East European Feature Films in CSULB collection: Borders, Ethnicity, Geopolitics  (11.02.15)


    Former Yugoslavia and the Balkans      jump
    Poland                                                   jump                             
    Germany                                                jump
    Czech Republic, Slovakia                      jump
    Hungary, Romania                                  jump
    Ukraine, Belarus                                     jump

    Other good films we'd like to have         jump

Former Yugoslavia and the Balkans

Lepa sela lepo gore = Pretty Village, Pretty Flame  (Yugoslavia 1996)  PN1997 .P72745 1998
Directed by Srdjan Dragojevic. Two boyhood friends, one a Muslim, the other a Serb, find themselves on opposing sides in the war in Bosnia. Now one of them lies in a hospital badly injured thinking of their friendship tattered and in ruins as he recalls the events that brought him there. In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles. 125 min. It is an excellent film about the recent war in Bosnia, Amazon has it on DVD and VHS. And it is subtitled in English.  ASIN: 1572523026

Rane = The Wounds (1998)  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165546/   PN1997 .W726 1999
Another film by Srdjan Dragojevic; would be great and is available on Amazon.  ASIN: B00004WIEL  This film follows two Belgrade youths on their rise to gangster legends in a decaying society.

No Man's Land (Yugoslavia 2001)   PN1997 .N5234 2002
Director, Danis Tanovic. Set during the height of the Bosnian War in 1993, a group of Bosnian soldiers are advancing on Serb territory under the cover of a foggy night. At daybreak, the fog lifts, and the Serbs open fire. Soon there is only one Bosnian survivor because he was able to dive into a trench in no man's land. He then watches as two Serbian soldiers use the body of a fallen Bosnian to bait a land mine. He fires on them, killing one, and taking the second hostage. Now both are alone and equally armed, so they are forced to share a wary trust as they try to attract help from either side. 97 min

Tito i ja = Tito and me    (1998) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105602/   PN1997 .T547 2001
Set in Belgrade in 1954, Tito i ja is the story of 10-year-old Zoran, a quirky child who, to his parents' dismay, adores Yugoslavia's charismatic leader Marshall Tito more than he does his own family. By Goran Markovic. 

Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia 1990)   PN1997 .T51145 1990
The story of Pheran, a life-loving teen with telekinetic gifts. Lured by promises of wealth, he leaves his beloved Grandmother and girlfriend to join the gang of Ahmed, a flamboyant criminal with a scam for all seasons. A Kusturica’s film.

When father was away on business (Yugoslavia 1991)   PN1997 .W519 1991
It's an open secret that father has been sent away to the mines for fooling around with the voluptuous object of desire of a Communist Party Official. That's the way things were in 1950's Yugoslavia-- loose lips and loose hips could be equally incriminating. Six-year-old Malik, however, thinks Papa is away on business. As seen through his eyes, this rapturous, full-bodied film magnifies the emotions of his new and giddy experiences, punctuated by family trips to visit his beloved Papa.  A Kusturica’s film.
Poland

Czlowiek z marmuru = Man of marble (Poland 1977)   PN1997 .M257475 1990 
In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him. She gets hold of outtakes and censored footage and interviews the man's friends, ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait of Birkut emerges: he believed in the workers' revolution, in building housing for all, and his very virtues were his undoing. Her hard-driving style and the content of the film unnerve her supervisor, who kills the project with the excuse she's over budget. Is there any way she can push the film to completion?

Kanal (Poland 1957)   PN1997 .W23 2005
September, 1944. It's the 56th day of Warsaw's uprising against the Nazis. The third Platoon of the Resistance is down to 43 heroic men and women, and they're penned in. After a last day of fighting, and of good-byes to family, to     love making, and to music, a handful of doomed survivors wade into the city's underground sewers in hopes of escape. Their valor is tested a final time.

