Haphazard travels of Sirman Deville to the Blank Sun

[sally]

but i find it funny mario

i think one of the points implied earlier, though only a temporary subject-to-non-existence point in this now-plastic no-horizon thread, was that if you are going to to declare something incompetent, that is a defacto announcement of your own competence, and that therefore the responsibility is on you to create, curate and consider such cinemas in your own thread, where we can all bask in the glory of adequate information. if you do not wish to create such a thread, then you get your chats where you can find them...

i for one am intrigued and aghast to discover what appalling content sir john man deville is going to come across next...

[niminy-piminy]

look Mario, to be open and straighforward, this is my personal cinetravelogue thread and i don't want this "charade" to be removed.

[Mario Gaborovic]

but i find it funny mario

i for one am intrigued and aghast to discover what appalling content sir john man deville is going to come across next...

Fine. Let this thread blossom then.

[niminy-piminy]

btw. if admins think these "haphazard travels/pursuits" threads are not truly representative of the SCFZ approach to exploring regional cinemas then i suggest all these threads of mine to be moved from "Regional Cinemas" to "Members' Forum" corner of SCFZ.
i am not asking for that, but if admins feel "Member's Forum" is a more fitting place for something like this then i am fine with such a measure.

[Holymanm]

My second-to-last European vacation was to Serbia and Romania, and Croatia is next on my wish list. Also eager to see Albania.

Don't forget Macedonia... Skopje is one of the weirdest places on earth, these years

That's on my radar too. My dad took a trip to Bulgaria and (now North) Macedonia a few years ago and brought back some fascinating pictures. Also the natural scenery in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro is amazing enough to supply countless Windows 10 intro screens.

from my trip to skopje:









things that made sense there: 0
statues there: 43024902394023

...basically they just took all the public money there and tried to turn the centre of the capital city into a schizophrenic ancient-rome-meets-disneyworld mess, and i guess it worked! that's why i went there! but other than that, there is also all kinds of beautiful nature around the country, just like anywhere else in that area

and if in the general area, of course consider going to kosovo as well... pristina is the default choice, as it's the capital, but prizren is an ancient gem!

all this said, going anywhere at all is good

[niminy-piminy]

i traveled towards the Blank Sun three times...

FIRST TRAVEL (late 1980s)

it was a typical (stereotypical) "family summer vacation".
Bohemia is a sea-less country and thus many Bohemians solve this longing for a sea by maniacally touring towards Croatia each summer.
in my native family, it was not a typical trait but one of my sisters married a representative of this mania.
his family owned a van and traveled to Croatia (Makarska Riviera specifically ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarska_Riviera ) as often as possible.
so, one summer in 1980s the newlyweds (my sis and her hubby) aimed towards the Blank Sun.
it was not their honeymoon trip but i guess their first bigger common summer vacation.
and to lower the cost of the trip (it is always better if 4 ppl pay for the fuel than just 2) they offered me and my mom to join them.

now, it has to be stated that in 1980s, Yugoslavia was (among the Soviet block countries) the posh country.
it gained (under Tito) a certain degree of independence from the Soviets and thus there were things one could hardly afford in Bohemia but were accessible in Yugoslavia (f.e. Adidas shoes or double deck cassette player that i brought back from the trip as my cherished trophies).
it also has to be stated that to be able to travel from Bohemia to Yugoslavia one had to gain first "foreign currency exchange permission" (one of the creepy customs implemented by local totalitarian state bureaucracy).
as far as i remember, in the other socialist countries, one could travel freely (without "foreign currency exchange permission") but if you intended to travel beyond the iron curtain or to Yugoslavia, it was necessary to afford it first.
the reason why Yugoslavia was also included is that many Bohemians were escaping behind the iron curtain via Yugoslavia (due to the more liberal state of affairs in Yugoslavia).
thus whoever was traveling to a Western country or to Yugoslavia was first checked by local authorities if it is more/less likely he/she might try to escape.
and this check of a potential escapist was done under a pretext of "foreign currency exchange permission".
if local authorities were suspicious you might try to escape "foreign currency exchange permission" was not granted and thus you had to forget about the trip because one can't travel penniless.

