News Roundup!

I hope all the U of C students are having a good reading period! 

First off I have some interesting news of a type I usually don't cover: Wired magazine's blog Danger Room has an article talking about how Georgia is blaming the Russian government for a cyber attack which took place three weeks before the crisis this summer. Whether or not you believe them, it's an interesting story. 

There's been a lot of news floating around recently about the 2009 Eurovison Song Contest, being hosted by Russia this year. The most interesting story, in my opinion (more Georgia and Russia, my apologies!) is how Georgia's song was deemed unacceptable due to the political connotations in the lyrics. The BBC also reports on how Russia has chosen a Ukrainian singer to represent it in the contest. They also have a more opinion-type piece on the politics behind the contest (I find it interesting to read the comments, left by people from all over, as well).

While maybe not a current event, the NYT has a good piece on bribery in the Romanian medical system. I thought the most interesting part was how patients would worry that if the doctor didn't accept their bribe, it was because they had an incurable disease. From some of our favorite news sites: Balken Insight has a good page with news about the upcoming election in Macedonia, and Transitions Online has a followup article about the closing of the American air base at Manas. 

And, in things that you might not think is as exciting as I do: One of my favorite websites (The Daily Beast) did an article on stylish first ladies from around the world. Two from the CEERES region that made it are Kateryna Yushchenko, wife of the Ukrainian president, and Mehriban Aliyeva, first lady of Azerbaijan. I think two of ten is doing pretty good! 

It's cold. Stay home and watch a film. From Romania.

It's officially cold now in Chicago. The city that is full of cultural festivals and life on the streets in the summer is keeping warm indoors. There is, of course, always a vibrant film life in the theaters. But if it gets even a bit too cold to go out at all, there's plenty of films to find for yourself.

I just saw an interesting multimedia showcase of the current crop of outstanding Romanian films, on the New York Times website, by A.O. Scott. The review is a great introduction to some of the better international films being produced. Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/01/18/magazine/20080120_ROMANIAN_FEATURE.html#

East Europe at Chicago Film Fest

The Chicago film fest began this week, and it runs until Oct. 17. There looks to be a strong showing of films from our region of the world (mostly central Europe; though a disappointing lack of films from the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia), so I decided to run through the program and list the films from our region in order to save you that step.

The full program is available here. The locations are spread throughout the city, and the program is rich with material.

There's an especially extensive list of films from Hungary, as well as an-person discussion with famed Hungarian film-maker Istvan Szazbo (Mephisto). The Romanian film 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS & 2 DAYS has already been generating great reviews for a year, and I hear that the Czech film I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND (OBSLUHOVAL JSEM ANGLICKÉHO KRÁLE) will be really good.

Below, I've culled the films from the CEERES region:

HARD-HEARTED
KREMEN
Director: Aleksei Mizgiryov
Russia
First-time director Aleksei Mizgiryov, who picked up the Best Debut prize at the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival, looks at the stark reality of Moscow through the eyes of Anton, a young war vet from the countryside. Anton’s rosy vision of the city, fueled by memories of a lost love, is quickly squashed on his first encounter with the city’s crooked cops. 82 min.
Wed 10/10 | 9:45pm | LM3 | EHHD1
Thurs 10/11 | 6:45pm | LM2 | EHHD2
Mon 10/15 | 7:15pm | AMC9 | EHHD3

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS & 2 DAYS
4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMANI SI 2 ZILE
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Romania
Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, 4 Months combines documentary-style camerawork with naturalistic acting to draw viewers into a raw, realistic world. It’s 1987, at the tail end of the Ceausescu era in Romania, and college roommates Otilia and Gabita live in fear and oppression. Gabita is pregnant, and together they prepare to meet with a cruel abortionist who asks them for more than money in return for his dangerous and illegal procedure. Romanian with English subtitles. 113 min.
Sun 10/7 | 6:00pm | AMC4 | EMWD1
Tues 10/9 | 8:45pm | LM3 | EMWD2

THE BANISHMENT
IZGNANIE
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Russia
The power of The Banishment, like director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s previous film, 2004’s Golden Globe®-nominated The Return, lies in the information that is withheld from the audience. Alex hurries his wife, Vera, and two children from an anonymous city to the stilly, bucolic countryside, where Vera reveals to Alex a shocking secret—she’s pregnant, and the child isn’t his. Russian with English subtitles. 150 min.
Sun 10/7 | 7:30pm | LM4 | EBAN1
Mon 10/8 | 8:15pm | LM3 | EBAN2
Tues 10/16 | 4:30pm | AMC4 | EBAN3

OPIUM: DIARY OF A MADWOMAN
ÓPIUM: EGY ELMEBETEG NAPLÓJA
Director: János Szász
Hungary
Based on the infamous writings of Hungarian psychoanalyst Geza Csath, Opium peers inside the chilling confines of an experimental institute for the mentally ill in the early 20th century. Though the film offers plenty of hair-raising glimpses of archaic instruments and barbarous medical procedures, the focus is on the increasingly symbiotic relationship between a morphine-addicted doctor and one tormented patient, whose voluminous diaries offer a window into her ravaged brain. Hungarian with English subtitles. 110 min.
Wed 10/10 | 6:45pm | AMC4 | EOIM1
Thurs 10/11 | 9:30pm | AMC7 | EOIM2
Tues 10/16 | 4:15pm | LM7 | EOIM3