Pokolenie (Poland 1955)    PN1997 .W23 2005
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a generation of youth comes of age. Stach and his friends start with spontaneous acts of defiance, which can prove deadly, but have no organized purpose. Then, while at work as an apprentice, Stach learns elementary Marxian economics from a shop steward. When he sees the valiant and beautiful Dorota, a leader of the Youth Underground, he volunteers. He recruits his friends, and they become a cell in the resistance, tasting courage, discipline, and tragedy. In the background lies the potential conflict between the Communists and the partisans, both anti-Nazi, both Polish, and on their own collision course.

Popiol i diament = Ashes and diamonds (Poland 1958) PN1997 .W23 2005 
Maciek, a young Resistance fighter, is ordered to kill Szczuka, a Communist district leader, on the last day of World War II. Though killing has been easy for him in the past, Szczuka was a fellow soldier, and Maciek must decide whether to follow his orders.

Ogniem i Mieczem (Poland 2003) PN1997 .W558 2003   
The historical background is the 17th century. Poland was the largest, the most democratic, and the most tolerant country in Europe. However, the tragic civil war brought about the gradual decline of the once
glorious republic.

Zezowate szczescie = Bad luck  DVD  (Poland 1960)  PN1997 .B2345 2005     
The odyssey of a man through Poland from 1930 to 1950, in a changing world that seems to have no place for him. We watch him from his childhood to his first love, from his unwilling involvement in Fascist politics to his arrest and imprisonment.

Katyn DVD  (Poland, 2009, by Andrejz Wajda) PN1997.K414 2009
Dramatization of the massacre of 20,000 people (interned Polish officers as well as civilians accused of treason by the occupying Soviet forces) by the Soviet secret police at Katyń in the spring of 1940, and the cover-up that followed. Follows the fictional stories of four families, separated from one another in the confusion of September 1939, when the Soviets and Germans invaded Poland, through the Soviet occupation in 1945 when the truth of the massacre gets suppressed.

Germany

I was nineteen = Ich war neunzehn DVD (Germany, 1968)  PN1997 .I2938 2007
Nineteen year-old Gregor Hecker returns to Germany in April 1945 wearing the uniform of a Russian Lieutenant. He had to leave the country with his parents when he was eight years old and now feels a stranger on German soil.

Sonnenallee (Germany 1999)    PN1997 .S63338 1999    
A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

Goodbuy, Lenin! DVD PN1997 .G592 2004 
Alex's proud, socialist mother falls into a coma for eight months. When she wakes, her heart is weak, so Alex has to keep the secret that the Berlin Wall has fallen and capitalism has triumphed. What begins as a little white lie     turns into a major scam.

Silent Country PN1997 .S5684 2007
The German Democratic Republic autumn 1989. A provinical theatre is planning to stage Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'. Political events - the exodus of East-Germans via the Hungarian border, the revolution, the fall of the wall - overshadow the rehearsals.
Hungary, Romania

Csillagosok, Katonák = The Red and the White (Hungary 1967)   PN1997 .R355 1990    
Powerful film about the absurdity and evil of war. Set in Central Russia during the Civil War of 1918, it details the battles between the Red soldiers of Russia and the counter-revolutionary Whites in the hills along the Volga River. In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side then the other. Captives are executed or sent running naked into the woods. Neither side has a plan, and characters the camera picks out soon die. A White Cossack officer kills a Hungarian and is executed by his own superiors when he tries to rape a milkmaid. At the hospital, White officers order nurses into the woods, dressed in finery, to waltz. A nurse aids the Reds, then they accuse her of treason for following White orders. Red soldiers walk willingly, singing, into an overwhelming force. War seems chaotic and arbitrary.
Mephisto (Hungary 1981)    PN1997 .M4357 2001
The story of a star's egotism, narcissism, and sexual opportunism. All are betrayed for political expediency in Hitler's Third Reich.

 A fost sau n-a fost? 12:08 east of Bucharest       PN1997 .T83473 2007   
On the sixteenth year anniversary of the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a local anchorman of a nearby provincial town invites two of his acquaintances to share their moments of revolutionary glory on his talk show. One is an impish, insightful retiree who sometimes poses as Santa Claus, the other a henpecked, hard-drinking teacher who has just devoted his entire salary to his drinking debts. Together they will remember the day when they stormed their town hall calling "down with Ceausescu." Or did they?

