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Specials Film programme ESCAPE / ESCAPE Darko Lungulov’s documentary tells of a double escape: Plagued by the nerve-racking fear of the NATO bombs falling on Belgrade, the single Mother Ljilja flees the Serb capital together with her two sons Vlada (11) and Dusan (8). They emigrate to New York, where she finds work – on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center. The filmmaker focuses especially on the development of the two boys, who adapt more easily than their mother to the “American way of life”. Bambi: 07.04. / 4.00 pm
Vrnjacka Banja presents: Playing herself in a thriller full of unexpected twists, the famous Serbian actress Sonja Savic reports during a brief visit to Belgrade that her daughter Sofia has been kidnapped. But when questioned by Inspector Despotovic, the increasingly hysterical star suddenly denies her former allegations, claiming she doesn’t even have a daughter. The chief of the secret police discreetly informs the inspector that the shadowy child is the illegitimate daughter of the Serbian foreign minister. Whereas the latter is adamant that the whole affair is a set-up aimed at destroying his reputation... In a film combining countless cinematic citations with references to the political violence which has left its mark on recent Serbian history, the title is not the only allusion to Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Alpha: 07.04. / 2.00 pm
Gdynia presents: The film relates 48 hours in the life of the bailiff Lucek Bohme. His lack of compassion makes him an ideal debt collector, as conscientious in enforcing legal warrants as he is unscrupulous regarding the consequences of his actions. He views other people’s feelings with professional distance – until one day a seizure order takes him into the home of the woman who was the love of his youth. Shortly afterwards he is confronted with the suicide of another victim. Surrounded by a hostile environment, he then tries to change his moral course. Feliks Falk’s first film in ten years describes the contemporary frame of mind in Poland, and at the same time presents the legend of a modern saint. Alpha: 10.04. / 4.00 pm
LACENITE OBUVKI NA NEZNAJNIJA VOIN / THE UNKNOWN
SOLDIER'S PATENT LEATHER SHOES The Bulgarian film classic follows the associative imaginary travels of director Rangel Vulcanov from the Buckingham Palace to the distant world of his childhood. Trailing the whimsical and quirky pathway of memory, he finds himself amidst the whirlwind of a traditional Bulgarian village wedding. A ‘White Aunt’ is being married to a ‘Black Uncle.’ To the child-narrator these are diametrically opposed creatures, standing in for Beautiful and Hideous. Their juxtaposition in the child’s mind is transposed onto the symbolic memory of the nation, where sublime and deformed, refined and primitive are presented along with a kaleidoscopic picture of harvest and war, floods and hot summer days, childbirths and deaths. (Dina Iordanova) Alpha: 09.04. / 2.00 pm
Ekaterinburg presents: Short documentary. A dilapidated church in a Russian village; during the Soviet era it served by turns as an arts centre and a vegetable storehouse. The building is now seemingly abandoned – except that an 80-year-old woman, assisted by her equally aged friend, is trying to restore the place of worship. No help is forthcoming from the remaining villagers. We see the old lady climbing about in the dome, holding a bucket as she plasters the walls. It is work that gives meaning to her life. Prize for best directing debut at the Ekaterinburg documentary festival. Bambi: 09.04. / 4.00 pm
Ekaterinburg presents: This playful and humorous blend of documentary and animated film is dedicated to the director Sergej Paradzanov, who died in 1990. His best-known films include TENI ZABYTYCH PREDKOV / SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS of 1964. An unconventional free spirit and the most prominent representative of Ukrainian poetic cinema in the 1960s, Paradzanov struggled against censorship, was imprisoned on several occasions, and in his country became a role model for generations of filmmakers, intellectuals and human-rights activists. Choosing an unusual form for his homage, director Roman Sirman also includes footage of self-ironical appearances of the filmmaker Fellini called the “magician of the cinema”. Main prize at the Ekaterinburg documentary festival. Bambi: 09.04. / 4.00 pm
Cottbus presents: Why are we afraid of death but not of life? In Jan Cvitkovic’s tender tragicomedy we see a group of characters who are trying to come to terms with mortality – by therapy in some cases, by ignoring it in others. The film centres around the funeral orator Pero and his family: Ida, who is deaf-mute; Vilma, whose husband only comes home for quick sexual relief; his father Dedo, whose failed suicide attempts are becoming increasingly bizarre. Yet all of them do experience moments of pure joy in life – and why should the living be sad if the dead have left suffering behind them? At the end, however, even the orator falls silent in view of his own helplessness. Award for Best Film at Cottbus. Alpha: 06.04. / 4.00 pm
STATSKIJ SOVETNIK / COUNSELLOR OF STATE Ingenious screen adaptation of the historical thriller “The Councillor of State” in the Fandorin series of cult author Boris Akunin, who also wrote the screenplay. Czarist Russia in the late 19th-century; revolutionary tensions and attacks are on the rise. Chrapow, the Governor-General of Siberia, is murdered in the ministerial compartment of the train to Moscow. The murder alleges to be Councillor of State Erast Farondin, who now sets out to solve the crime. The vice-director of the St. Petersburg police (brilliantly played by Nikita Mihalkov) comes to Fandorin’s aid – and from then on things take a wholly unexpected turn... Caligari: 05.04. / 9.30 pm
ZABORAVLJENI GRAN PRI IZ 1939 / THE FORGOTTEN
GRAND PRIX OF 1939 The German name von Brauchitsch still rouses associations, but nowadays few people know anything about the career of the motor-racing driver Manfred von Brauchitsch, who died in 2002 at the age of 97. Taking the sportsman’s funeral as the starting point of his documentary, Dinko Tucakovic, director of the Belgrade film museum, centres on the first Yugoslavian Grand Prix in Belgrade in 1939, a long-forgotten race which was once associated with von Brauchitsch’s name. Staged in the era of such famous racing drivers as Caracciola, Rosemeyer or Nuvolaria, this major sporting event was overshadowed by the outbreak of World War II. Tucakovic interviewed eye-witnesses, and unearthed breathtaking footage of magnificent men in machines flying round the hilly circuit of the Kalemegdan, Belgrade’s ancient fortifications. Bambi: 07.04. / 4.00 pm |
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