Best Premiere Viewings of April 2K22

1. Последняя ‘Милая Болгария’ (Алексей Федорченко, 2021) /
The Last Darling Bulgaria (Aleksey Fedorchenko, 2021)

Sergei Eisenstein (portrayed by Aleksandr Blinov and instantly recognizable in spite of remaining unnamed) appears like a Looney Tunes character in a farcically surreal tragicomedy that sees him assisting a young fruit breeder, Leonid (Ilya Belov), in his attempts to unveil the true cause of death of a depressed writer, Semyon Kurochkin, while also carrying on his own father’s apple-growing legacy. Kurochkin is one of the pseudonyms of the Russian writer, satirist and translator Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894-1958) whose novella Before Sunrise serves as the main source of inspiration for Aleksey Fedorchenko and Lidia Kanashova’s intricately woven screenplay indulging in a plethora of eccentricities and mockeries.

A deep, headfirst dive into Kurochkin’s writings (almost burned on a cold, rainy night) treats the viewer with a fascinating series of wonderfully composed split-screen tableaux vivants in which facts and fiction, dreams and memories, cinema and reality become inseparable from each other, as the bright-colored veneer sprinkled with great, somewhat irreverent humor gently covers dark periods of the 20th century history. The film bounces back and forth between the 1920s and 1943, without ever losing the thread or the heart of the story, keeping you invested by means of its formal playfulness. In equal measures wildly entertaining and boldly experimental, The Last Darling Bulgaria (whose title references a made-up apple variety) operates as a celebration of creativity and obsession – a kind of madness that keeps an artist sane.

2. Rara (Sylvano Bussotti, 1969)

Wow! A reflection on / exploration of the corporeality of music (and spiritual potentials of the body?), the first feature from Sylvano Bussoti (1931 – 2021) – an Italian composer, painter, writer, stage and costume designer, opera director and manager – is a mighty fine piece of the 60’s underground cinema. Operating on the same wavelengths as the works of Anger, Schroeter, Jarman and Pasolini, Rara can also be seen as the queer predecessor to the offerings of Experimental Film Society, particularly of its founder Rouzbeh Rashidi, as it seems to embrace a very similar approach to filmmaking. Rather than employing images and sounds to illustrate the scripted story, it lets the abstract narrative(s) emerge from their interaction, or rather occasional, unexpected intersections of the two independent, free-wheeling entities. It starts as a documentary of sorts, but gets increasingly chimeric (and formally challenging) with its DADA-esque mysticism, transcendental eroticism, and cacophonous congregation of haunting piano strokes, delirious violin solos, and uncannily immersive vocalizations.

3. Hotel Poseidon (Stefan Lernous, 2021)

Just when I thought that I had seen the greatest among the weirdest films there were to see, Hotel Poseidon came along with its crushing waves of absurdity, surrealism, existential dread and misery porn mixed with insane amounts of dirt as in ‘wanna take a shower, wash the clothes & dishes that have already been washed, and get a tetanus shot only ten minutes into it’.

Think Lynch at his most eccentric meeting Andersson at his most depressingly humorous in a suffocatingly claustrophobic setting which parallels the twisted world of Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessen, all filtered through the prism of the Buharov brothers (!), yet somehow idiosyncratically bizarre in its bold, uninhibited, genre-defying what-the-fuckery. Creating a brimful of oddball characters who feel like ciphers when they’re not grotesque caricatures (such as a bartender who was forced-fed the pages of kids’ Bible in her childhood), actor-turned-director Stefan Lernous employs a number of formal and structural tricks to make the pulling of the rug under your feet go smoothly every time he does it... and he does it often. On top of that, he is in absolute control of both aural and visual aspects of his feature debut, with heavy drones and ominous strings inflating the atmosphere of inevitability, and excellent camerawork turning decrepitude into beauty.

4. After Blue (Paradis sale) / After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (Bertrand Mandico, 2021)

“Our conscience makes cowards of us all.”

