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Author: Mariana Hristova

Albanian Film Then and Now

I had two things on my mind while heading up to Tirana, the last stop of our cinematic journey: that I would be glad to visit the Albanian film archive which lately became popular in the film preservation circles because of the widely promoted Albanian Cinema Project; and that I wanted to catch up with …

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Humidity Rate in Serbian Cultural Life

Belgrade was a surprising extra stop in the cinematic caravan organized by prof. Nevena Dakovic and prof. Alexandra Milovanovic from the Belgrade University. And it actually came just in time to update me on the current state of Serbian cinema and local cultural issues which I was following more closely while still living in Bulgaria. …

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Films and Flavours in the Balkan Neverland

Venerable Marx, if you lived in these lands You would be quickly clean shaven and sent to a school for re-education. “A Drinking Binge With Carl Marx”, a poem by Mircea Dinescu I have been to several film festivals around the Balkans but none of them dares to be as honest, freehearted and bohemian as …

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The Act of Killing

On boredom, suppressed desire and mundane evil Only after seeing the black and white experimental miniature “Afternoon / Shotgun” (1967) by Lordan Zafranovic, I realized that its double-faced title contains the two possibly most accurate key words  describing the atmosphere and the action in the film. Unlike in classic narrative where the conflict usually emerges …

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Life from a Scratch

Some 10 years after reflection on the Greek film Correction (2007) by Thanos Anastopoulos An anonymous man alone with his guilt in an anonymous city. Although neither him, nor the place is left unnamed throughout the film, this is the emotional refrain that frames my personal perception of Correction. The story emerges slowly and hesitantly …

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Split in Genres and Images

Split is an indisputably cinematic city. The combination of Roman, Byzantian, Venetian, Austro-Hungarian and Socialist architecture, natural landscapes and the special light at dusk and dawn by the sea makes of its modest territory a possible scene of various film narratives. Such an emblematic city carries visual reminiscence from the past but also presently creates …

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50 Shades of Green

Some thoughts on use of color inspired by Olympia Mytilinaiou´s Workshop Olympia Mytilinaiou´s workshop provided important knowledge on the construction of imagery in a film and what a critic is supposed to keep an eye on while watching a cinematic piece. One of the aspects of film imagery we discussed was the use in color …

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The “Bad Influence” of Film Festivals

Reflection on Jean-Michel Frodon´s Masterclass During his Masterclass, the reknown French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon emphasized on four different forms of writing on film which in his opinion undermine the role and quality of film criticism. Naming them anecdotely “the bad masters of film criticism”, Frodon elaborated on the impact of film merchants who utilize …

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Healing Post-War Traumas with Dark Irony

British writer Elizabeth Bibesco once said that “irony is the hygiene of the mind” and it seems that namely this purifying type of dark and bitter irony is the key to the post-war Croatian drama “A Wonderul Night in Split” (2004, dir. Arsen Anton Ostoijc). Set in the supposedly euphoric last hours of a New …

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