Cum mi-am petrecut sfâr̦situl lumii = The way I spent the end of the world    PN1997 .W387 2007
The way I spent the end of the world: Bucharest 1989, the last year of Ceau̦sescu's dictatorship. Eva, 17, lives with her parents and her 7 year-old brother Lalalilu. One day at school, Eva and her boyfriend accidentally break a bust of Ceau̦sescu. They are forced to confess their crime before a disciplinary committee. Eva is expelled from school and transferred to a reformatory establishment. There she meets Andrei and decides to escape Romania with him. Lalalilu is more and more convinced that Ceau̦sescu is the main reason for Eva's decision to leave. So, with his friends from school, he devises a plan to kill the dictator.
    The last man in Brooklyn: The year is 2092. The world has torn itself apart with nuclear weapons. In what's left of Brooklyn, New York, two men live a lonely coexistence. One is scarred by the searing radiation of atomic bombs, the other a miraculously unscathed drifter bent on cruelty for his own foul pleasure. Then, SHE came along...

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle = Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluier  (2010) DVD 94 min   MultiCultural Center
Two weeks before his release, a teenage prisoner learns that his mother has returned home. Meanwhile, he finds himself in love with a student working in the penitentiary as an intern.

   Czech Republic, Slovakia

The Unbearable Lightness of Being  (USA 1988)   PN1997 .U448 1998   
Tomas is a womanizer whose enormous sexual appetite is never fully satisfied. He deeply loves his wife, Tereza; but, he only finds true understanding with his lover Sabina. Sabina shares his desire for sex without the "heavy" commitment of love. Tomas struggles with the decision of whether to give up his freedom and commit to the love of one woman or to remain faithful to his promiscuous ways.  Soviet invasion of 1968.

Ostre sledovanй vlaky = Closely Watched Trains (Czechoslovakia 1966) DVD   PN1997 .C662 2001   
Comedy-drama about a young trainmaster employed in a tiny station during World War II. He becomes involved in a plot to blow up a German ammunition train, but when the plan backfires, he is forced to commit the ultimate act of courage.

Horí, má panenko = The firemen's ball (Czechoslovakia 1967)    PN1997 .F472 1983
The fire department in a small town is having a big party when the ex-boss of the department celebrates his 86th birthday. The whole town is invited but things don't go as planned. Someone is stealing the prizes to the lottery and the     candidates for the Miss Fire-Department beauty contest are neither willing or particularly beautiful.

Obchod na Korze = Shop on Main Street (Czechoslovakia 1965)   PN1997 .S59 1965
Slovakia during WW2. Tono lives a poor life, but the authorities offer him a take over the Jewish widow Lautman's little shop for sewing material. She is old and confused and thinks that he is looking for employment and hires him. The     odd couple begin to like each other. But some time later the authorities decide that the Jews must leave the city. What should he do with the old lady?

Vesnicko má stredisková =  My sweet little village (Czechoslovakia 1985)   PN1997 .M9692 1995
Comedy about the people who inhabit a small town.

Ukraine, Belarus

Zemlia  =  Earth; Bezhin Lug = Bezhin meadow    DVD (USSR 1930/1937)   PN1997 .E177 2001
Earth: A Ukranian landowner is forced to give up his holdings to the state. Vasili obtains a tractor and under his leadership the collective is successful. He is shot by the landowner's son. Vasil's father asks that he have a "modern" funeral with songs by the young people of their new life.  Bezhin meadow: Eisenstein's film was banned in Russia in 1937, and subsequently all prints were destroyed. This print is a reconstruction by Sergei Yutkevich from old stills and sketches. It was to have been about the young pioneers and their contribution to Soviet collective farming, but became instead the story of the struggle between old and new forces in Russia as symbolized in the story of a young boy who opposes his evil father.  Earth, originally released as a motion picture in 1930. Bezhin meadow is a partial reconstruction from episodes originally filmed in 1935-1937.
Neskorenii  =  The Undefeated (Ukraine 2000)   PN1997 .U4495 2001    VHS
Award-winning film director Oles Yanchuk's powerful account of personal courage and determination in the face of insurmountable odds. The true story of Roman Shukhevych, the leader of the Ukrainian underground army that fought against both of the twentieth century's most devastating war machines, the Nazis and the Soviets

