Pavle Levi’s insightful and well-argued book, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema examines the evolution of the national Yugoslav and regional post-Yugoslav cinema within its shifting political and cultural landscape – initially, in the context of individual expression under the repressive government of Josip Broz Tito, then subsequently, as […]
Tag: Serbian Cinema
Underground, 1995
Underground begins on a deceptively lyrical, unassuming note: “Once upon a time, there was a country.” On the evening of April 6, 1941, two drunken profiteers, Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and Blacky (Lazar Ristovski) celebrate their latest caper – the theft of a government arms shipment – accompanied by a raucous, obliging gypsy band. However, their […]
Time of the Gypsies, 1989
Emir Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies is a curious, visually hypnotic film: a lyrical glimpse into an exotic, obscure culture, a tragedy of lost innocence, a reaffirmation of love and family. At the center of the story is a young man named Perhan (Davor Dujmovic) who lives in a Gypsy ghetto with his grandmother (Ljubica […]
When Father Was Away on Business, 1985
During the turbulent political climate of 1950 Sarajevo, as the nascent socialist federation of Yugoslavia under Marshall Josip Tito began to exert its independence from the Soviet Union, young Malik’s (Moreno de Bartolli) only pressing concern is to earn enough money with his best friend Joza in order to buy a genuine leather football and […]
The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, 1967
The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator is a fascinating, offbeat, and engagingly idiosyncratic examination of love, betrayal, world history, psychology, and criminology. The film opens to Dr. Aleksander Kostic’s droll lecture on sexuality, and cuts to the images of several provocative artworks. It serves as a comical prelude to the meeting of a shy, […]