In Bertrand Mandico’s exquisite sophomore feature, Kate Bush is not the English singer-songwriter with an impressive vocal range, but the moniker of Katarzyna Buszowska – a dangerous, mysterious, wish-fulfilling criminal on a distant planet of After Blue inhabited only by women (all men died because their hair grew inside). She has a third eye between her legs, and gets released from the sand prison by a naive village girl, Roxy (nicknamed Toxic by her frenemies), only to wreak havoc. Now, it is up to Roxy and her hairdresser mother Zora to go after her into the poisonous mountains, and eliminate her with a custom-made shotgun.

Once again working alongside an all-female cast (and a blind, sexless android, Louis Vuitton, equipped with tentacles), Mandico delivers another quaint, chimeric, highly eccentric film, both genre- and gender-fluid; an uninhibited neo-western/fantasy mutant that firmly embraces all the freedom and dreaminess Cinema can offer. Armed with a keen sense of camp and humor, he imbues it with the velvet darkness extracted from fairy tales, subtly twisted eroticism of the 70’s Eurotrash, and psychedelic scenery that wouldn’t feel out of place in a René Laloux’s sci-fi flick or some surreal piece of Japanese animation. Assisting him in bringing his boldly fetishistic vision to bizarre life is, of course, his muse Elina Löwensohn (portraying Zora), as well as his frequent DoP collaborator Pascale Granel who wonderfully captures the otherworldly set design, and fashionable costumes, with Pierre Desprats providing a sultry electric score.

5. Uski Roti / His Daily Bread (Mani Kaul, 1970)

One of the strongest feature debuts in the history of (slow-burn) cinema, His Daily Bread is a tour de force of visual poetry which ‘out-Bressons’ Bresson whom it is undoubtedly inspired by. Through its author’s unmistakable control over mise-en-scène, it effortlessly transcends banalities (and waitings) of everyday life, with the simplest of actions turned into sublime micro-poems. Brimful of lingering, stunningly beautiful close-ups of women’s faces, and gently interwoven with deep, poignant silences, this formally ambitious drama isn’t about WHAT it shows, but HOW it is shown.

6. Napló gyermekeimnek / Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros, 1984)

Personal and collective history clash and intertwine in the first entry of the Diary trilogy by the acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros. Even if you’re not familiar with the story of the director’s life, you can easily recognize or rather, deeply sense autobiographical elements in a film-loving protagonist, Juli (a fascinating performance by 17-yo Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), whose strong will and rebellious nature are nothing short of inspiring. The young heroine is all the more sympathetic thanks to her confrontational perseverance in the unwelcoming post-WWII environment in Hungary, with Stalinist madness on the rise, and hypocrisy raring its ugly head behind every corner. The harshness of her reality is only alleviated by idyllic memories (growing bleaker towards the end) and the darkness of the cinema venue, as well as by all the small perks of coming-of-age, such as the first love. And it is with great skill, not to mention confidence and gentleness that Mészáros balances between the private and the political / poetic and prosaic, making her 80’s drama appear like a lost artifact from the 50’s or 60’s by virtue of (her son) Nyika Jancsó’s absorbing B&W cinematography.

7. You Won’t Be Alone (Goran Stolevski, 2022)

(read my short review HERE)

8. Re Granchio / The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis, 2021)

In their first fiction feature that also marks (brilliant!) on-screen debut for filmmaker Gabriele Silli and the great majority of non-professional cast members, Rigo de Righi and Zoppis elicit authentic performances, and seamlessly blend a number of disparate influences – Pasolini, Azevedo Gomes, Herzog, Rohrwacher & Leone – into a familiar, yet spellbinding two-act folktale of forbidden love, rebellion, greed and redemption, capturing the spirit of the 19th century, and framing the action, particularly of the romantic first half, as true masters of painting, with the 16mm texture lending warmth to their potent, meticulously composed shots.