for some reason, we were evaluated as not potential escapists and could go on a trip.
i was an early teen then — before i was with mom at the Baltic Sea in East Germany, so it was my second trip to the sea (the first trip to the Adriatic Sea).
as far as i remember, we passed Zagreb and reached the sea coast in Zadar ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadar
after taking the first bath in the sea in Zadar, we proceeded southwards along the sea coast.
i remember the breaks in obligatory Makarska Riviera, in Split (gorgeous Temple of Jupiter ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Jupiter,_Split ), in Dubrovnik (very cool old town ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik ), until we reached the Bay of Kotor (or Boka) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Kotor
in Bay of Kotor (Boka) i saw many tall palm trees and i felt i reached (because of this exotic flora) the true Orient.
from Boka we didn't proceed towards Albania but we turned back home, passing through the (pre-war) Mostar and Sarajevo.
so, i can say i walked across the Mostar bridge before it was hit (1993), and rebuilt (2004) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stari_Most

... (trips 2 & 3 to be continued)

[Mario Gaborovic]

It was Makarska where I actually almost got killed at the age of 6 (in the summer of 1988), but instead ended up with terrible nose deviation (still visible today) and 9 stitches on my forehead (not visible anymore). I went there with my grandma. Of course, the coastal towns have roads near sea; upon ending up swimming, just when I was about to cross that road, a small red Zastava van https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OBeXy241snY/maxresdefault.jpg was coming behind parked truck; I've actually seen it coming but didn't make good evaluation of its speed. The driver probably stepped on a gas harder, and it hit me with the rear view side mirror which knocked me down to the asphalt, face-down. We extended our stay for about 10 days until I recovered.

The accident happened right behind the 90 degrees curve where this photo was taken (behind photographer's back), which means southeast here.
https://cf.bstatic.com/images/hotel/max ... 659468.jpg

[niminy-piminy]

i don't remember anymore what year exactly it was when i spent a few days on Makarska.
but it seems to me it must have been (most likely) either 1987 or 1988 (1986 is probably too early and 1989 is certainly too late).
fortunately enough, we didn't travel in Zastava van.
we had a camping van that was separated from the car (drawn behind the car).
but the fact, i might have been at the same spot at the same time (summer 1988) only reinforces the repute of this SCFZ forum as SUPER COINCIDENCE FILM ZONE.

[niminy-piminy]

1975 poll No20
BACKBONE (Vlatko Gilić)

i reached 9:50, i see the following scene (interior with many wall posters) and i feel i must be hallucinating...


because behind the shoulder of the hero is clearly a portrait of Jan Palach — who committed suicide (self-immolation) to protest against the Warshaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1968... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Palach
i had no doubts it is him but i still had to compare the screencap with the photo because it seemed unbelievable that anyone in Soviet block in 1975 would dare to display a portrait of Jan Palach in film.
in 1970s-1980s Czechoslovakia (i.e. after the restoration of Neo-Stalinism) Jan Palach was total, absolute, ultimate taboo!
i am sure if any Czechoslovak filmmaker would insert such a scene in the film (in 1975), the particular film & filmmaker would be instantly banned.
was censorship more lenient in Yugoslavia?
or Tito was okay with Jan Palach's pics? (such a pic was not censored?)
or in Yugoslavia (in 1975), the portrait of Jan Palach was not so notoriously known (anymore), and thus nobody (capable to censor) was able to identify him based on his nose & lips & chin?


cover of the local magazine (1969).
then for about 20 yrs (till 1989), this picture was absent in Czechoslovak public media — tho surprisingly not absent in Yugoslav cinema.

