#Balkan Cinema

[majortomwaits]

i need you to understand, this is from a film about chess and insane sexual dynamics between a married couple and a bachelor who comes over to play chess

[moviescramble]

Safe Place (Sígurno Mjesto) - Review

Depictions of mental health on screen can so often feel like nothing more than mere tropes; a plot device to give the “hero” the chance to demonstrate their power. It’s very rare that you see a writer or director make bold choices for the sole purpose of raising awareness. For those going through it themselves or for those who find themselves as bystanders, the invisible prison of one’s own mind…

[yugocar]

ex-yu cinema would make rounds on tumblr if it was more known

[dougielombax]

Mališa (1987).

The Serbian pigeon movie.

Looks like tumblr has made another movie that doesn’t exist.

It’s like Goncharov all over again.

A classic!

Right up there with Infinite Jest, Yötön Yö and Mirrors Lie Twice.

*mirrors lie twice*

[bulgara]

Old Varna // Nostalgie

[gregor-samsung]

Šavovi [Stitches - Un legame privato] (Miroslav Terzić, 2019)

[angelkarafilli]

The Manaki brothers were two Aromanian photography and cinema pioneers within the Balkan Peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.

[max11237]

Errant Destinations (Jewish Women in the Americas)2024(for free)

Description:

Errant Destinations is a collection of nine literary chronicles in which contemporary Chilean-Jewish author Andrea Jeftanovic reflects on travel in its multiple variations, with reference to diverse fields of study, including references to cinema, literature, and the visual arts. Jeftanovic transforms travel into an art form, inviting the reader to participate in literary and geographical encounters in foreign places such as the tunnel that unites Sarajevo bombarded during the Balkan War; the diffuse maritime delineation between Chile and Peru; an organization for relatives of victims of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; the hidden corners of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s characters; the hotel room in Cienfuegos where Castro stayed in two distinct historical moments; an

[thebendsbyradiohead]

anyone in this bar has a mubi subscription? there's this romanian movie that just started streaming on it that i really want to see but it's not yet on my pirate websites

[jessaerys]

reading this article about the historical context of a serbian film (2010) both as a piece in conversation with decades of serbian horror cinema and as a response to the violence of the balkan wars, and its subsequent stripping of context by the UK media in favor of moralizing conversations about censorship and free speech, which ironically mirrored british media propaganda that dehumanized the civilian serbian victims during NATO's meddling in the break up of yugoslavia decades before the film's release, which paved the road for western orientalist notions of the balkan region

and it seems that the director wanted to play with these ofuscated concepts of self-balkanization that were already left to interpretation to begin with so it is interesting to learn all of this background info after years of tangentially being aquainted with the film for its gross-out, fucked-for-fucked's sake, watch-as-dare urban-legend reputation for which it is infamous in the west. but definitely not surprising lol

[justforbooks]

In the childhood memories of more than one generation, Glynis Johns, who has died aged 100, will be best remembered as the Edwardian materfamilias of the hugely popular Walt Disney musical Mary Poppins (1964). Winifred Banks, married to David Tomlinson’s George W Banks, is the mother of Jane and Michael, the children in the care of the magical nanny played by Julie Andrews. A protester for the right to vote, Winifred delivers a spirited rendition of the song Sister Suffragette – “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us. And they’ll sing in grateful chorus: ‘Well done, Sister Suffragette!’” – as the children’s previous nanny tries to quit.

But the husky-voiced actor had other claims to fame from her more than 60 films and 30 stage productions. In 1973, Stephen Sondheim composed the song Send in the Clowns for Johns when she was cast in the leading role of the premiere production of his musical A Little Night Music, on Broadway. And she had won initial stardom in the British cinema as a mermaid.

In the title role of the film comedy Miranda (1948), she travels from Cornwall to London and causes romantic complications among the Chelsea set. Although the film’s whimsy may now seem strained, it was a great commercial success in its day, making Johns a top-liner in British movies. Miranda returned in a rather belated sequel, Mad About Men (1954).

By that time, Johns had moved almost completely from stage to films, where she was associated chiefly with lightweight roles, alternately fluffy and feisty. One of her most appealing opportunities came in the thriller State Secret (1950, released as The Great Manhunt in the US), playing a cabaret artiste in a fictitious Balkan country, and gamely singing Paper Doll in a wholly invented language.

