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Macedonia: Celluloid Heroes
April 15, 2006
Transitions Online (www.tol.cz), 12 April 2006
by Robert Alagjozovski
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Magical documentary or crass fiction? The people of Sutka are divided over a new film about their "champions."
SKOPJE, Macedonia | "I heard about Sutka 10 years ago in a Prague bar," Aleksandar Manic says.
The filmmaker recalls how a friend regaled him with "an unbelievable story about this magical place where joy and sorrow mix and people pulsate with everyday passion and love of life."
Manic went on to make a film about the Skopje suburb known familiarly as Sutka (pronounced Shutka). The Shutka Book of Records is winning awards and good reviews - and protests from some Sutka residents, who say the film ridicules the inhabitants of the municipality, the great majority of whom are Roma.
At the film's Skopje premiere in February, a group of Sutka political representatives and Romani activists demonstrated at the Kultura cinema where the event was held. Some called for the film to be banned. Instead, it was shown throughout the country, and on 6 April it opened the Golden Wheel Roma film festival, a low-key event now in its fourth year.
Golden Wheel's sponsor, TV BTR Nacional, one of Macedonia's two Romani-language television stations, did take note of the controversy around the film, arranging a workshop during the festival on the presentation of Roma in film and theater.
When The Shutka Book of Records first hit local cinemas, tempers flared over its style as much as its content. Some Macedonian Roma say the film blurs the line between documentary and fiction and has no claim to real life in Sutka, formally Suto Orizari, a municipality of more than 20,000 people within the Skopje metropolitan area.
LIFE IN HAPPY VALLEY
The Shutka Book of Records is a joint Serbian-Czech production, filmed during 2000 and 2001 in Suto Orizari by the Serbian-born Manic. The film presents more than a dozen authentic Sutka characters: Uncle Muso; Dider "the Terminator"; Veso, known as Alfonso; Fazli, alias Sabrina; the boxer Jadigar; Refet Travolta; Ali Bajram; and others. Each is distinguished by a distinctive hobby or obsession and each strives to be a champion in his or her field (thus the film's Macedonian title, Champions of Sutka). One collects pirated Turkish music tapes. Jadigar is an impresario of goose fights as well as boxing matches. Yashar the Dervish is a vampire and Dr. Koljo an exorcist. Others are hyper-productive creators of music videos, and some present themselves as champions "in sex, wardrobe collection, and culture." The connecting link and guide through the film is Dr. Koljo, otherwise Bajram Severdzan, who appeared as an amateur actor in Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat and Stole Popov's Gypsy Magic.
When Manic got together enough money to start shooting he said he encountered "a sea of stories" in Sutka.
Inspired by the rich variety of personalities he found there, Manic returned for additional filming, eventually gathering so much footage it took him 400 hours to edit the film. The finished product - "acted documentary," Manic says - is a mix of documentary material and stories acted out by their real-life protagonists, embellished through the occasional use of black-and-white film, animation, and a speeded-up camera to recreate the jerky rhythm of early silent film.
The film presents Suto Orizari as a poor place, "the poorest in Europe," and yet for Manic, the intensely idiosyncratic characters he met there justify his nickname for it, "Happy Valley."
Sutka is not just a place, "but a state of mind, a state of happiness, passion and complete freedom," Manic says.
CHAMPIONS OF THE FESTIVALS
Since premiering at the 2005 Rotterdam film festival, the film went globetrotting, with successful screenings at festivals in La Rochelle, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and closer to home in the Serbian towns of Subotica and Novi Sad. In Ljubljana it won an award from Amnesty International for the promotion of human rights and minorities, and it took both the critics' and the audience prizes at Novi Sad.
Shutka "reflects on the connection between money, or the absence of it, and joy, about moral values, social standards, good taste and bad taste, myths and mystification," wrote the Portuguese critic Joao Antunes after the film's screening in Tromso, Norway, where it won a prize from the International Federation of Film Critics.
The press kit handed out to Macedonian journalists gives a sampling of the comments (positive, naturally) made by foreign critics. One called it a "magical collection of surreal characters from the biggest Roma ghetto in Europe," and an unidentified Dutch critic compared the film's style to that of Fellini.
One unnamed American journalist, apparently struck by the acting talents of Sutka's residents, remarked that the film was a fake documentary with trained actors playing made-up characters.