[Mario Gaborovic]

I repeat again; Yugoslavia was NOT a part of Soviet block because Tito said 'no' to Stalin in 1948. Otherwise it would be assimilated as a satellite state as well. Once regarded as heroes, the communists who sided with Soviet Union and its sympathizers, were often sent to Goli otok(Naked Island) labour camp, from which many never returned.

However, this made the country fall into some sort of vacuum, with plenty of influence from the West and this in turn resulted in many stuff of cultural importance nobody would suspect, such as state-supported alternative music/theater scene, avant-garde art (the experimental filmmaking scene is notable example), fashion, comics, shopping culture, etc. Just remember that the only communist country at the Eurovision song contest was YU.

Of course it wasn't recommendable to be pro-American either; as a founding member of the Non-Alignment movement, the government opposed to imperialism from both sides. That was particularly important in the 1950s, when the grip of the state was more tight - in culture this resulted in YuMex music movement, which I already mentioned here.

It was around 1968 that the filmmakers try to test freedoms; you wouldn't believe what kind of scenes Živojin Pavlović dared to shoot (he was especially cheeky among Black Wave authors). But this such a broad theme, because 1968 protests were also huge thing in our country too. Many films, some of my favourites, deal with this subject, even as a look-back. In one of the most popular locally made films, we've got Czechoslovakian brass band who found themselves in Yugoslavia in the midst of Prague events.

The guy in the poster, a partisan dude who's stretching arms wide, is Stjepan Filipović, a Yugoslav No.1 symbol of antifascist resistance for that photo that was taken just moments before his execution.

[niminy-piminy]

i tend to include Yugoslavia and Albania in the "Soviet block" because from my 1980s perspective both were part of the group of the East European socialist countries — tho i knew already in the 1980s that both had a "special" status.
but you are right, this label is (related to Yugoslavia) wrong!

since Czechoslovakia was not part of the Non-Aligned Movement i must admit i had/have near to zero information about it.
it is most likely i was (somehow) educated about the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1980s but it already evaporated from my mind and after 1989 i was never preoccupied with the subject.
now, i took a short extra lesson (sharing the link in case anyone else (non-familiar) would be interested)... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement

it also has to be stated that despite i tend to call the post-1968 Czechoslovak regime "Neo-Stalinist", Stalin was actually almost out of discourse (one can even say "taboo") in the 1980s Czechoslovakia (the time when i started to become educated in the local school system).
we were informed (in school) about Stalin rather briefly and i remember i felt if i would keep asking about Comrade Stalin (in school) i might be suspected to be a faultfinder (who via asking about him might be aiming to highlight the shortcomings of the socialist system as a whole) and thus i knew (already as an infant) it is safer not to ask about anything related to Comrade Stalin (in school).
so, Comrade Stalin was omitted from the official discourse, and instead, Comrade Brezhnev (Stalin's duplicate) was officially eulogized.
and despite Tito became Stalin's antipode in the late 1940s (and i got this information in the school in the 1980s), Tito was also rather a skipped subject (in 1980s Czechoslovakia) with the vague "explanation" that both dudes (Stalin and Tito) had issues with a personality cult.

i always knew very well that Yugoslavia had nothing to do with the 1968 invasion but i never studied what was exactly the opinion of Tito.
so, now, i took another short extra lesson about the subject (tho i read the more extensive/elaborated Czech version of this wiki page)... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslo ... _relations
obviously, Tito was fiercely against it!
my (wrong) preconception was he just stood aside.
but it is obvious he explicitly, persistently supported Prague Spring.
seems like he even entered in some negotiations with Brezhnev trying to persuade him not to intervene (when the invasion started to "hang in the air"), and just two weeks prior to the invasion, he visited Prague giving again the full support to Prague Spring politics.
and after the invasion happened, he explicitly denounced this Brezhnev's adventure.
in this context, Jan Palach's poster in 1975 Yugoslav movie is no longer a surprise.
"Czechoslovakia-Yugoslavia relations" wiki entry (version written in Czech) also mentions that in the 1980s some Czech banned authors (f.e. Havel, Kundera) were available in Yugoslavia — Czechoslovak officials were sending protests but Yugoslav officials didn't give a shit about it.

