Variety of Balkan cinema at Arpa Film Festival
Hailing from three Balkan countries, 6 films — three from Romania, two from Serbia, and one from Kosovo — will be screened at the Arpa International Film Festival, November 13-15, 2015. These must-see screenings, of feature films Off (Serbia) and Three Windows and a Hanging (Kosovo), documentary films Aliyah Dada (Romania) and Armenopolis, Armenian Soul (Romania), and short films While They Were Flying to the Moon (Serbia) and Tamara, Echelon (Romania) are all stories offering a fresh connection to Balkan sensibilities.
“Arpa International Film Festival is the right place for Balkan cinema,” said Gregor Zupanc, an Arpa festival programmer and a Los Angeles based film and television director. Zupanc has worked in Serbia and neighboring Balkan countries in film and television, plus received the prestigious “Belgrade Documentary & Short Film Festival” award for “Best TV Documentary,” for his film, The Cave. “Arpa’s film festival offers filmmakers a way to showcase and promote their new world films to an international audience in Hollywood.”
The film industry is tough for any filmmaker to navigate, secure financial support, and realize their creative projects. The roller-coaster film industry ride that many Balkan countries have endured and continue to grapple with proves to be one of the toughest challenges yet. The entire Balkan film industry is economically strapped, with filmmakers oftentimes making films for significantly less than their European counterparts. More ideal than public funds are co-production funds, international funds, and private funds to attain the much desired budgetary boost for Balkan productions. Regardless, Balkan films portray deeply rich stories, spanning from gut-wrenching to heartwarming, that continue to garner respect from the international film community.
Zupanc shares, “The Balkans in general is a very good place to be an artist, because one has never ending inspiration. Around the world, many people are obsessed and impressed with Balkan wildness, warm hospitality and a pure, rough, not yet globalized cultural model — which permeates their dynamic films that are filled with social and political character.”
Six Balkan films screening this November
Kosovo’s first-ever foreign-language Oscar candidate is Isa Qosja’s feature film, Three Windows and a Hanging. Set in a deeply traditional village a year after the Kosovo War of 1999, where schoolteacher Lushe (Irena Cahani) reveals to a foreign journalist that she and three other local women were raped by Serbs during the fighting. The news threatens to tear apart the fabric of the village and challenges a patriarchal culture and a tradition of silence and shame, but ultimately serves as a catalyst for social change. This German-Kosovar co-production premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival this summer where it won the Cineuropa Award.
Feature film Off, by Serbian director, Predrag Stojic, is an intense high-stakes action film. The main character, Petar Lubarda, a young medical student, leads a secret life as one of the best drivers in the illegal street-racing world of “Serbian Roulette.” When his older brother, a former top “Roulette” driver, gets trapped in a maze of blackmail, conspiracy and revenge, a former childhood friend and now a corrupt police inspector threatens to incarcerate Petar for a deadly crash he supposedly caused.
Film director Oana Giurgiu’s documentary, Aliyah Dada, is a historical tale that is visually trimmed in the Dada style as a tribute to the pioneers of this movement, Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, two Jews of Romanian descent. The documentary follows 130 years of immigration of Romanian Jews aliyah (the return to the Holy Land) in a light and colorful depiction of history through human stories and collages. A non-Jew Romanian starts a journey to discover the reality behind the Romanian Jews’ return to the Holy Land — from the first settlers’ adventure, to the hidden horrors of the Second World War in Romania, the communists’ secret deals for trading the Romanian Jews to Israel, and becoming Israel’s fourth largest group.
Documentary, Armenopolis, Armenian Soul, is a cinematic essay on the history of Armenopolis and the life, joy, pain and memories experienced there. Directed by Florin Kevorkian and Isabella Bostan Kevorkian, this documentary is an invitation to admire a Baroque city, an authentic museum in open space, a place designed for the future, for families, with love and passion. Gherla is a city built from scratch, on a land bought back in the early 17th century, by an Armenian community who had left for Moldova. The city has managed to preserve its most important institutions: Solomon Church, Karatsony House, City Hall, orphanages, high school and park. Armenopolis-Gherla is a city designed to defeat history, with houses more than 250 years old.
While They Were Flying to the Moon, is a short film by writer-producer-director, Borisa Simovic,based on a novel by Svetozar Vlajkovic. The story is set in Belgrade, Serbia in 1969 on the day that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The city, deserted, everyone, hypnotized watching the landing on television — except one man, Tozi, sitting alone in a bar until one woman, Vera, sits a few tables away. This is a time period when snitching was one of the most popular tools used by the regime. Not being careful about what you say could have easily been a one-way ticket to prison. Tozi suspects that Vera is a snitch, but decides to approach her. Simovic’s short film has a schedule of 13 festival screenings so far in 2015 and has already won five festival awards this year.
Short film, Tamara, Echelon, is a surreal black comedy by Romanian actress and first time director, Kristina Cepraga Goodwin. It is the story of Tamara, a flirtatious 75 year-old widow, who is obsessed with finding a new lover and ritually goes to the cemetery to search for a new “victim” — a new man. She meets Gelu, an 80-year-old widower and convinces him to visit her. A strange and bizarre love story between senior citizens, turns into a tragicomic situation, stirring up questions about life and death, and about the fact that there is always someone watching you.
Written by Sharon Swainson
Communications & Content Development
2015 Arpa International Film Festival