It says something for her properties of youthfulness that at the age of 30 she could play a teenage schoolgirl in the melodrama Personal Affair (1953). The same year she played in two fanciful Walt Disney British productions, as Mary Tudor in The Sword and the Rose, and as the heroine wife of Rob Roy, and she went on to make her first Hollywood picture, the Danny Kaye comedy The Court Jester, in 1955. The following year she played a cameo role in the star-studded Around the World in 80 Days.

At the time Johns alternated between American and British films, generally in subordinate roles, but a rewarding one came in The Sundowners (1960), set in Australia, as a jolly barmaid who takes a shine to a visiting Englishman played by Peter Ustinov. It brought her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. Top billing came in a stylish horror movie, The Cabinet of Caligari (1962). She was well enough known to American audiences by this time to star in 1963 in Glynis, a TV sitcom series that ran for just one season.

In 1966 Johns returned to the London stage in The King’s Mare, as Anne of Cleves to Keith Michell’s Henry VIII. Her Welsh heritage came into play when she took the role of Myfanwy Price in a screen version of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (1971) starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole, and two years later came her great Broadway success as Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, which brought her a Tony award.

Glynis came from a show business background: her mother, Alice Steele (nee Wareham), was a concert pianist who performed under the name Alys Steele-Payne, and her father was the prolific character actor Mervyn Johns. He was a stalwart in particular of Ealing Studios films: father and daughter appeared together in an Ealing drama, The Halfway House (1944).

Though her vocal intonations pointed to her Welshness, Glynis was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where her parents were on tour. She was reportedly carried on to the stage at the age of three weeks, and it was not too much longer before she was appearing there in a professional capacity, making her performing debut at the Garrick theatre, London, as a dancer in a revue called Buckie’s Bears (1935).

Educated at Clifton high school, Bristol, and South Hampstead high school and the Cone School of Dancing in London, she rapidly graduated to juvenile acting roles in both theatre and cinema. Her first screen appearance came at the age of 14, as politician Ralph Richardson’s troublesome daughter in South Riding (1938), and on stage she was the young sister, another Miranda, in Esther McCracken’s comedies Quiet Wedding (1938) and Quiet Weekend (1941).

That year brought the opportunity to appear in the film 49th Parallel, starring Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier in a spy thriller intended to bolster second world war support in the US. When the prospect of playing a mermaid came after the war, she was able to draw on her theatrical versatility: “I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine. I swam like a porpoise.”

Johns returned to the London stage in 1977, as Terence Rattigan’s choice to play the murderer Alma Rattenbury in his well-received dramatisation of the Rattenbury case, Cause Célèbre. Her acting appearances became sporadic, though in 1989 she starred with Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger on Broadway in Somerset Maugham’s The Circle.

She was occasionally a guest star in US television series such as Murder She Wrote and The Love Boat, and played Diane’s rich mother, Helen Chambers, in the first series of Cheers (1983) and Trudie Pepper in the sitcom Coming of Age (1988-89). By the time of her final films, While You Were Sleeping (1995) and Superstar (1999), she was a characterful grandmother.

Johns was married and divorced four times. Her first husband, from 1942 to 1948, was the actor Anthony Forwood. Their son, Gareth, also an actor, died in 2007. Marriages to two businessmen followed: David Foster, from 1952 to 1956, and Cecil Henderson, from 1960 to 1962. She was married to Elliott Arnold, a novelist, from 1964 to 1973, and is survived by a grandson and three great-grandchildren.

🔔 Glynis Margaret Payne Johns, actor, born 5 October 1923; died 4 January 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[yugocar]

art my mutuals/followers were touched by this year

made this little compilation mostly for myself, but also for anyone else looking for random inspiration. thanks to everyone for sharing <3

tito i ja (tito and me) dir. goran markovic // film

niederungen (nadirs) “herztier” (the land of green plums) - herta muller // literature 

album “ghost story” (dorothy may, unmarked, you left this) - fern maddie // music

four winds series EP’s (notos, eurus, boreas, zephyrus) - the oh hellos // music

uhvati zeca (catch the rabbit - lana bastasic // literature 

winter in sokcho - elisa shua dusapin // literature

‘night mother - marsha norman // literature

the sisters brothers dir. jacques audiard // film

the year of magical thinking - joan didion // literature 

true west - sam shepard // play

giovanni’s room - james baldwin // literature 

the white album - joan didion // literature

i’m thinking of ending things dir. charlie kaufman // film 

struggle: the life and lost art of szukalski dir. irek dobrowolski // documentary

last breath dir. richard da costa & alex parkinson // documentary 

the broken earth trilogy - n.k jemisin // literature

kurak gunler (burning days) dir. emin alper // film

[sorenphelps]

I need to know more about Hungary! 8, 14, 22, 26, and 29 please ❤️

Hi there! Here we go, it took way longer to answer than expected...