I liked "Kišma" (thanks for sharing, Mario).
now, going also through Vlatko Gilic's shorts.
and started a subs pot to DAYS OF DREAMS (if anyone would like to chip in).
will investigate Živojin Pavlović in the near future.

[niminy-piminy]

this issue of being surprised about something that was (actually) not surprising at all (if considering properly the context) made me become curious about the nature of censorship in Yugoslavia (in Tito's 1970s and post-Tito's 1980s).
i clearly have a certain concept of censorship "usual" in the East European socialist country of the 1970s-1980s (based on what i experienced in 1970s-1980s Czechoslovakia) that in the case of Yugoslavia (with its "Non-Aligned" status) doesn't fit.

so, now i am looking for any articles about censorship in Yugoslavia in the 1970s-1980s because i wish to get to know in detail what was similar/different (as compared to 1970-1980s Czechoslovakia).
will appreciate any links, recommendations, elaborations.
so far i was i able to find only this...

CENSORSHIP IN THE AGE OF PUNK: YUGOSLAVIA 1970-1989

https://yugoslavpunk.omeka.net/exhibits ... e-of-punk-

-----------------------------

otherwise...
i already said (in another thread) that the first gig of the big international star band that i attended after the iron curtain collapse was Laibach in 1990.
so, reading about Laibach in the article above made me not only play again (after a long time) the "Life is Life" appropriation.
but, then, i also played another appropriation song that makes totalitarian vibes of pop music explicit (this time the dumb Queen's "One Vision").
https://youtu.be/ZZAD7W3M4zc

and thereafter i couldn't resist rewatching Laibach playing "Whistleblowers" in North Korea.

We fight for you,
For freedom and for sin.

https://youtu.be/SQORt5Y7Eqo

and then rewatching Slavoj's hilarious elaboration about Laibach in North Korea.
https://youtu.be/NRfgKrmI9Po

One Vision (Queen)

God works in mysterious ways
Mysterious ways
Ah
Hey!
One man, one goal
Ha, one mission
One heart, one soul
Just one solution
One flash of light
Yeah, one god, one vision
One flesh, one bone, one true religion
One voice, one hope, one real decision
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Give me one vision, yeah
No wrong, no right
I'm gonna tell you there's no black and no white
No blood, no stain
All we need is (one worldwide vision)
One flesh, one bone, one true religion
One race, one hope, one real decision
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Whoa-yeah, whoa-yeah, oh yeah!
I had a dream when I was young
A dream of sweet illusion
A glimpse of hope and unity
And visions of one sweet union
But a cold wind blows and a dark rain falls
And in my heart, it shows
Look what they've done to my dream, yeah!
One vision
So give me your hands, give me your hearts
I'm ready! There's only one direction
One world and one nation
Yeah, one vision
No hate, no fight, just excitation
All through the night it's a celebration
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah
One, one, one, one, one, one, one
One flesh, one bone, one true religion
One voice, one hope, one real decision
Give me one light, yeah
Give me one hope, hey
Just give me, ah
One man, one man
One bar, one night
One day, hey, hey
Just gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken!
Vision, vision, vision, vision

[Mario Gaborovic]

Laibach was a thing across the border because they sang in English... No matter how good the bands were, if you sing in Serbo-Croatian nobody would give a damn. Of course, I too rarely play non-English bands anyway.

