Ex Yugoslav ballad (Yugoslavia)

Azra (Croatia)


Suncokret (Serbia)


Time (Croatia)


Dejan Petkovic (Serbia)

Influid II (Germany)

Arkona (Russia)

Slavic mythology.

Kriegsmaschine (Poland)

Negura Bunget (Romania)

Tabor ukhodit v nebo (Russia)

Gypsy Camp Vanishes Into the Blue/Queen of the Gypsies, 1975
Directed by Emil Loteanu;
Amazing music composed by Yevgeniy Doga.





This young singer is amazing too. Alyona Buzylyova:

Ryszard Czekala (Poland)

Sekcja zwłok (Autopsy, 1973)


Director and screenwriter of animated and feature films. Born in Bydgoszcz in 1941.

He graduated in painting and graphic art from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1966, in the Drawing for Film Class of Kazimierz Urbański. As a producer of animated films, he debuted two years later (1968) with Ptak / The Bird. Czekała was a co-founder of Kraków's Animated Film Studio. He debuted as a feature film director in 1976 with Zofia / Sophia, after which he made exclusively feature films for almost a decade, to return to animation from 1985 (Do utraty głów / Until Loss Of Heads).

A winner of many awards, chiefly for his animated works, including the main prizes at the festivals in Kraków and Mannheim for Syn / The Son (1970), and in Cork and Annecy for Apel / The Roll-Call (1971). His feature films also received recognition, his debut Zofia / Sophia winning many major prizes, including the Grand Prize of the San Remo IFF (1977).

"Less than four years have passed since his debut," wrote Kazimierz Żórawski in 1971, "during which time he has made just three films, but even today one can say about Ryszard Czekała that he is a fully mature artist, a creative personality whose works go beyond the recognized framework of animated film, blazing new trails." ("Kino" 10/71)

Ryszard Czekała was one of the reformers of Polish animation in the late 1960s / early 1970s. What sets him apart from other animation artists in our country? First of all - his focusing on the plot side of a film, his way of treating the material in a way that brings animated film closer to a feature film or documentary. Therefore - it is the themes which seemed reserved for feature films and documentaries until Czekała's animation appeared.

"I take the themes for my films from everything around me...," Czekała said, "I model the matter of my films from the everyday life accessible to everyone..., eliminating all the formal ornamentation and spectacular material - I select the form to match what I want to say. What I say are simple things." ("Polska" 5/1971)

Today it seems obvious that an animated film can tell a story, that it can be subtle, expressive, close to people's hearts, yet still remain an animated film. This has been proved by Czekała's successors, to mention Piotr Dumała. Because, though many critics pointed out that Czekała's films might just as well have been told with the help of actors, the formula of animated films gave them additional meanings, greater expression, strengthening an impression that maybe the same stories told traditionally could not have created.

What were those stories? Ptak / The Bird (1968) - the main character dreams of freedom, its substitute being freedom for a bird that he is saving up his pennies to buy. Syn / The Son (1970) - the loneliness of parents abandoned in the countryside by their now "urban" son. Finally, Apel / The Roll-Call (1970) - a shocking picture of life in a concentration camp, a story of fear, humanity, and the inhumane camp system. These stories could have been told differently. However, what Czekała did when he made these three films can be compared to the contemporary achievements of Art Spiegelman, author of the "Maus" comic book, and Zbigniew Libera, who proposes that we build ourselves a concentration camp from Lego bricks (LEGO Concentration Camp), where the material adds meanings but also forces people to take an aloof look at the consumers of things that, one would think, are impossible to consume.

Andrzej Kossakowski wrote that with Apel / The Roll-Call, Czekała contributed to overcoming certain mental barriers: "It's true that animated films have long come out of the nursery ... but not all issues seemed possible to transfer to the world of animation." He also showed that animated films can be used "to speak about serious matters seriously, without that seemingly necessary wit, that 'tongue in cheek'," something that had seemed reserved for documentaries or acted films. ("Film" 50/7)

Ryszard Czekała's proposal was interpreted by many critics as a reaction to the ossification of the philosophical films which dominated the 1960s. Czekała himself confirmed this:

"I simply don't really like animated films which are allegories, or films which are philosophical tales, where people and objects have symbolic meanings. I want to show specific events and situations. My only concern is that they be evocative." ("Film" 25/1970)

As Kazimierz Żórawski wrote:

