ransom them back to their wrongful owners for a pretty penny. However, as the thieves liberate the national treasure Landscape No. 2 from a former Communist general, Sergej spontaneously decides to crack the safe and grab the cash inside. Inadvertently, he also scoops up documents that would incriminate the men behind the 1945 massacre.

The old corrupt officer is not about to wait for Polde’s ransom call. He calls in the Instructor, a rather pedestrian looking killing machine to recover and destroy the incendiary document. Of course, the immature Sergej is oblivious to the chaos he has set in motion, off-handedly stashing the unexamined papers at one girlfriend’s flat, before sneaking off for a night of passion with the other. However, his romantic two-timing is rudely interrupted by the shocking news of Polde’s suicide. Suddenly, things get very real for Sergej.

Altthough Moderndorfer uses the conventions of the crime noirs, Landscape is more about the corrosive influence of Slovenia’s national secrets. Years of Communist rule kept the truth of the massacre tightly under wraps. Clearly, many would like to prevent further historical inquiry into such a delicate subject. Yet, for Damjan, Sergej’s archivist neighbor, and presumably Moderndorfer, the truth must be exposed to bring closure to a painful episode in Slovenian history.

The Slovenian cast-members all seem to project a sense of world-weary resignation that well serves Moderndorfer’s naturalistic style. The positive exception would be Maja Martina Merljak’s energetic performance as Sergej’s well-heeled, vivacious girlfriend Jasna. As Sergej, Marco Mandic is a convincing lowlife lothario, whose cad-like behavior makes him a less than sympathetic rooting interest. Regrettably though, Jaka Lah’s supporting turn as Sergej’s infatuated neighbor Damjan comes off as an unfortunate gay stereotype.

Moderndorfer and cinematographer Dusan Joksimovic create a dark, dank vision of contemporary Slovenia, where it seems to be perpetually raining and the sins of the past still exert a malicious influence on the present. Landscape is a smart, but pessimistic film that challenges comfortable Western historical preconceptions of World War II and Tito’s partisans. It screens again Sunday (6/14), as the Brooklyn International Film Festival continues at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.