9. Where Is Anne Frank (Ari Folman, 2021)

My encounter with Ari Folman’s three animated features could be described as ‘the Goldilocks experience’, with the first one being too hot, the second one too cold, and the latest one just right. Simultaneously poetic and didactic, personal and political, Where Is Anne Frank does a remarkable job at bridging the gap between the past and the present, reality and fantasy, trauma and comfort. From the very moment Anne’s imaginary friend Kitty materializes out of ink in Amsterdam of our times, the film casts a spell on the viewer with its lush, elegantly stylized visuals which – complemented by Karen O’s dreamy vocals on the delicate score – guide you through the bittersweet ode to imagination, compassion and the power of memories. Its emotional punch may not be as strong as that of Ivan’s Childhood, Grave of the Fireflies or any other masterpiece portraying children in war, but it will certainly reach both the minds and hearts of people who haven’t fallen into the hateful pits of Holocaust denial.

10. Bina / The Antenna (Orçun Behram, 2019)

“One gets used to rotting. I also like silence, you know...”

Slowly and insidiously, dread creeps or rather, drips into the bleak lives of apathetic high-rise inhabitants in Orçun Behram’s promising, formally disciplined feature debut – a conspicuous allegory of a totalitarian, media-controlled society set in an unnamed city, during unspecified time that gives off the 80’s-behind-Iron-Curtain vibes. Taking cues from Polanski’s psychological thrillers, Cronenberg (Videodrome, in particular) and Nakata (Dark Water), the author demonstrates impressive talent in visualizing his ideas which – despite their on-the-nose nature – never stand in the way of establishing a dense atmosphere of increasing paranoia, as well as of producing some effective, skin-crawling moments. Assisted by cinematographer Engin Özkaya, he treats us to a copious amount of taut, tension-filled shots, with the sound design team and first-time score-composer Can Demirci submerging the viewer in ominous soundscapes. And that synthwave crescendo à la Carpenter adds some extra oomph to the unnerving proceedings.

11. Misiunea spațială Delta / Delta Space Mission (Mircea Toia & Călin Cazan, 1984)

René Laloux meets Vladimir Tarasov in the first Romanian animated feature – a beautiful, if a bit rough-around-the-edges cosmic adventure in which a diamond-shaped super-intelligent computer of Delta research station falls for an intergalactic journalist with a turquoise skin and face straight out of a Modigliani painting, Alma. This crush leads to the clash between human(oid)s and robots, but thankfully, Alma’s best friend Tin – an alien dog that looks like a two-legged frog with a cow tail – has ‘a bad habit of chewing metals’...

Recently remastered and released on blu-ray and Amazon Prime platform by Deaf Crocodile Films, Delta Space Mission blasts its way to the viewer’s heart with its colorfully wobbly, often psychedelic imagery wonderfully complemented by a bizarre, pulsating synth score that ‘sounds like a cross between Tangerine Dream and a malfunctioning Atari 2600’ (George J .Smalley, 366 Weird Movies). Its flat-shaded character designs and kaleidoscopic backgrounds depicting Delta’s high-tech interiors, futuristic cities and surrealistic jungles reflect both the artists’ wild imagination, and ‘sweet tooth’ for pulp sci-fi. Adding an extra layer of strangeness is mostly deadpan delivery of lines, as well as a healthy dose of offbeat humor.

“Imagine an early 80’s Eastern European space-prog album high on sugary breakfast cereal, ‘Heavy Metal’ magazine, Hanna-Barbera cartoons and 8-bit arcade games like Galaxian and Asteroids, and you have some idea of the otherworldly weirdness of the Romanian animated sci-fi film DELTA SPACE MISSION.” (Deaf Crocodile Films)