"The works of Ryszard Czekała are a natural and conscious reaction to the philosophical or rather pseudo-philosophical aspirations of many makers of animated films, to those films - parables of the world, films - syntheses of existence, films - grand symbols. 'Ptak', then 'Syn', and finally... 'Apel', are works telling simple and uncomplicated stories, where the simplicity is intentional, it is an artistic method. ... Ryszard Czekała tries to get through to the audience, telling them realistic stories whose possibility of existing ... is never in question. The aim of a realistic storyline supported by a visual setting reminiscent of documentaries, is to bring the author's thoughts closer to the viewer." ("Kino" 10/71)

It's worth noting this comparison, because it comes up in many texts by critics analysing Czekała's early animated films. Alicja Iskierko compared them to documentaries in her book "Znajomi z kina. Szkice o polskim filmie krókometrażowym" / "Cinematic Acquaintances. Sketches on Polish Short Films" (Warszawa 1982). So did Kazimierz Żórawski, mentioned earlier, many times in fact, writing even more explicitly:

"His films give... the impression of being 'documentaries' transposed to the language of animated film, not only in the images which Czekała composes three-dimensionally, but equally, thanks to the themes and references to reality, in moving from the realm of 'thinking' to the realm of 'feeling'." ("Film" 12/71)

In fact, though, Czekała comes much closer to feature films. The drama of his works, the way he leads the camera, the rhythm, sound, the precise and extremely meaningful editing similar to that of features, the use of detail, all this gives them an affinity to feature films. Andrzej Kossakowski wrote that in all of Czekała's films, animation could be replaced with acting, though he did say their impact would be smaller then ("Film" 50/77). One has to agree. Jerzy Giżycki ("Kamera" 5/1971) even compared the power of impact of Czekała's Apel / The Roll-Call to Wanda Jakubowska's Ostatni etap / The Last Stage and Andrzej Munk's Pasażerka / Passenger, the best-known feature films touching on the problem of concentration camps.

Ryszard Czekała said:

"I try to create a certain evocative vision of the world in my films which would make the viewers forget they are at the cinema. The audience should feel participants in the events, they should identify themselves with the characters. In an acted feature film this objective is easier to achieve ... It's harder in an animated film - but is it impossible? Even a world drawn on paper can look enough like genuine reality for the viewer to believe in its existence. Even a drawn person can betray their personality, their feelings." ("Film" 9/1971)

Asked point blank if that meant he wanted to make feature films, he replied:

"A producer who can narrate an event with the help of drawings should also be able to narrate it with the help of staged shots. ... We should think in film terms, not in terms of graphic art, painting, or theatre. To a filmmaker all these disciplines are only an element of directing." ("Film" 25/70)

Czekała emphasized (as Kazimierz Żórawski wrote, "Kino" 10/71) that he thought in film images from the start, including the sound, or maybe even initially he heard his films more than he saw them. That's an important confession. It is exactly this equal value of storyline, sound, and image that constitutes the value of Czekała's films. Żórawski wrote:

"It is that naturalistic and surreal sound to which the black-and-white images in 'Ptak' are synchronously set, which creates images of the loneliness of a hunched man, and in 'Syn" the loud swallowing of soup, the sound of a piece of bread falling to the ground, the quiet splash of a tear flowing down the father's cheek and hitting the smooth surface of the liquid filling his plate, finally the rustle of the newspaper as the son reads it, create the mood and the audience's emotional reception."

After he made his feature debut Zofia / Sophia (1976) and abandoned animation for 10 years, Wanda Wertenstein wrote that a careful observer could have predicted that Czekała would find animated film too confining. After all, Ptak / The Bird, Syn / The Son or Apel / The Roll-Call, even Sekcja zwłok / The Autopsy (1973) could have been played by actors. "Their graphical realism was not far from photographic realism, while the notional, philosophical aspects were shaped by classic means of expression of narrative cinema - the choice of standpoints, light gradations, editing, the relation of image and sound. The drawn figures were surrogate actors, the animated cut-outs - a substitute for real gestures." ("Kino" 10/76)

Wertenstein asked if the baggage of animation was sufficient for a producer of features. She replied in the affirmative, saying that "Czekała tries to utilize the same stock of means which made him original when he was working with the material of animated film" ("Kino" 10/76).

