Balkan Cinema

When history has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn't invent a country to fool themselves? The collapsing sets of Tito's Hollywood of the East take us on a journey through the rise and fall of the illusion called Yugoslavia. Exploring the ruins of the forgotten film sets and talking to directors, producers, policemen and Tito's projectionist about the state run film studios and Tito's personal love for cinema and it's stars, 'Cinema Komunisto' uses film clips to go back to the film when 'His story' became the official history.

A group of young persons are going to make a revolution, but in real life everything is not the same as in smart books.

Balkan Rhapsodies is an episodic documentary poem that interweaves a mosaic of encounters, observations, and reflections from Silva's travels throughout war-torn Serbia and Kosovo between 1999-2005. An American filmmaker and ethnographer, Jeff Daniel Silva, was the first US civilian allowed entry into a devastated Serbia in 1999 just days after the NATO bombings. By immersing himself intimately into the lives of people he meets, the film grapples with the inexplicable contradictions he encounters while digging deeper in search for comprehension. Using the 78 days of NATO bombings (March 24 - June 10, 1999) as a structural reference point, this documentary infuses the fragmentation, cultural incongruities and ultimate dissolution of the Former Yugoslavia into the fabric of its editing through a poetic assemblage of 78 episodic movements (measures). Inspired by the rhapsodic musical form as well as a penchant for Serbia's potent national drink (ljivovica), the film weaves Silva's footage gleaned over eight years incorporating it with cultural imagery, archival material, and informal conversations with American luminaries Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Balkan Rhapsodies deftly balances a serious and humorous landscape that captures the essence of life in the Balkan's of a generation ensnared in war during the Milosevic years.

World War II drama about the 1943 battle around the Neretva River between Axis forces and Yugoslav partisan units.

In 1943, 20,000 Yugoslav partisans led by Tito find themselves encircled by 120,000 well-armed Axis troops in the mountains of Bosnia and must break out of encirclement.

A 10-year-old boy goes through variety of silly situations and confusions during the peak of Marshal Tito's cult of personality in 1950's Yugoslavia.

The film is a funny, dramatic and tragicomic search for the truth about a Song. A Song that everybody in the Balkans claims it is theirs.A Song that appears as a love song, as a religious hymn and even as a song inciting for battle. An exciting journey around Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. A film showing with a sense of humor some of the typical features of the character of the people on the Balkans, as for example their habit of appropriating all that is good and denying the others the right to possess the same qualities, the same songs, the same customs, the same temperament.

Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1993 at the time of the heaviest fighting between the two warring sides. Two soldiers from opposing sides in the conflict, Nino and Ciki, become trapped in no man's land, whilst a third soldier becomes a living booby trap.

This documentary series covers the struggles of the Yugoslavian people during the collapse of their country, and the subsequent wars to finally find hope with the signing of the Final Peace Accords.

The documentary Goli otok presents the history of the concentration camp built on an island at the Croatian northern seashore bearing the same name, during the clashes between Tito and Stalin from 1949 to 1955. The reconstruction of life at the camp and of the methods of political re-building is based on the testimonies of the former prisoner Alfred Pal, while the words of the former general of the Yugoslavian secret political police Jovo Kapicic reveal the establishment's view on the logic's and the motives that led to the creation of the Camp. This documentary also reveals more than a few non-published documents of the Yugoslav secret services shedding new light on the consequences of the Tito-Stalin skirmish that spelled doom for the condemned enemies of the state Stalin's allies.

Casting is a documentary about people forced to take desperate measures-even compromise their moral standards-to make money in the economically deprived climate of Eastern Europe. Often not knowing what they are getting themselves into, these men and women are herded into casting calls, asked to strip to their underwear, and answer personal questions in front of a camera.

A contemporary historical film reflecting the drama of the profound social changes that the Serbian society underwent at the turn of this century. The story is delivered through an account of the development of the local ambulance service. Adhering to the spirit of modern neorealism, this evolution is illustrated by three stories set in three different periods linked by mutually connected and conditioned characters; and there is also a dream of what it could be!

Kosovo 2004, five years after the war. Nenad, ten year old Christian boy from a Serbian enclave, determined to create a proper community burial for his late grandfather, crosses enemy lines and makes friends among the Muslim majority in deeply divided, war-torn Kosovo.

This is the story about the investigation and trial following the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which triggered the First World War. The courtroom drama is seen through the eyes of young attorney Rudolf Zistler, one of the attorneys appointed by the court to defend the 24 accused members of Young Bosnia and assassin Gavrilo Princip. Rudolf Zistler, the forgotten hero of this historic trial, was the only one who really defended the accused, in spite of the threats, and facing a danger of being lynched by Austrian officers. According to his own conscience, and skill, he bravely proved that the accusation for high treason was not legally valid, by proving that Bosnia was not legally part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, but just an occupied territory.

Belgrade during the height of the war Yugoslavia in 1999. Kaja struggles with daily destruction and the constant threat of being drafted, but also with his impending divorce from his wife Tijana, who wants to emigrate with their son.

Set in early 19th century Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.

Several urban legends of Communist Romania are dramatized.