12. Storia di una monaca di clausura / Story of a Cloistered Nun (Domenico Paolella, 1973)

One of the most eye-pleasing and least sleazy nunsploitation flicks, Story of a Cloistered Nun follows a young aristocrat, Carmela (ethereally beautiful Eleonora Giorgi), who is forced into a convent only because she opposed a marriage arranged when she was but an infant. Once in her new home, she faces jealousy and hypocrisy, humiliation in the name of temptation, as well as a different kind of forbidden love than the one she experienced in her former life. It is in a debauched sister, Elisabeth (excellent Catherine Spaak who unfortunately passed away just yesterday), that she finds a sole friend... unaware of her vengeful character. Reportedly inspired by the authentic 17th century chronicles, Carmela’s bittersweet drama is helmed with an assured hand, but it is the trinity of Cristina Lorenzi’s extravagant costumes, Piero Filippone’s terrific production design and Armando Nannuzzi’s painterly cinematography that keep taking your breath away.

13. The Lost City (Aaron and Adam Nee, 2022)

It’s been a long while since we had a love letter to Romancing the Stone and its one year younger sequel The Jewel of the Nile, so The Lost City comes across as a welcome, nostalgia-fueled refreshment in the mainstream cinema. This action-adventure rom-com is perfectly aware of its unrestrained goofiness and delightful cheesiness, and everybody plays their parts accordingly. As the main baddie, Daniel Radcliffe relishes in nibbling on the scenery, and the starring duo of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum firmly embrace self-parody, with their screwball chemistry often lighting up the screen. Increasing the star-power is always reliable Brad Pitt in an über-cool cameo role. Some of the jokes don’t hit the intended mark, but the ones that do made me laugh till I had to pull out the paper handkerchief and wipe the tears to enjoy the beautifully captured Caribbean locales.

14. The Sadness (Rob Jabbaz, 2021)

What happens when a mysterious virus awakens the very literal worst in most of the people? The answer marked by outbursts of physical and sexual violence lies within the blood-and-gore-soaked madness of The Sadness – the feature shocker-debut from Canadian-Taiwanese filmmaker Rob Jabbaz. Informed by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the incompetent governments, conspiracy theorists and pretty much the rest of our society subjected to criticism, this bold deviation of the zombie subgenre is one of the most visceral cinematic offerings in recent memory. What makes it highly memorable are brilliantly sickening practical effects, and Tzu-Chiang Wang’s admirably psychotic performance as the Businessman. ‘Not for the faint of heart’ goes without saying.

15. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Eugène Lourié, 1953)

“This is such a strange feeling. I feel like I am leaving a world of untold tomorrows for a world of countless yesterdays.”

Nothing says ‘charming’ like Ray Harryhausen’s wonderful stop-motion creation wrecking everything from boats to a lighthouse to New York locales, and inspiring a number of giant monster features, most famously the long-running ‘Godzilla’ series.

Like a Pink Worm

 I don’t need another time zone to know who I am,
Because who I am is always round
With an equilateral triangle inside,
And the Sun in the center.

Darkness seems to come in phases –
First, it is indigo blue and afterwards pitch black,
But there are always stars,
and shiny debris floating between.

So, when I am dead and beautiful
Like a pink worm that’ll eat my flesh,
I’ll make sure to fuck an angel –
Someone with red hair.

collage: (In)Vulnerability (Kinoko II)
March 3, 2020

You Won’t Be Alone (Goran Stolevski, 2022)

Completely subverting all of my expectations, Goran Stolevski’s feature-length debut turned out to be not a folk horror (though it is where it takes its cues from), but rather a gentle and poignant lyrical meditation on nature, gender, identity, sex and human condition depicted through the eyes of a young, unwillingly created witch, Nevena, with a neat shapeshifting ability. Think Terrence Malick in a remote area of Balkans in the 19th century, with intestines exchange during transformations (many kudos to practical effects artists), and you might get the idea of whether you want to see this uniquely bizarre take on witchcraft or not.

