For the first edition (1st – 5th of October 2009), which coincided with 20 years after the collapse of communism, we have chosen to look back with a smile and present the parodies that were made back then, some of which many wouldn’t remember or even know at all, due to their minimizing or incomplete perspective upon the communist era.
Schedule
October 1st – 4th, Eforie Cinematheque
Thursday, the 1st of October Films for Fun (October 1st – 5th)
15:00 PROGRAM OF STUDENT FILMS 1
17:30 IVAN VASILIEVICH: BACK TO THE FUTURE / IVAN VASILIEVICI MENIAE OFESIU
Soviet Union, 1973
Director: Leonid Gaidai
The comical time travel is opened with the film Hibernatus (1969, France, Director: Edouard Molinaro, with Louis de Funès). With Leonid Gaidai, a time machine accidentally engages a real medieval character, the Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who reaches Moscow in the Seventies. With this comic technique, Russian SF anticipates, 20 years sooner, the movie Just Visiting (1993, France, Director: Jean-Marie Poire, with Jean Reno).
17:30 EVENT PRESENTED BY MANUELA HĂRĂBOR
20:00 LEMONADE JOE / LIMONÁDOVÝ JOE ANEB KONSKÁ OPERA
Czechoslovakia, 1964
Director: Oldrich Lipský
Friday, the 2nd of October
15:00 PROGRAM OF STUDENT FILMS 1
18:00 THE DIAMOND ARM / BRILIANTOVA RUKA
Soviet Union, 1968
Director: Leonid Gaidai
A detective comedy that partially takes place in Istanbul, in which a coincidence (a scream of pain made by some nobody, which is also a signal for smugglers) acts as a snowball that causes an avalanche. Istanbul started to be the perfect location for espionage and robberies, since Journey into Fear (USA, 1943, Director: Norman Foster, with: Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles and Dolores del Rio). In the Sixties, when Gaidai made his film, the city on two continents had already become an irreplaceable character in many western films, amongst which the most famous one was Topkapi (USA, Director: Jules Dassin, also after a novel by Eric Ambler). This latter film by Jules Dassin became an icon, with some elements, such as the exotic location, being later parodied by Blake Edwards in The Pink Panther cycle, while the robbery by the act of an acrobat was retrieved by the director John Woo and the actor Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II (2000). If we force such comparison, the action in The Diamond Arm is similar to the one in The Sucker / Le corniaud The Sucker / Le corniaud (1964, France, Director: Gerard Oury, with Bourvil and Louis de Funes). Despite the Berlin Wall, filmmakers from both East and West used to watch movies from the other side, but we cannot definitely conclude that Gaidai, with The Diamond Arm, took direct inspiration from Oury’s film, neither that Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the future was emulated by the makers of Just Visiting.
20:00 A QUIET SUMMER / MIRNO LEATO
Yugoslavia, Rep. of Macedonia, 1961
Director: Dimitrie Osmanli
The vacation of a couple of intellectuals that live in a museum turns into a nightmare for them, but a funny story for the audience.
Saturday, the 3rd of October
15:00 PROGRAM OF STUDENT FILMS 3
18:00 STRANGLER VS. STRANGLER / DAVITELJ PROTIV DAVITELJA
Yugoslavia, 1984
Director: Slobodan Sijan
Slobodan Sijan is known for his two previous films, Who's Singin' Over There? and The Marathon Family. He remains a master of comedy while taking on a horror subject. His parody succeeds in being both serious and well documented in the field of psychoanalysis, and also reaches comic results while probing the mechanisms of horror films in general and the atmosphere of the films of Mario Bava in particular.
20:00 ADELLE’S DINNER / ADÉLA JESTE NEVECERLA
Czechoslovakia, 1977
Director: Oldrich Lipský
Detective Nick Carter emerges as a character in the US at the end of the 19th century and survives in novels till 1990. Oldrich Lipský calls him into action in Prague at the beginning of the 20th century to solve a case in which the serial killings have an absolutely unusual murderer. The atmosphere of the 1900s is also suggested by inserts, with Jan Švankmajer’s decisive contribution with spectacular animation. If you wish, the story somewhat reminds of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) by Roger Corman.
Sunday, the 4th of October
15:00 PROGRAM OF STUDENT FILMS 4
17:00 BALKAN SPY / BALKANSKI SPIJUN
Yugoslavia, 1984
Directors: Duşan Kovacević, Božidar Bota Nikolić
After settling in the west, Petar Jakovljević returns to his homeland for business. He becomes the object of a feverish chase by his neighbor Ilija Cvorović. Stage-to-screen adaptation of the famous play by Duşan Kovacević, who also made the screenplays for Underground and other Yugoslav films, amongst which those of Slobodan Sijan.
19:00 THE MYSTERIOUS CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS / DAVITELI PROTIV DAVITELJA
Czechoslovakia, 1981
Director: Oldrich Lipský
In the same year when Stere Gulea was making a politicized screen adaptation of the novel of Jules Verne, as the action is connected to the Memorandum movement in Transylvania, Oldrich Lipský was also starting from Jules Verne, feverishly parodying vampire movies (following the example of Roman Polanski), the industrial revolution (as the machines of the crazy scientist Orfanik, played by Rudolf Hrusínský, are still fragile), paranormal phenomena, and the Austro-Hungarian subjects’ passion for music. The action takes place in the mountainous and archaic kingdom of Carpathia, and there’s obviously some referenceto Dracula. And to think, in the meantime, Dracula and vampires were still taboo subject for us…
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