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<\/p>\nThese reviews originally appeared on Capital New York.<\/i> <\/p>\nCinema Komunisto<\/i><\/h1>\n
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\nCinema Komunisto<\/em> begins with white words on a black screen: \u201cThis is the story of a country that no longer exists except in movies.\u201d A cinephile\u2019s dream, Cinema Komunisto<\/em>, written and directed and produced by Serbian director Mila Turaljlic, is an elegy not only to Yugoslavia, which no longer exists, but to the intense and focused movie industry that once thrived there during the reign of Franz Josip Tito, a movie buff if ever there was one.<\/p>\n Lenin said, famously, \u201cCinema is the most important of all the arts for us\u201d (\u201cus\u201d meaning Communists); he recognized the propaganda power wielded by images. Tito followed this dictum to the letter, giving cinema a high priority in Yugoslavia (not to mention seeing up to 300 movies a year in his own private screening room). Not only is the giant Avala Studios, founded by government order in 1945, now disintegrated, but many of the films themselves have turned to dust.<\/p>\n Turaljlic\u2019s haunting, melancholy documentary is an attempt to reclaim that past, to show us its many images, to introduce us to the films of that lost land. <\/p>\n The cult of personality surrounding Tito was all-encompassing and grotesque, and was added to by visiting Hollywood stars, like Orson Welles, seen in one clip in Cinema Komunisto<\/em> declaring with hilarious seriousness, \u201cThe greatest man in the world\u2026 [dramatic pause] is Tito.\u201d<\/p>\n But Tito was very much admired for being an independent global actor, as when, in 1948, he refused to follow Stalin\u2019s orders. Stalin threatened to invade Yugoslavia in retaliation. Tito poured money and resources into the film industry, and in 1947 ordered a \u201cfilm city\u201d to be built in Belgrade, where Yugoslavians could produce their own films. Avala was the biggest studio in Europe, which also made it attractive to foreign film companies. The Avila sets were massive, their costume shop an entire warehouse, their resources were inexhaustible if Tito signed off on the project. Avala\u2019s co-productions with foreign film companies brought money pouring into the coffers, and made Yugoslavia a regular pitstop for foreign stars who all stayed at the Metropole Hotel in Belgrade (Sophia Loren, Kirk Douglas, Alfred Hitchcock, the list goes on and on).<\/p>\n \n \nTuraljlic\u2019s documentary is meticulous and eloquent, utilizing old footage from early Yugoslavian films, mostly war films, showing the courage of the Partisans in fighting Hitler, and then, in promoting the Socialist cause. She has tracked down the major players of the time, all old men now, who speak about their glory days in Yugoslavia\u2019s film industry as though they were yesterday.<\/p>\n Velimir Bata Zivojinovic starred in over 300 Yugoslav films, and is still considered the face of Yugoslav\u201d cinema. He was the John Wayne of his country, the actor who articulated the myth of Yugoslavia to itself, who presented a heroic, gritty demeanor in the face of insurmountable odds. He was<\/em> Yugoslavia. He says during one of his interviews with Turaljlic, \u201cWe had no idea it could collapse so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Veljko Bulajic was one of the most successful directors of his day, and his films, along with Bata\u2019s performances, helped not only express the \u201cstory\u201d of the country\u2019s short past, but create it. In this, he had Tito\u2019s complete support. Tito was quite a busybody, apparently: all scripts had to be run by him. He would put notes in the margins, saying, \u201cThis didn\u2019t happen this way!\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most unforgettable people interviewed is \u201cLeka\u201d (Aleksandar Leka Konstatinovic), Tito\u2019s personal projectionist for 32 years. Every day he would go to Tito\u2019s palatial home, and run movies for the Yugoslav leader. Sometimes it was a struggle to even find a movie Tito hadn\u2019t seen, so Leka would race around Belgrade pulling reels off of editing machines before they were even finished, just to be able to show Tito something. Leka is now a halting old man, but he has a lot of pride, still, about what a good job he did. In one of the most extraordinary sequences, he walks through Tito\u2019s old house, bombed by NATO in 1999 and left in disrepair, telling the camera \u201chere is where the screen was\u201d and \u201chere is where I would stand\u201d, all while the sunshine streams through the giant holes in the roof. Leka sits amidst the rubble, holding a dusty can of film. He spent his life in service to a man now dead, and rapidly fading from the collective memory of each of the constituent peoples of his former country.