Shot in the southeast of Serbia, mostly in the sparsely populated village of Pokrevenik (in the municipality of Pirot), and beautiful locations of Mt. Stara Planina, You Won’t Be Alone lulls you into a dream state by way of Mark Bradshaw’s hauntingly evocative score and Mathew Chuang’s often sun-bathed, Lubezki-inspired cinematography, gathering an ensemble cast who all give superb physical performances. Namely, Stolevski narrates the story in Nevena’s whispery, introspective voice-over, so neither of the actors, save for Anamaria Marinca who portrays the villainess Old Maid Maria, had to learn an archaic Macedonian dialect – instead, they employ body language and facial expressions to guide us across the not always fragrant meadows of emotions that the (anti)heroine experiences for the first time, ‘dressed in corpses’.

Despite the gruesome manner in which Nevena takes her disguises, one cannot help but sympathize with the poor girl who learns that life is even more wicked than her ‘witch-mother’ or, as she’s called by villagers, ‘wolf-eateress’ Maria – a tragic character whose past, along with the reasons of her ‘evil’, is unveiled in the final act. What she has been through doesn’t justify her hunger for newborns, but it does offer a different, nonjudgmental perspective on her kin. 

Bianco/Nero No. 400 : Il Picnic

Conceived on September 30 of 2019, Bianco/Nero has grown to become my most voluminous and obsessed-over series – a whole new mysterious, shapeshifting (meta)world of seemingly endless possibilities. Taking cues from a number of various sources – myths and fairy tales, religious, pulp and surrealist art, steam- and cyberpunk aesthetics, Brutalist architecture, alternative music and avant-garde cinema, just to name a few, it has strived to blur or erase the boundaries between personal and universal, poetic and banal, physical and spiritual, profane and sacred, real and imagined, earthbound and extraterrestrial, order and chaos, life and death, miracle and apocalypse, the past and the future.

In the course of its irregular evolution, this wild, yet hopefully refined collage-mammoth has embodied both broken and still breathing dreams, inexplicable whims, undisclosed desires, repressed memories, scattered thoughts, contrasting ideas, spatio-temporal ruptures, the elusive ‘color’ of inner voices and illusory ‘words’ from beyond the realm of possibility. A reflection of my interrelation to Art and its omnipresence, the pieces of Bianco/Nero has often turned into a sort of a visual manifesto that stubbornly refuses to be clearly expressed. The 400th ‘chapter’ named The Picnic isn’t the final one, even if I decide to put an end to the series...

Hipnos II: Printovi na prodaju!

Moja četvrta samostalna izložba Hipnos II koja je održana u Centru za kulturu i umetnost Aleksinac od 24. marta do 6. aprila je završena, i želim još jednom da zahvalim svima koji su učestvovali u sjajnoj organizaciji!

Svi izloženi kolaži štampani su na platnu, a printovi (zasad jedini primerci, izuzev Ponuda za Anu Večnosti) dostupni su za prodaju. PDF sa dimenzijama i cenama (u dinarima i bez poštarine!) može se preuzeti sa OVOG LINKA. Zainteresovani me mogu kontaktirati putem email-a nikola[dot]gocic[at]hotmail[dot]com, a ukoliko ste iz Niša ili okoline, možemo se dogovoriti oko ličnog preuzimanja.

(Precrtani radovi su prodati!)

Kinoko (A3) / 2200rsd

ARTBOX.PROJECT Venezia 1.0 Recognition!

Extremely delighted to announce that my 2020 collage ULTRAFANTASIA: THE SPIRITS GATHERING is one of the 10 finalists for the ARTBOX.PROJECT Venezia 1.0!

The exhibition will take place in Tana Art Space, Venice, May 1 - May 31, 2022.

You can see all 10 finalists, as well as 20 semi-finalists on the following page: ARTBOX.PROJECT Finalists

Best Premiere Viewings of March 2K22

CLASSIC CINEMA

1. Одинокий голос человека (Александр Сокуров, 1987) / The Lonely Voice of Man (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1987)

“The fish floats between life and death. That’s why it’s dumb... It knows everything. It’s a special being, a sacred one. Because it knows the secret of death.”

The deepest of melancholies drenched in all the pain, despair and misery of human condition, then liquefied and distilled into a slow-burning piece of pure cinema that reaches the darkest corners of one’s soul and/or subconscious with its sooty, bleakly poetic visuals, ruminative silences and moody, hauntingly elegiac music...