This refers to the use of detail, telling a story more through editing than through scenes of action, staging simple but expressive shots.

Czekała abandoned animation in favour of feature films but remained faithful to the themes from his animated works, especially Ptak / The Bird and Syn / The Son. The result was not unequivocally good. He did best in his feature debut Zofia / Sophia (1976), a film which received many awards, including the main prize at the San Remo festival. " 'Zofia' is primarily a film of moods and climates created by object shapes, colours, shadows; in other words - by visual composition. Dialogue appears infrequently," wrote Bogdan Zagroba.

He praised Ryszarda Hanin's acting, and the film as a whole: "Czekała has shown himself to be an artist aware of the diverse possibilities offered by the language of film, the language of images, moods, comparisons, able to make do without words." ("Film" 44/76)

Critics noticed faults as well, though. Zagroba himself wrote that the film was burdened slightly with the tenuousness of the literary material, causing it to look more like "Czekała's favourite monochromatic impression than a complete figure."

Wanda Wertenstein also saw drawbacks in Czekała's method, writing that the film "requires some effort from the viewer, and above all patience to see all the pieces of the puzzle come together into a cohesive whole." ("Kino" 10/76)

Czekała's second feature, Płomienie / Flames (1978), revolved around the same problems that had been present in his first animated films and in Zofia / Sophia. Parents, children, countryside, city, traditional rural culture or urban "hotchpotch"? These are themes familiar from the "peasant trend" in literature and the works of other filmmakers, to mention Grzegorz Królikiewicz. The film received praise from Czesław Dondziłło in his book "Młode kino polskie lat siedemdziesiątych" / "Young Polish Cinema of the 1970s" (Warszawa 1985); he thought it even surpassed Zofia / Sophia which he thought to be more one-dimensional. Krzysztof Kreutzinger praised it, too ("Film" 7/79), comparing the visual side of Płomienie / Flames to the paintings of Jan Vermeer. Nevertheless, critical opinions predominated. Tadeusz Sobolewski was negative:

"Czekała has kept to his old method. Each character repeats the same grimace the whole time. And it's only for that one grimace that he needs actresses like Ryszarda Hanin and Barbara Krafftówna. ... These characters either reveal their view of life in one sentence, repeated over and over ..., or say nothing and stay stuck at the table like stuffed dolls. My impression is that for whatever he wanted to express, Czekała could have used a clean soundtrack, without dialogue, with just crunching and grunting. If we muffled the impossibly lengthy conversations and cut the film to under twenty minutes, we would be left with 'Syn', no less - the best film by Ryszard Czekała." ("Film" 8/79)

Subsequent films as well, Przeklęta ziemia / Damned Earth (1982) and Piętno / Stigma (1983) based on the prose of Julian Kawalec, took on the dominating theme of Czekała's output:

"watching people who are between two types of culture, on the borderland of the urban world and the rural world." ("FSP" 3/85)

These films did not receive an unequivocally positive reception, either. Piętno / Stigma was accused of being too rough, too inconsistent in terms of drama and even genre. As Maciej Pawlicki wrote: "The director wanted to turn a contemplative moral treatise based on retrospection into a fast-paced, spectacular and intelligent crime story with a wise message. The result is neither one nor the other." ("Film" 25/85)

The adventure with feature films, though it resulted in the outstanding Zofia / Sophia, came to an end. This was cohesive output, though with different cinematic material. What Andrzej Kossakowski wrote about Czekała's animated films can also be applied to his feature films:

"Czekała's world is sad, dark, it doesn't try and win anyone over with perfunctory optimism, it forces them into serious reflection. ...This is a world of tragic human truths whose portrayal required serious language." ("Film" 50/77)

His return, years later, to animated films did not bring Ryszard Czekała achievements on a par with Syn / The Son or Apel / The Roll-Call. His works had lost their uniqueness. However, he remains important as the producer of films which were milestones in animation: Ptak / The Bird, and above all Syn / The Son and Apel / The Roll-Call.