The film's Macedonian distributor promised to bring Manic's work to a wide audience. Darko Mitrevski did just that when distributing his own 2005 film, Bal-Can-Can. Mitrevski's movie, not unlike Shutka in its esthetics, was screened throughout Macedonia, even in shut-down movie houses or former cinemas converted to other uses, drawing 120,000 viewers, a tally not seen since the 1980s. Mitrevski promised similar viewership and promotion for the documentary as well.
"We believe in the commercial potential" of Shutka, Mitrevski said. "The film is hilariously funny, emotionally it brings you to tears, and surrealistic to the point of madness."
As he launched the nationwide media campaign for the film, though, Mitrevski could hardly have foreseen the kind of press Shutka was about to get.
CHARGES OF CYNICAL EXPLOITATION
"We say 'enough.' In the Decade of Roma Inclusion, with a whole industry of nongovernmental organizations working for our emancipation, it is unjust to have somebody still showing our ugly face," the former mayor of Suto Orizari and current member of parliament from the district, Nezdet Mustafa, told the media the day before the film's Skopje premiere on 2 February.
Macedonia is one of eight countries working with Roma advocacy groups and the World Bank in the Decade of Roma Inclusion initiative.
Manic's film shows Sutka's people living in brick-and-concrete houses, like those in other poor Macedonian neighborhoods. Mustafa, however, remarked that an image of Roma living in tents and caravans as they did 40 years ago is obsolete and should give way to examples of the many Romani intellectuals, doctors, or musicians instead.
The municipality's present mayor and Mustafa's fellow member in one of the two Romani political parties in Macedonia, Erduan Iseni, said that "commercial success was the only motive for the filmmakers, and the film does not present the reality of Roma life."
"People on the edge of existence, having no place in society, are cynically called ychampions,' revealing their anomalies," Iseni said.
Both Mustafa and Ferdi Ismaili, of the Tetovo-based Roma humanitarian association Sonce ("Sun"), called on the Culture Ministry and the entire government to stop the film from being show"WE ONLY PLAYED OURSELVES"
Manic and Mitrevski rejected the accusations that the film was insensitive.
His film is "neither about the Roma, nor about Sutka, but about dozens of nice, charming, and dear people," the director said.
"Is the award-giving Amnesty international a racist organization?" asked Manic and Mitrevski in a statement.
They dismissed the protest as a cheap political ploy and said it was not fair to criticize the film without having seen it.
A number of domestic film critics and journalists have defended the film.
"Should we condemn all films that deal with the funny side of our nature?" asked the film critic of the daily Vecer.
"When the BBC and other foreign media shoot reports on Macedonia they don't show the yuppies with briefcases but the beggars around [Skopje's historic] Stone Bridge," wrote columnist Jasna Frangovska in the daily Vreme.
Some local film fans were skeptical of the film's artistic quality. Biljana, a blogger who discussed the film on her site, told TOL the film made its effects with "a special humor based on the feeling of superiority through humiliating the other."
Countering the claims of the artistic community, some of the film's detractors insisted they only objected to the film's claims to be a true documentary and would not be opposed to a treatment of the same theme from a purely fictional angle, like the work of Kusturica. According to Mayor Iseni, some of the film's protagonists felt cheated because their stories were taken out of context, and complained that their everyday life looked nothing like the film version.
Bajram Severdzan defended the film's style. "The unusual champions are part of the special positive energy that characterizes the Roma," he said.
Ali Bajram, one of the Sutka "champions," a musician reportedly with 14 albums and 20 videos, agreed that the furor around the film's Macedonian release was political.
"How can people be offended? We only played ourselves and not somebody else," said Bajram, who told TOL he had recently appeared at the Romfest music festival in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. "I am proud that people outside Sutka will hear about me through this film."
On the streets of Suto Orizari, opinion on the film tended to divide along age lines, with younger people likely to have positive views while their elders regard it as a shame for the Roma.
A local Romani representative of a think tank specializing in minority affairs said those Roma who objected to the film were protesting in the wrong place. Ibrahim Ibrahimi of the European Center for Minority Issues said the film does convey the reality of Romani life, "the poor conditions in which they live."
"The protests should be directed towards the bad policies of Roma parties that are not able to deal with the problems of the Romani community," Ibrahimi said.
Two months after its premiere, the film is still showing in Macedonian cinemas and no formal requests have been lodged with the government to pull it. Next year, the debate over the film's merits could spread to Hollywood, if the distributor holding the film's North American rights successfully lobbies for the film to be allowed to compete for the Oscar as best documentary.
Robert Alagjozovski is a TOL correspondent in Skopje.
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