2. Dim / Smoke (Slobodan Kosovalić, 1967)

“You are mistaken, young man. No one knows history well!”

Co-penned by director himself and Borislav Pekić – one of the most revered writers from around these parts, and set in an unspecified German town covered by a heavy patina of past traumas, Slobodan Kosovalić’s fiction debut is an unorthodox piece of Yugoslavian / Serbian cinema, as well as an unusual representative of the revenge subgenre. Not even slightly exploitative, it is permeated by a deep sense of melancholy, loss and foreboding embodied in a reticent protagonist – young Jew Georg Anders (Milan Milošević, stoically composed) who is after a former concentration camp commander, Newermann (Janez Vrhovec, at his most repellent in a limited screen time), returning from prison after serving a minimum sentence. The film’s appropriately ‘smoky’ B&W visuals that at times bring to mind early Makavejev and Puriša Đorđević create the atmosphere of suppressed guilt and overarching sorrow, further intensified by the uncannily brooding score from Croatian composer Branimir Sakač. Appearing in supporting roles are always reliable Milena Dravić (as an unnamed, mysterious girl) and Pavle Vuisić (as a compassionate bartender) whose ‘subdued’ performances complement the solemn tone and moody poetics of Smoke. 

3. Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

If the sparks between Joan ‘mesmerizing eyes’ Crawford and Clark Gable had been materialized (along with a strong sexual tension that culminates in a leg massage scene), there would’ve been a spectacular light show in my living room last night. And what a visually climactic performance that final act is – like a juicy, fiery red cherry on top of the cake! Not to mention that it would’ve been virtually impossible to stage in a theatre; only cinema allows all the wonderful ‘magic’ on display.

4. Salomé (Charles Bryant & Alla Nazimova, 1922)

One of the earliest pieces of American queer / feminist cinema and the last of Charles Bryant’s three features, Salomé is a deliberately hyper-theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play co-written by ex-lovers Natacha Rambova (also credited as art director and costume designer), and star Alla Nazimova (who employs highly expressive mannerisms to convey a character almost thrice as young as she was back then). Minimalist in set design that channels the spirit of Art Nouveau style, the film shines a spotlight on emotionally unrestrained performances of the entire cast adorned in fascinatingly extravagant creations that appear like a missing link between Triadisches Ballett and Jean Paul Gaultier’s outrageous work for The Fifth Element. Its quirky, decadent beauty is further amplified by 2018 version score composed by award-winning Serbian musician Aleksandra Verbalov who open-mindedly experiments with everything from Byzantine chants (sung by the  Kovilj monastery monks) to intense bursts of cello energy and mystical musings of clarinet and piano.

5. Le Vampire de Düsseldorf / The Secret Killer (Robert Hossein, 1965)

It is with great subtlety, skill and insight that Robert Hossein approaches both the direction and his portrayal of real-life serial killer Peter Kürten (1883-1931) known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf (aka The Secret Killer) in a stylish, quietly impressive period piece which explores both the crimes and reclusiveness of a mentally disturbed individual against the backdrop of collective evil, revealing the hypocrisy and monstrosity of a fascist regime in 30’s Germany. Hossein’s modus operandi seems to be out of touch with the iconoclasm of La Nouvelle Vague movement, but also not quite like that of the classic filmmakers (one can sense the influence of Welles and Hitchcock), which results in an idiosyncratic blend of biopic/drama and thriller, in equal measures uncanny and melancholic, disturbing, yet strangely poetic. He avoids sensationalism by framing most of the murders from a distance or letting them happen off-screen, as if paying respects to the victims, and simultaneously emphasizing the coldness of Kürten’s acts. And through a romantic subplot that involves utterly magnetic Marie-France Pisier in the commanding role of cabaret singer Anna, he probes into his subject’s gentler side and makes the dance between Eros and Tanatos more hypnotic.