But you could still appreciate some of the golden era (1980-81) Yugoslavian music where the lyrics don't matter that much -

Charlot the Acrobat - Nobody Like Me (and never, and no one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UZ_2m6LAcI

Electric Orgasm - Crocodiles Are Coming (Who are they, and what do they want from me? 'cause I don't wanna be alone, because the crocodiles are coming)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvSr7C1OE9A

Idols - Plastic (I Wear a plastic suit, plastic is my food, maybe I am plastic myself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPh37THvhG0

[rischka]

a fascinating discussion you guys

[niminy-piminy]

the only non-English song i am familiar with is "Ja ne bi, ne bi, ne bi" ("I Would Not, Would Not, Would Not")
https://youtu.be/7zYulsDeyCU

[niminy-piminy]

a fascinating discussion you guys

when the iron curtain fell and "freedom" arrived i thought all my experiences with totalitarian rule or censorship are becoming obsolete.
lately (and not only because of Trump), i am getting more and more reminded about all kinds of tidbits that were/are buried in the juvenile strata of my brain.

[niminy-piminy]

bloodbath
mudbath

death
rejuvenation

IN CONTINUO (Vlatko Gilić, 1971)
ONE DAY MORE (Vlatko Gilić, 1972)

(both of the same duration — both can be played simultaneously)
https://youtu.be/BXqPTZEQRBw
https://youtu.be/2LZfnRnud-Y

[niminy-piminy]

like a message from beyond, today was added to freeleach

1975 poll No22
PSYCHIC KILLER aka THE KIRLIAN FORCE (Ray Danton)

i am watching this film about the astral projection for the year poll (thx Rischka!) and, in the middle, i made a detour pause to see another VG short... POWER (Vlatko Gilić, 1973)

https://letterboxd.com/film/power-1973/crew/

An insight into the lecture “How to rule the others” given by Mr. Slobodan Cirkovic ‘Roko’, a well-known Yugoslav experimentalist on telepathy and hypnosis.

https://youtu.be/OFPYdKFXMtE

[rischka]

lol the kirlian force is not a good movie. i somehow had it mixed up with the one about psychic plants which is i believe 'the kirlian witness' 1979

[niminy-piminy]

THE KIRLIAN FORCE is okay.
(looking forward to THE KIRLIAN WITNESS.)
if there is a hypnotist, a mesmerist, and alike in the film i am fine to watch it.
i have on kg a collection of films about this subject.
and i might start a thread about hypnotism (copy-pasting here the list from there) in (let's say) October.
coming under a hypnotic spell and watching a film is closely related.
i even read an academic book about hypnotism vs. cinema!

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo ... 51040.html

Stefan Andriopoulos:
Possessed: Hypnotic Crimes, Corporate Fiction, and the Invention of Cinema
(transl. by Peter Jansen and Stefan Andriopoulos, The University of Chicago Press, 2008)



Silent cinema and contemporaneous literature explored themes of mesmerism, possession, and the ominous agency of corporate bodies that subsumed individual identities. At the same time, critics accused film itself of exerting a hypnotic influence over spellbound audiences. Stefan Andriopoulos shows that all this anxiety over being governed by an outside force was no marginal oddity, but rather a pervasive concern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Tracing this preoccupation through the period’s films — as well as its legal, medical, and literary texts — Andriopoulos pays particular attention to the terrifying notion of murder committed against one’s will. He returns us to a time when medical researchers described the hypnotized subject as a medium who could be compelled to carry out violent crimes, and when films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler famously portrayed the hypnotist’s seemingly unlimited power on the movie screen. Juxtaposing these medicolegal and cinematic scenarios with modernist fiction, Andriopoulos also develops an innovative reading of Kafka’s novels, which center on the merging of human and corporate bodies.

Blending theoretical sophistication with scrupulous archival research and insightful film analysis, Possessed adds a new dimension to our understanding of today’s anxieties about the onslaught of visual media and the expanding reach of vast corporations that seem to absorb our own identities.

[Mario Gaborovic]

i made a detour pause to see another VG short... POWER (Vlatko Gilić, 1973)

https://letterboxd.com/film/power-1973/crew/

Power is my favourite VG short.