<\/p>\n The film footage Turaljlic has found is woven together in a superb and never-ending collage of black-and-white stills, movie scenes, fragments of dialogue (one soldier says to another, \u201cWhat time is it?\u201d and the other soldier replies, calmly, \u201cTime for revolution!\u201d), giving an impression of the sheer volume of films being made in Yugoslavia during the era. Beautifully, and helpfully to film fans, as the end credits roll, there is a long list of the must-see films from Yugoslavia, for anyone who would like to check out some of the movies from this drowned Atlantis.<\/p>\n Joan Didion famously wrote, \u201cWe tell ourselves stories in order to live.\u201d You get the sense, while watching Cinema Komunisto<\/em>, that narrative-creation – however false or at least skewed – was a strong drive in these artists. Any country with a working film industry is telling the world, through its movies, \u201cThis is what it is like for us\u201d, and saying to themselves, \u201cThis is who we are, or who we would like to be.”<\/p>\n Cinema can be a repository of cultural memory, which is why the footage of the film vault at the abandoned Avala Studios, filled with shelves and shelves of rusting damaged cans of film is so upsetting. Yugoslavia no longer exists, but its story still does. Who will tell it? Turaljlic begins the conversation with this beautiful film.<\/p>\n \n \nBill Morrison’s The Miner’s Hymns<\/i> also looks at a vanished world: the coal-mining region of the North of England. With no voiceover, and a sweeping, sometimes-bombastic score by Icelandic composer J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson The Miners\u2019 Hymns<\/em> is just what its title suggests, a hymn in praise to the men who worked in these mines, and the women who supported them, helping to create and sustain the vibrant industry England is so known for.<\/p>\n Opening with a slow aerial pan over the area that used to be the Durham coalfields, now overrun by strip malls and parking lots, Morrison uses a very modern technique to open what is a very old-fashioned story. J\u00f3hannsson\u2019s music is electronic and insistent, featuring huge crescendos, meant to call to mind the tradition of colliery brass bands in England, but also reminiscent of a giant church organ droning a hymn in a vast, unpeopled space.<\/p>\n Morrison has used archival footage to make up the majority of Miner’s Hymns<\/i>. The grainy newsreel images of union parades and family picnics in the early 20th century are slowed down, stressing the idea that all is gone now. Morrison lets the images linger in their fullness of time and length, as a camera follows a procession, or scrolls across a crowd of faces. What is so incredible about much of the footage is the direct gazes the coal workers\u2019 give to the camera, intense and personal in a way that seems perfectly contemporary.<\/p>\n There is some incredible footage of the men descending the elevator down into the pit, and much detailing of the grueling, meticulous work the men did down in those harrowing tunnels. Morrison does not provide context for what we are seeing with a voiceover or with text on the screen. The images speak for themselves. TThe Miners\u2019 Hymns<\/em> is only 52 minutes long. But it has an undeniable power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These reviews originally appeared on Capital New York. Cinema Komunisto Cinema Komunisto begins with white words on a black screen: \u201cThis is the story of a country that no longer exists except in movies.\u201d A cinephile\u2019s dream, Cinema Komunisto, written … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/CINEMAKOMUNISTO_ARCHIVE_1.jpg\" "\\"Cinema")
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\nCinema Komunisto: That’s Tito and his wife watching movies, with Leka, Tito’s personal projectionist, visible in the background.<\/i><\/p>\nThe Miner’s Hymns<\/h1>\n
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