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

It's a tricky question on my end, because I am partly Vietnamese on my father's side, so I'm usually not assumed to be Hungarian at all (even tho that as I'm getting older I'm looking more and more Caucasian). I'm assumed to be Chinese, because Asian=Chinese in most people's minds here. (It's actually a pet peeve of mine, but that's another question.) I think Hungarians in general get confused with Slavic/Balkan people? Maybe Germans? Idk, when abroad they often think my mother is either Russian or French, while my bf is thought to be Austrian (which is fair enough, because his ancestors are from Austria/Germany).

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

Already answered here.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

Proud: We are ridiculously good at some sports, we are I think the 14th in most Olympic Games medals per capita list at the moment. We also have a lot of Nobel prize winners (we are the 13th I think?), and generally a lot of cool things were invented by Hungarians (e.g. Rubik cube, matches, ballpoint pens, Vitamin C, the basis of computers, the basis of Microsoft Word and Excel, etc.). I also think our language is badass, it's in the top10 hardest languages to learn. I also really like how diverse our gastronomy can be, and the so called ruin pubs are good stuff.

Ashamed: Politics... And the general attitude of people, I mean when I can see a sign printed out in Hungarian in hotel cafeterias abroad, saying "Please do not steal!", I feel like denying where I'm from.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Hungary is mostly non-existent is Hollywood, but since a lot of American movies/TV shows are actually produced in Hungary, recently we are mentioned by name more (see the Black Widow movie for example). Sometimes our language is used as like an evil devil "language", or we are just vaguely referred as "East European" or "Post Communist" or part of the Balkan. We are depicted as uncultured poor people and/or criminals. Not the most flattering portrayal, however there is some truth in all.🤷🏻‍♀️

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

Oh boy, it's easier to list the ones we don't hate. XD We have a mutual friendship with Poland, but that's about it? Hungarians hate everyone (including themselves). We were very, lets say, unlucky with our history, so we are a country who is surrounded by itself population-wise. Therefore we hate every neighboring country (I think maybe Romania the most?). We are historically super bad at picking sides (I mean we always were on the eventually losing side of every big conflict), so it's no wonder that nowdays we try to be good with Russia, China, Turkey, Trump's USA... As I said, politics are bad here.

[rosetta-j-stone]

Finally went by the Balkan shop again and got me some Cockta, Cedevita and Domacica, also I went to the cinema for a screening of U raljama života ... today has been a good day : )

[gregor-samsung]

Babai [Father] (Visar Morina - 2015)

[steampunkforever]

When we look back at action films as an artform (and they are an artform unless you're lame), the majority of the good ones are surprisingly simple. Sure, there are good action movies with a series of mind bending twists and complicated plotlines, and some simple action films like Die Hard have sophisticated character development, but at the end of the day the genre, just like the pulp thrillers it descended from, favors the straightforward.

Taken, despite its elevated position in action film lore, is really quite simple. Just as John Wick at its heart is about a man killing the people who stole his car and killed his dog, Taken is about Liam Neeson finding the men who kidnapped his daughter and killing them, just as he says in the iconic thesis-statement scene. He WILL find you, and he WILL kill you. Because of his particular set of skills, you see.

One thing that interested me about Taken was its position in the canon of post-9/11 action cinema about retired spies. With a both the director and writer hailing from France, the dangers Americans faced abroad in this film stem less from foreign wars in the middle east (though former French colony Lebanon gets a shoutout here) and more from the mounting immigration problem the EU faced in the fallout of Balkan conflicts.

I remember in Italy the outright racism Albanians faced in this period, but the movie pretty starkly presents the kind-of-brown guys as the villains in a way that "Russian Mafia" in 2010s crime movies doesn't quite match simply because of the different dynamics Americans had with immigration from Slavic states.

Of course films like Gomorrah have deeper analysis of the ties between Slavic countries and human trafficking (remember that one alpha male podcaster who got arrested? Still a thing) and Taken is much more focused on Liam Neeson in his Liam Nissan punching bad guys. And he does punch bad guys. He's got a particular set of skills, you see.