Here is what "Magazyn Filmowy" wrote about this last film:

"It's rare to see an animated film which makes such a huge impression. Narration, rhythm of images, visuals, sound, all form an absolute whole, working together equally powerfully in this small piece which is an outstanding work of art." ("MF", 25/71)

Source: http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/os_czekala_ryszard

Andrzej Masianis

"The 20th century was characterised by a rich development of theoretical reflection and performing practice in the field of art. The inherent lack of limits of the area and its criteria arouses doubts among many artists and audiences. In my drawings I attempt to return to the classically simple formula of artistic expression that refers to the historical styles of Baroque and Gothic Art, and one that, in my opinion, may move contemporary audiences. In my works I often refer to the subject of the Last Judgment. I am influenced by writing – theological, biblical texts, fantasy writing – and even by science fiction films. Although my works refer to biblical themes, I don’t consider myself a religious artist. The kind of artwork that is typical of religious art seems to me rather churchy and schematic. Christian subjects are very close to me, but my work isn’t restricted to them exclusively."

Source:http://beinart.org/artists/andrzej-masianis

Valerie a týden divu (Czech Republic)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970 by Jaromil Jire

Paradjanov: A Requiem (Germany)

Documentary on Sergei Paradjanov, 1994

Sayat Nova (USSR/Russia)

The Color of Pomegranates (1968)



One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov's "Color of the Pomegranate", a biography of the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova (King of Song) reveals the poet's life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova's life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die, but these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Paradjanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov writes, directs, edits, choreographs, works on costumes, design and decor and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work void of any dialog or camera movement...

Source: http://www.parajanov.com

The Blackboard (Iran)

Samira Makhmalbaf, 2000



Why was the film shot in Kurdistan? And where did the idea first come from?
My last movie was produced in Tehran. Tehran is a part of Iran. Kurdistan is also a part of Iran at this time. My next movie will take place in another part of Iran, including Baluchistan, to make this movie. My father accompanied me in my trip to Kurdistan. We walked through many arduous paths and everything my father saw on the way reminded him of a story that could easily have been made into a movie. Among the stories my father told me, this was the one I chose. The story of the wandering teachers of a school destroyed by bombs, who carry their blackboards on their back wandering around and looking for students, and not finding any.

After making “The Apple”, a film that mostly takes place in a house and an alley, how did you end up making a big budget production like this?
Each story requires a different makeup . “The Apple” did not need to be a big budget production, and “The Blackboard” could not have been made with just three or four actors. What’s more, after the appreciation “The Apple” received all over the world, a high amount of energy built up inside me. This internal energy was looking for a way to get out.

The name “Halabcheh” is mentioned in the movie. Where is Halabcheh, and how did the bombardment they talk about in the movie, take place?
Halabcheh is a city in Iraq, situated close to the Iranian border. The Iraqi government used chemical bombardment to repress the Iraqi Kurds.the movie “The Blackboard” was shot near Halabcheh, on the Iran-Iraq border. The landmines planted in that area during war have never been removed and one of our problems during production was to know where we can walk and where there are no landmines. We regularly received information from the local villagers on the safe lands to walk on.

Is this movie also the story of the different generations of Iranians?
Yes, We see three generations in this movie. One is the young generation which is fertile and productive, but the older generations have done little for them and they have to do dangerous things every day to make ends meet. They like to learn, but that is not one of their choices. The second generation is the middle one: the teachers. They try to teach and benefit the two other generation from their knowledge and experience, but do not succeed. The third generation is the one with no patience to hear what the second generation has to say. It is too late for them to change. They walk their own path. Bitter recollections hurt their common memory and they walk their own path. The older generation is more patriotic than the two younger ones. They have reached the end of their lives, and just like a flock of fish in the Pacific Ocean heading to their birthplace when they reach the end of their lives, these old men leave Iran and go to Iraq to die where they were born.

The old Iraqi men leave Iran and go to Iraq, to die where they were born. When did they come to Iran?
They took refuge in Iran during the eight-year-old Iran-Iraq war, to escape the chemical bombardments.

Where do the teenagers come from, and where do they go?
Every morning, they cross the Iranian border and illegally enter Iraq, and smuggle something back in to Iran on the same day. To earn in of to make it through the day, they play with their lives everyday.

To what extent is this story true?
This story is something between reality and fiction. Smuggling, being homeless, and people’s efforts to survive are all part of reality. Even in the case of the insane woman, I was inspired by the story of one such woman who had killed her husband. I took the actress to that woman, so she could be inspired to act like her. My brother Maysam has filmed behind the scenes of “The Blackboard”, and in his film he clearly shows how an insane countrywoman is both my inspiration for creating the character and the actress’s inspiration for playing the part.

Source: http://www.makhmalbaf.com