6. Sayehaye bolande bad / Tall Shadows of the Wind (Bahman Farmanara, 1979)

An eerie choral invocation heard during the striking opening sequence sets the uncanny tone for Bahman Farmanara’s mystery drama which was reportedly banned by both pre- and post-revolution regimes in Iran. Flirting with the subgenre of folk horror, the film plays out like a political allegory of power structures, as the fear of an idolized scarecrow grows among the superstitious villagers. Only a bus driver, Abdollah, who draws a face on the said object of worship seems to be immune to the anxiety-fueled hysteria that permeates the dense atmosphere of uneasiness. The overwhelming feeling of dread is intensified by Ahmad Pezhman’s doom-laden score, and Ali Reza Zarrindast’s beautifully morose cinematography dominated by earthy colors.

7. Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König / Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1972)

“Art is the serenest form of existence.”

The film's heightened theatricality, aesthetic artifice and playful anachronisms make it appear as a spiritual predecessor to Mark Rappaport’s Mozart in Love (1975) or Scenic Route (1978), Éric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois (1978) and João César Monteiro’s Silvestre (1981), as well as to a great deal of Jarman’s and Greenaway’s opuses. Not as wild as Ken Russell’s madly creative biopics with which it also shares some similarities, but still a fascinating, if demanding watch.

8. A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961)

A lovely, exquisitely shot ‘kitchen sink’ (melo)drama which marks the brilliant big-screen debut for round-eyed Rita Tushingham, and intricately weaves a number of themes into a socially conscious story populated with authentic characters. Although based on a play, the film rarely feels stagy, and despite the depiction of working class’ trials and tribulations in a bleak environment, it surprisingly gives off uplifting vibes.

9. El fantasma del convento / The Phantom of the Convent (Fernando de Fuentes, 1934)

A fine example of early Mexican Gothic, The Phantom of the Convent blurs the boundaries between a ghost story and character study, creating a dense, immersive atmosphere of silent dread through a tight symbiosis of expressive, shadow-infested cinematography, sweeping orchestrations, and labyrinthine setting of dark secrets where the trio of protagonists is forced to spend the night.

10. Carevo novo ruho / The Emperor’s New Clothes (Ante Babaja, 1961)

Completely filmed in a white studio, with only a few colorful props and extravagant costumes breaking the illusion of infinite space, Ante Babaja’s feature debut is a singular piece of Croatian / ex-YU cinema. A witty adaptation of H.C. Andersen’s well-known fairy tale, it also takes cues from Orwellian fiction in its biting mockery of autocratic idiocy, marrying its experimental, deliberately cartoonish visuals to over-the-top histrionics.

CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

1. Пiсня пiсень (Єва Нейман, 2015) / Song of Songs (Eva Neymann, 2015)

As if possessed by the spirits of Tarkovsky and Parajanov, the former guiding the camera during admirable long takes, the latter ‘flattening’ numerous scenes into breathtakingly beautiful tableau vivants, Ukranian director Eva Neymann and her DoP Rimvydas Leipus paint an inspired, highly romanticized portrait of life in a shtetl at the beginning of the 20th century. Borrowing motifs from several stories by Yiddish author and playwright Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916), Neymann comes up with a poetically rambling / Sokurov-esque screenplay that – softly spoken or whispered by her reticent characters – transmutes into a hypnotizing aura of half-remembered dreams and memories shrouding the meticulously composed imagery. She knowingly captures the emotional naivety of her main protagonist Shimek’s childhood, as well as the lyrical power of his love for a girl next door, Buzya, initially expressed through fairy tale-like narratives, and later, by way of youthful yearning and hazy nostalgia. ‘Song of Songs’ is also another triumph for Leipus who has already proven to be a reliable visualist working on films such as The Corridor (1995) and The House (1997) by Šarūnas Bartas, and Khadak (2006) by Belgian duo of Brosens and Woodworth.