Moi Ivan, tvoi Abraham = Ivan and Abraham (Belarus/France 1993)    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107588/    PN1997 .I7725 1993 
In 1930s Poland, it was traditional for some Christian boys to live for a time with Jewish families in order to learn a trade from Jewish craftsmen. For this reason, Ivan has gone to live on a large estate with Abraham and his family, has     learned Yiddish, and has become Abraham's best friend. But the anti-Semitism born of poverty, ignorance, and superstition is fierce in this community of and the two boys run away into the countryside to flee an imminent conflict.         Journeying together in a menacing environment, they reveal their innocence and inseparability.

OTHER GOOD FILMS WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE

Russian Idea (Russia, 1995)   http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu/2004/films/russian-idea-program-notes.html
The term "The Russian Idea" is used to describe a desire for revolution, to create a utopia. In this film director Sergei Selyanov attempts to prove that 'our national films' that have become part of the world culture are connected with 'The Russian Idea' in one way or the other, using clips from the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Vertov. 53 min.

Voyna = The War  (Russia 2002)    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309047/
Balabanov's rabidly nationalistic take of the conflict in Chechnia (Chechens are animals and Westerners are saps).

Molitva za getmana Mazepu = A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa (Ukraine, 2002)   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323279/
Ukraine's most ambitious post-Soviet film, a historical epic.  A highly controvercial production, sometimes criticized for "horryfying diletantism" and anti-Russia bias, nevertheless is a testament of new post-Soviet sensibilities and is also made by one of the most poetic filmmakers (Yuri Ilyenko).
Occupatsia. Misterii = Misterium Occupations (Belarus, 2003)
The film is banned in Belarus for unorthodox treatment of Belarus' occupation during WWII (the film is more ambitious than that).

Putevoditel' = The Guidebook (Ukraine 2005)  http://www.fdk-berlin.de/forum/en/program/filme/putevoditel/
"The Guidebook" is the full-length fast-paced feature/documentary film dealing with  history, philosophy and aesthetics of modern life in Kiev, the most  lyrical and the most football (according to the director’s opinion) cities in the world.

Freedom's Fury (US?  2005)
A documentary on the 1956 Olympic semifinal water polo match between Hungary and Russia. Held in Australia, the match occurred as Russian forces were in Budapest, stomping out a popular revolt.

Underground (Yugoslavia 1995) Directed by Emir Kusturica. A tragicomedy about friendship and betrayal dealing with the conflicts of Yugoslav history. Marko and Blacky, two opportunistic buddies, attain riches and heroic praise dealing arms to resistance fighters in the midst of war. When things get too hot, they move into a cellar packed with refugees whom Marko encourages to manufacture the contraband. Meanwhile Marko conspires to leave Blacky in the cellar as he grows richer from the toils of those living underground. 167 min. 

Crna Macka, Beli Macor = Black Cat, White Cat (Yugoslavia 1998)
Matko is a small time hustler, living by the Danube with his 17 year old son Zare. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to         see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her. But none of the two care much for an arranged marriage: Zare is in love with Ida, Afrodita is waiting for the man of her dreams.

