Emir Kusturica’s life-affirming movies crammed with manic vitality are in a manner consultant of the filmmaker himself, whose artistic energies spill out of the medium that he works primarily in, and flows into different artwork kinds. It turns into musical items, operas and even items of structure. For his movie Life is a Miracle, he constructed a village, which was not dismantled after the movie. He continues to dwell there, organising annual movie and music festivals. When he isn’t making movies, he excursions along with his music band The No Smoking Orchestra, which has scored the music for a few of his works.
The twenty seventh International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) will honour the Serbian filmmaker with a retrospective of 4 of his movies, aptly titled ‘Chaos and Control: Cinema of Emir Kusturica’.
No straightforward process
Securing the prints of his movies was no straightforward process, says IFFK Artistic Director Deepika Suseelan, who has additionally curated the bundle.
“We have never faced so many difficulties in curating a package. Getting the films from his earlier years, which were made during and after the Bosnian war, were a challenge especially because of lack of clarity regarding the rights. A retrospective of his films has not been done in any festival in recent years, except the Belgrade International Film Festival. When we approached the Serbian film fund, they said it would be better to drop this plan. In the end, we managed to get four of his films for the retrospective after reaching out to several Serbian sources, including filmmakers,” says Ms. Suseelan.
Celebratory temper
One of the movies to be screened is Black Cat, White Cat, his 1998 movie which received the Silver Lion for Best Direction on the Venice Film Festival. The movie is considerably consultant of what Kusturica’s movies are identified for, with its wild celebratory temper. It is sort of like being caught in a carnival, being pulled from one wild experience to the following, together with your head by no means being allowed to cease spinning. From a gangster who juggles hand grenades amid a packed get together to a pig which slowly eats away a rusted automotive, it’s crammed with surreal imagery. With its smattering of Romani language in some sequences, one can even catch just a few Hindi phrases right here and there.
Another movie to look out for within the bundle is the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning 1995 movie Underground, which is unfold over an expansive interval from World War II to the wars that ravaged the previous Yugoslavia within the early Nineteen Nineties. Life is a Miracle and Promise Me This are the opposite movies within the bundle.
Documentaries
Kusturica has additionally made three documentaries, Super 8 Stories, a live performance film that includes his personal band, Maradona, that includes conversations with the legendary footballer, and El Pepe: A Supreme Life, his tribute to Uruguay’s former president José Mujica and his life as a guerilla chief.
In latest years, his political positions have usually landed him in controversy, particularly his silence on the war-time atrocities dedicated by Serbian leaders, together with Slobodan Milosevic, and his obvious closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Source: www.thehindu.com