Ćirković also appears in Man Is Not a Bird by Makavejev. He's now long gone, I dunno when he died actually, but he ran a caffe in his hometown of Zaječar. In Eastern Serbia there is a small ethnic minority who practice paganism up until today, Wallachans. They are basically Romanians who added -ić to their surnames, and inhabit those east parts along the borders with RO/Bulgaria. They are usually poorly educated and superstitious (along with Roma and Kosovar Albanians they had lowest % of highly educated people in Yugoslavia as a whole, which is really the bottom of the scale considering so many nationalities). Even today, in many villages they do black magic, throw beans to predict the future, make potions for embetterment of sexual activities and when someone dies, they make a cheerful parties because they escort the deceased to the heavens, rather than mourning him.

He even released an 7-inch of guided hypnosis session to make people stop smoking. You don't understand of course, but basically he directs one how to puff, tells ya how the smoke is now disgusting and tasteless, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAgjwLaaGOA

[niminy-piminy]

we have also Wallachia (Moravian)... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Wallachia
unfortunately, residents of Moravian Wallachia are not (with maybe some exceptions) pagans (they became deluded by monotheism).

my favorites are IN CONTINUO & ONE DAY MORE (i perceive them as interrelated).
then comes POWER.
tho, it is hard to say because there is not a single film by VG (i have seen so far) i would not like.
(so far) i watched 7 shorts + BACKBONE (will include it in my 1975 ballot).
out of those traceable, there is only LJUBAV left (gonna watch it soon).
https://youtu.be/DBVahri4Q48

DAYS OF DREAMS lacks subs.
TOK, HOMO HOMINI, ZATEGNI DELE seem out of reach.
if getting to any of these, it would be my 10th and thus only one more person with 10 (or two more with 8 ???) needed to start a poll (i noticed on Ltbxd there are SCFZ viewers of VG films — so, maybe VG poll is not a utopia).

[sally]

Even today, in many villages they do black magic, throw beans to predict the future, make potions for embetterment of sexual activities and when someone dies, they make a cheerful parties because they escort the deceased to the heavens, rather than mourning him.

this is why i love these threads!

[Mario Gaborovic]

I'll do DAYS OF DREAMS myself if needed, there's veeeeeeeery little dialogue in there so it's easy, but I'm not really... hmmmm, enthusiastic about that one. Pretty much nothing happens there.

[niminy-piminy]

I'll do DAYS OF DREAMS myself if needed

good news!
i was (somewhat) suspicious DAYS OF DREAMS might not be as good as BACKBONE.
however, i would still like to watch it (at one point) — i am curious about all the facets of VG's oeuvre.

[niminy-piminy]

out of "Fascinations: Romania"
https://www.ji-hlava.com/programove-sek ... e-rumunsko
only THE ALERT! (Mircea Săucan, 1967) is part of JIDFF-online.
i didn't watch anything by Mircea before, but gonna explore his oeuvre in some indefinite future!
THE ALERT! has got all the ingredients that make a tasty ickykino.

A series of four films presented as educational clips about work safety in a chemical factory presents a multi-layered reflection on the ambiguity of life and death, waking and dreaming, seen through oppressive black and white images and episodic narrative. The enigmatic story of a young couple employed in a socialist factory is characterized by the constant repetition and variation of motifs that ironically violate safety rules. „Inhale as much air as possible, to have what to offer.“

https://letterboxd.com/alanmattli/film/the-alert/

Unearthed from the Romanian film archives, this is both a curious little oddity and a major example of the cinematic innovations the Eastern Bloc was home to. Ostensibly a commissioned work designed to teach chemical workers factory safety measures and the basics of first aid, Săucan takes that premise and runs away with it: over the course of four impeccably staged instructional shorts, he composes an impressionistic love story, blurring the lines between mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and passionate kissing, between machinery and humanity ("The workers' breath is the factory's breath!"), between the public and the private – and engaging in some light church taunting for good measure.

Obviously, the whole affair is extremely political, using the cinematic vocabulary of Communist propaganda to champion the star-crossed romance of two individuals; but there's also a joyous playfulness to everything. For example, it's such a funny running joke that all the emotional drama and intricate Tarkovsky-esque compositions – all spinning cameras and striking low-angle shots of imposing industrial architecture – are routinely punctuated by matter-of-fact on-screen text informing the viewer about the proper way to position a person who's just inhaled poison gas.