Pan Wolodyjowski = Mr Wolodyjowski  (Poland 1967-69)
"Pan Wolodyjowski" does not rank with some of the great film epics, such as "Lawerence of Arabia," but there is definitely much to impress the lover of historical films. This is especially true if, like me, you have grown tired of all the usual times and places that make it repeatedly into film and wish to discover a new realm of barbaric splendor and excitement. In the late-1600s, while colonists in America were struggling to defend their western frontier, there was another borderland - a "Wild East" if you will - between Europe and Asia. The frontier between the Ottoman Empire and Europe lay through Poland, Ukraine, and southeastern Europe, and each side was trying to invade the other's. This was a world of Tatars and Turks, Cossacks and Polish "winged hussars," scimitars and lances, fur caps and feathers everywhere.This film adaptation of the last of Henryk Sienkiewicz' historical trilogy is a bit dated in its looks - women with big hair and bangs, the colors a bit too bright - but with a cast of thousands the story the film tells is compelling and filled with enough pitched battles, chases, explosions, hair's-breadth escapes, love stories, strong male and female characters, rapes, murders, impalings and suicides to keep all but the most special-effects dazed teenager entertained. But more than that, this film is a gateway into forgotten realms. Can anyone watch this or the other two episodes in the trilogy ("The Deluge," and "With Fire and Sword") and ever listen to another "dumb Polack" joke again? I don't think so.

Potop = Deluge (Poland, 1974)
Adaptation of one of the parts of the trilogy of which Ogniem i mieczem forms the first book.

Bolshe Vita (Hungary 1996)
Russians, westerns and Hungarians live unique moments in post-89 Hungary.

Skrivánci na niti = Larks on a string (Czechoslovakia 1990)
Prague in the early 1950's. Bourgeois elements are being re-educated by working in a scrapyard full of the detritus of industrial society. The volunteer workers comprise a professor of literature, a public prosecutor, a dairyman, a          saxophonist, a barber, and a young cook. Also working in the yard are a number of female prisoners serving a year for trying to defect... A camera crew arrives with potted plants and other props. An idyllic scene is created; the prisoners star briefly in a pro-North Korean newsreel before going back to work... The volunteers are striking because the scrapyard work quotas have risen without consultation. A union rep arrives to persuade them otherwise... The guard for the female prisoners gets married but the gypsy musicians make a mess at his reception. The cook flirts with one of the pretty prisoners and finally proposes...

Ko to tamo peva = Who's singin' over there?  (Yugoslavia 1980)
On April 5, 1941, a date Serbs will recognize, men on a country road board Krstic's bus for Belgrade: two Gypsies who occasionally sing about misery, an aging war vet, a Nazi sympathizer, a dapper singer, a consumptive, and a man with a shotgun. Krstic is a world-weary cynic, out for a buck; the driver is his son, the simple, cheerful Misko. En route they pick up a priest and young newlyweds going to the seaside. Along the way, mis-adventure strikes: a flat tire, a rickety bridge, a farmer who's plowed the road, a funeral, two feuding families, an army detail, and a lost wallet slow the bus and expose rifts among the travelers. On April 6, amid rumors of war, they reach Belgrade...

Brat 2 = Brother 2 (Russia 2000)
Danila Bagrov meets his army buddy Konstantin Gromov in Moscow, with whom he fought in Chechnya. The friend tells Danila about his twin brother Dmitry, who is a professional hockey player in America. However, the team owner in cahoots with his Russian partner have swindled the young star into an oppressive contract, allowing them to rob him blind. Several days after this conversation Danila finds Konstantin dead. In order to straighten things out and avenge his friend, Danila goes to Chicago...

Oberst Redl = Colonel Redl  (Hungary 1985)
Director, István Szabó. Colonel Redl is the latest movie version of an oft-filmed tale, based on a true story. Redl (Klaus Maria Brandauer), a poverty-stricken Ukranian of the early 20th century, laboriously works his way into the highest circles of the Imperial Austrian Army. Throughout his upward ascent, Redl is able to keep his homosexuality from becoming public knowledge. Because of his mastery of several languages, Redl is sent by Emperor Franz Joseph to spy on the Russians. Playing one country against the other, Redl enjoys the sexual and monetary favors from both sides of the espionage spectrum until word of his gayness leaks out and he is blackmailed. To pay off his accusers, Redl is obliged to increase his counter-espionage activities on behalf of the Russians. Finally trapped by his many deceptions, Redl is given the option of killing himself to save his honor.