2. Strawberry Mansion (Kentucker Audley & Albert Birney, 2021)

In their second collaborative effort which marks my initiation into their (highly whimsical!) cinematic world, Kentucker Audley (who also stars as a mild-mannered dream auditor, James Preble) and Albert Birney (in a supporting role of a baritone frog waiter who plays the sax) let their imagination run wild, naked and free, fetishizing analog technologies and pretty much all things vintage. Set in a retro-futuristic dystopia in which the government imposes taxes on people’s nighttime adventures, Strawberry Mansion comes across as a sparkling satire of corporate advertising that is seamlessly blended with an eccentric star-crossed romance of picture-book-like qualities, and a love letter to the art(ifice) of filmmaking written or rather, illustrated from the perspective of an 80’s child high on the 40’s detective flicks, 50’s sci-fi and 60’s pop-art and fantasies featuring Harryhausen’s creations. As preciously old-school as it gets, the film wonderfully and effortlessly captures the irrational nature of dreams, and kaleidoscopic disintegration of the near-future reality in its deliberately ‘outmoded’ special effects handcrafted with utmost care, ‘scratchy’, candy-colored visuals shot digitally then transferred to 16mm, and absorbing synth-heavy score that enhances the plasticity of images.

3. Lingui, les liens sacrés / Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2021)

Quietly and leisurely told from the perspective of a single mother, Amina, and her 15-yo daughter, Maria, Lingui is an unobtrusively poignant, yet powerful drama that delivers poetic justice with a heavy blow, all the while employing dazzling, beautifully captured colors and patterns of women’s clothing to put you under its spell. Sensitive subjects of (unwanted) teen pregnancy and abortion in a society which condemns it both legally and morally are approached with utmost care by writer/director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun who proudly waves a feminist flag in his exploration of tight-knit solidarity in times of need, simultaneously warding off the stench of colonial breath. 

4. Midnight (Oh-seung Kwon, 2021)

An impressive calling card for Oh-seung Kwon, Midnight is a nail-biting, adrenaline-pumping, edge-of-the-seat thriller laced with sharp social commentary, and elevated by performances so convincing that you often want to smash Wi Ha-joon’s poster-boy face to a bloody pulp, as he channels pure, wolf-in-the-sheep-clothing evil in his role of a murderous psychopath. Equally praiseworthy is Ki-joo Jin in her portrayal of a sweet and vulnerable, yet resourceful deaf-mute heroine, Kyung-mi Kim, whose silent world the viewer is often plunged into through the clever sound design, making her plight quite palpable. And all the night-time tension and creepiness of suburban back alleys are beautifully captured by cinematographer Taek-gyun Cha.

5. Bo we mnie jest seks / Autumn Girl (Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, 2021)

Quite possibly the most vibrant representation of socialist era Poland, Autumn Girl is a breezy and sensual musical biography about ‘the Polish Marilyn Monroe’ – actress and singer Kalina Jędrusik (1931-1991) who ‘subverted cultural norms’, as noted by Mikołaj Gliński in the article for Culture.pl. Soaked in soft pastels contrasted by juicier, more saturated colors, the film takes cues not only from the facts, but also from rumors, depicting events that ‘did not necessarily happen’, and according to the thanks in the ending credits, with support and trust of Jędrusik’s descendants.

Opening with an eye-catching sequence of retro-stylized collage animation, this irreverently glitzy portrait of the free-spirited sex symbol often brings to mind the audacity of Ken Russell’s biopics, and Anna Biller’s keen sense of camp, with a dash of Wes Anderson’s whimsical aesthetics. Brimful of life, it pulls you into its borderline fantastical world of the 60’s, all the while being carried on the shoulders of Maria Dębska who shines through and through in the leading role that marries feminine charm to libertine insolence, as well as nerve to vulnerability in a male-dominated show-biz environment. In the final song – a sultry jazz-pop tune which gives the original title – she performs the ultimate act of seduction using both her body adorned in a backless dress, and tricky soul whose power is felt in her delicate, dreamy voice.