I hope this gets distributed more widely now that it's been digitised and furnished with English subtitles. Definitely a must for people who like to be wowed by the stylistic ingenuity of the Eastern European new waves of the 1950s and 1960s.

[niminy-piminy]

i see two other MS films are on yt (with Eng. subs)...

Two brothers with opposite characters and world views meet after more than 10 years. One of them, a fashionable actor tries to domesticate the other one who's younger and nonconformist by seducing his girlfriend.
https://youtu.be/dQrkH2vKeJk

A genius architect is losing both professionally and when it comes to matters of the heart. A film about internal turmoils surfacing, about freedom of thought and action, originality, non-conformism and everything that opposes these things.
https://youtu.be/NDhMLrQg6Bc

at first glipse, these two seem less ambiguous/playful/emigmatic/ironical than THE ALERT!
but according to a film theorist and aesthetician, George Littera:

“Meandre is one of the most iconoclastic films (though without any emphatic overtones) Romanian studios have ever made and I trust it will resume its place among masterpieces of the 20th centuries when criticism – now in a process of gradual awakening – proceeds at re-examining and reinterpreting it.”

--------------------------------

ha, i see Mircea is a familiar figure for many scfz regulars!

https://letterboxd.com/lencho_o_t_apes/film/meanders/

Deep-cut Soviet-bloc nouvelle-vague from Romania; there are lengthy dialogue-heavy passages that feel like expo-dumps designed to anchor the film to a linear, legible, literal narrative that honestly is pretty damn boring... but when the filmmakers allow the images to do the work, it soars, finding a Wellesian playground of dutch-angle urban mystery in the brutalist Bucharesti cityscape.

Missing link between the key Resnais titles and early Phillippe Garrel.

https://letterboxd.com/brotherdeacon/film/meanders/1/

Enjoyed Meandre. I have a soft spot for the experimentation involved, as well as its bizarre non-likable protagonist being the artist who struggles over wasting his talent in Soviet-styled social architecture methods, yet always seems to capitulate when pressed (I think of the scenes beneath those huge rectangular, identical, ugly apartment projects being all the rage in the Communist architecture awards of the time). In addition, director Mircea Săucan stylistically employed almost two distinct films in one, lavishing attention-grabbing camera angles, tracking shots and optical effects to further his black and white world of expression or constraint as the scene demanded. Odd yet somehow right in presenting themes of decision-making, egotism, success, family-drama, love's complications, professional in-fighting, and wacky Beatles-inspired jabs at youthful folly and timid revolt through ennui (with gymnastics of course). I could watch the sensual Margareta Pogonat hang wall-paper and be thoroughly content. A little known Romanian treat.

[niminy-piminy]

2009 poll watchlist:

THE SNAIL ON THE SLOPE (Vladimir Todorović, 2009)

The Snail on the Slope is a generative film based on a book of the same title by Strugatsky brothers. The novel is set on an unknown planet, where humans have a base from which they are investigating and trying to conquer the Forest. The Forest is constantly changing and fighting back. It is also dangerous and there are a lot of unexplained phenomena that they are discovering.

The film is made of five chapters, which critically address the questions of artistic and scientific efforts to understand nature. The topics that arise in those chapters are: sublime view on nature, role of knowledge, ubiquitous bureaucracy and destruction of nature.

https://vimeo.com/6654322

[niminy-piminy]

1955 poll:
THE SEAL (Dušan Makavejev)

the Kafkaesque satire

https://youtu.be/EeeJMZ52Wms

[Mario Gaborovic]

I translated Dani od snova (aka Days of Dreams) - the second (and last) feature of Vlatko Gilić. Unfortunately the TV rip is not a good quality but that's all we have until much-needed restoration occurs.