Kusturica’s Groove

On the Balkan Fellini

Emir Kusturica is the Balkan Fellini, where the Arthouse meets the soul. You can be as Avantgarde as you like but without a cultural core you’re just saying look how clever I am. Or imagine if Fellini or Kaurismaki was from the Eastern Block and add sometimes slapstick, sometimes very dark humour on top and you might come close to what the director was doing. Definitely not as bleak as Bela Tarr but has the same sense of humanism. His work from the early 80’s to the late 90’s is what you want to seek out, particularly Time of the Gypsies (1988) which is pure cinema magic. His debut Do You Remember Dolly Bell (1981) was rooted in his home town of Sarajevo and focused on the transition from old neighbourhoods to squashing the populace downtown into high rise towers in the name of Socialist utopia.

A slice of raw life mixed with magic and mystery, death followed by comedy followed by something inexplicable. He’s tackled romance, war, youth, socialism and industrialisation while simultaneously criticising and celebrating all of it. We’re from a similar part of central Bosnia with its own special brand of ethnicities, myths, foods and feuds. A meeting point of east and west, medieval Christianity, Ottoman Empire followed by Austro-Hungarian modernism. None of it to be taken too seriously because you might find yourself drunk at dawn with a local in a strange town. Both of you standing on centuries old cobble stones with the ancient accordion blues swirling inside your head. Incidentally those same stones were used to hold down the pickled cabbage stored in the basement and that smell is enough to awaken your dead relatives.