Go east

Exploring film culture behind the
former Iron Curtain at EUROfEST

by MARK SLUTSKY

From Eisenstein and Kuleshov to the Czech New Wave to Jan Svankmajer to emerging talents like Cristian Mungiu, Eastern Europe has always been a significant contributor to world cinema. The chunk of continent formerly hidden behind the Iron Curtain is the focus of EUROfEST, which opens this week at the Cinéma du Parc and Segal Centre.

Now in its second year, the festival showcases filmmaking talent from an impressive breadth of countries, with movies originating from Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia… the list goes on and on.

Despite the attitudes of prevailing regimes, Eastern Europe always had a fascinating underground rock scene in the Communist era, and a couple of EUROfEST films touch on that. Slovenian director Igor Zupe’s Music Is the Art of Time focuses on ’70s Yugoslavian punk legends Pankrti, and specifically their album Dolgcajt (No Fun), and features interviews with contemporary musicians, critics and scenesters. Graffiti Street, directed by Sergej Kreso, is a doc about Sarajevo rockers LaBanda, a popular band whose first album was interrupted by the Bosnian war, and who now gather to finish recording.

Canadian David Homel’s doc Is My Story Hurting You? covers similar ground, at least geopolitically, focusing on a Bosnian Serb therapist, Vladimir Jovic, who treats those affected by the region’s recent, bloody past. In Grandpa and Grandma, Lithuanian director Giedre Beinoriute explores her own past, or rather that of her family, specifically her grandparents, exiled to Siberia in the late ’40s.

FAMILY VALUES: Mrs. Ratcliffe’s Revolution

Two films look at the careers of significant Eastern European artists. Jan Saudek—Trapped by His Passions, No Hope for Rescue, by Adolf Zika, looks at the life and work of Czech photographer Saudek, through three intertwined storylines. Dzintra Geka’s John Dored’s Island focuses on the Latvian cinematographer of the title, who covered WWI, Lenin’s funeral and other big news of the 20th Century.

The program isn’t comprised entirely of docs, of course. Set in a deer farm, the Latvian film The Dark Deer tells the story of a teenage girl who attempts to save her family’s animals from German hunters. Also from Latvia is Laila Pakalnina’s The Hostage, about a hijacked airplane and the sole captive, a seven-year-old boy.

Mrs. Ratcliffe’s Revolution, directed by Bille Eltringham, is a Hungarian-U.K. co-pro about a ’60s-era British family who make their way to Communist East Germany. Bullying is the subject matter of Estonian filmmaker Ilmar Raag’s The Class, an award-winner at quite a few European festivals about a couple of kids who band together and wage war on their tormentors. German-Turkish film Hidden Faces tackles the issue of honour killings with the layered story of a woman hunted by her uncle after she appears in a documentary about the practice.

In conjunction with the festival, a photography exhibit, Interférences Montréal: Art Nouveau en Roumanie will be hitting the walls at the Cinéma du Parc. As the title suggests, the show will highlight the works of pioneering Eastern European architectural modernists and should provide an interesting visual companion to the festival.

EUROFEST RUNS FROM SEPT. 19-25 AT
THE CINÉMA DU PARC AND THE SEGAL
CENTRE. FOR MORE INFO, SEE
WWW.EUROFEST.CA

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