DAYS OF CROATIAN FILM ’99
A Quieting of Expectations
The Eighth Days of Croatian Film, Zagreb, March 11-14, 1999
The high expectations and, as a consequence,
the great disappointments of previous years made way for
much more quieter expectations and a lukewarm reaction
to this year’s output of Croatian short and medium length
film and video work. The main body of production presented
at this national festival of short films was TV based,
i. e. part of its program output. Other works came from
students of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, and
there is a new prolific independent production group called
Factum from Zagreb on the scene.
There are also a number
of individual productions, as well as the cineclub ones.
Most of the TV productions, but some of the others also,
are distinctly »formulaic,« i. e. they are interview based
films made in a Big-Mac structural manner: a slice
of verbal exposition, then a slice of a few ambient shots
backed by music, then another slice of verbal exposition
etc...
Most of these documentaries do present interesting
personalities or problems, and there are some that have
outstanding impact like In the Wrong Place at the Wrong
Time, a document on three maladapted youngsters,
or The
Fourth Shift, a film about a number of workers
who have lost their jobs, and are unsuccessfully trying
to find new ones, both by Damir ^učić (a Croatian Television
production). Some works are notable since they twisted
the formula — especially impressive is the playful Bag by
the three co-authors D. Matanić, T. Rukavina, S. Tomić
(Factum production) about a small town on the Croatian
coast (Karlobag) where a number of international lorries
are caught in a stalemate by the powerful local wind. Similarly
playful, but in the Monty Python tradition, is the student
work Insanity and Neurobiology (An Academy of Dramatic
Arts production) by Danijel Kušan in which a Croatian doctoral
candidate in neurobiology at Oxford is explicating the
»insanity« ideology of his peer group. But the most inspiring
are the films that clearly do not belong to the Big-Mac formula.
There is the subtle and short (12 min) The Duel by
Zrinka Matijević (An Academy of Dramatic Arts production)
about the clever and varied fight of a six year old boy
against his mother who is desperately trying to get him
to eat.
And there is the clever and intriguing film by
Rajko Grlić Drinking Water and Freedom III, a compilation
of three short films made over the course of twenty-five
years. The film impressively demonstrates the changeable
Croatian political moods by showing the changes that a
fountain and nearby memorial tablets have undergone during
the decades. There is a meager but not negligible short
feature output, the most impressive being the academically
precise work They Also Serve by ethnic Croatian
UK film student Marin Fulgosi (a Dub Laoghaire Institute
of Art Design and Technology production). The revived production
of animation films in previously famous Zagreb film is,
alas, of low standard, except an excellent, intriguing
and suggestive object animation work by Nicole Hewitt, In/Dividu.
Music videos were the next most numerous production genre
after documentaries, but most of them showed a tiring lack
of structural inventiveness, and musical quality. The previously
powerful avant-garde production was reduced to only a few
films with two of them being quite acceptable (Amen by
Zdravko Mustać and Phases by Ana Šimičić). This
year’s production does indicate some vitality and variety,
though short film fans will be haunted by the feeling that
there are too few opportunities to delight in.
Hrvoje Turković |