SAVIOR’S SQUARE
PLAC ZBAWICIELA
Directors: Krzysztof Krauze, Joanna Kos-Krauze
Poland
Savior’s Square, which has already racked up five top awards from the Polish Film Festival and four more from the Polish Film Awards, offers a devastating glimpse into a family’s struggle to stay afloat in post-Communist Poland. After losing his money in an apartment scam, Bartek is forced to move his wife and sons into his mother’s tiny Warsaw apartment. Personal hostilities within the apartment come to a boiling point as family values disintegrate. Polish with English subtitles. 105 min.
Tues 10/9 | 4:45pm | AMC4 | ESSQ1
Wed 10/10 | 7:00pm | LM3 | ESSQ2
Thurs 10/11 | 7:00pm | LM4 | ESSQ3

I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND
OBSLUHOVAL JSEM ANGLICKÉHO KRÁLE
Director: Jirí Menzel
Czech Republic / Slovakia
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, this irreverent black comedy blends razorship wit and blunt tragedy into a no-holds-barred social commentary. The King begins in the 1950s with Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) being released from a 15-year imprisonment imposed by the Communists. Flash back to the ’30s, when womanizing Jan, an ambitious go-getter who longs to be a rich hotelier, hooks up with a fervent Aryan as the Nazis begin to invade. Czech and German with English subtitles. 120 min.
Wed 10/10 | 9:00pm | AMC9 | ESKE1
Thurs 10/11 | 6:30pm | AMC7 | ESKE2
Tues 10/16 | 5:00pm | LM3 | ESKE3

ISKA’S JOURNEY
ISZKA UTAZÁSA
Director: Bollók Csaba
Hungary
Beautiful compositions of a criminally unfortunate way of life make for an eye-opening, dramatic experience in Iska’s Journey. Daily, poor young Iska must salvage enough scrap metal from the trash heaps to keep her witchy mother in booze and cigarettes. One day she and a lovestruck fellow ragamuffin decide to escape to the place of Iska’s dreams, the seaside—but the journey could lead to an even worse fate. Hungarian with English subtitles. 92 min.
Wed 10/10 | 8:45pm | LM7 | EIZJ1
Thurs 11/11 | 9:15pm | LM7 | EIZJ2
Sat 10/13 | 12:00pm | AMC4 | EIZJ3

THE MAN FROM LONDON
A LONDINI FÉRFI
Director: Béla Tarr
Hungary/France/Germany
Hungarian master filmmaker Béla Tarr follows 2000’s award winning stunner Werckmeister Harmonies with another black-and-white masterpiece that is at once dreamy, genuine, eerie, and breathtaking. After witnessing a murder, railway worker Maloin’s quiet life of seaside isolation changes forever. Forced to examine his thoughts on crime and punishment, Maloin begins to question his own worth and the meaning of his existence. Hungarian with English subtitles. 132 min.
Thurs 10/11 | 4:15pm | LM3 | EMFL1
Fri 10/12 | 6:30pm | LM4 | EMFL2
Sun 10/14 | 8:45pm | AMC9 | EMFL3

MEN IN THE NUDE
FÉRFIAKT
Director: Károly Esztergályos
Hungary
Middle-aged Tibor, unhappy in his marriage and career, never considered bisexuality, but a manipulative 19-year-old male prostitute pursues him and ignites a sexual passion and artistic inspiration that Tibor feared he’d lost forever. Bold and affecting visuals lead us through a rocky relationship plagued by the human fear of aging as well as the potentially tragic interplay between love and sexuality. Hungarian with English subtitles. 94 min.
Fri 10/5 | 10:00pm | AMC9 | EMIN1
Mon 10/15 | 9:45pm | LM3 | EMIN2
Tues 10/16 | 7:30pm | LM3 | EMIN3

TRADE ROUTES
Director: Jim Loftus
Bulgaria/USA
Against the backdrop of a high-stakes Bulgarian election, this dense political thriller finds an ingenuous, low-level CIA officer and her disgruntled boss trying to strike a dangerous deal with the prime minister’s top political officer, who desperately needs to finance his campaign. In a world where information buys money and money buys power, everyone along the trade routes faces questions of duty and betrayal. English and Bulgarian with English subtitles. 117 min.
Fri 10/5 | 9:30pm | LM2 | ETRR1
Sun 10/14 | 12:15pm | AMC9 | ETRR2
Mon 10/15 | 9:45pm | AMC7 | ETRR3

István Szabó
Friday, October 12 6:45 p.m.
Landmark’s Century
Centre Cinema
2828 N. Clark St.
The always entertaining Hungarian director István Szabó (Sunshine, Being Julia) spends an evening at the festival speaking on the intimacy and the insight that can be achieved with the use of the close-up in film. Szabó has said that film has “one singular quality that no other art form can supply. The moving picture is capable of showing us a living human face in close-up: this ability is the source of its special energy.” In his carefully cast films, Szabó perceptively uses close-ups to convey what he has called “life’s beautiful changes, the constant movements of the human expression in the most intimate moment, in the moment of its birth.” Szabó received an Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film for Mephisto, one masterpiece in a trilogy that includes Colonel Redl and Hanussen. Now is your chance to get up close and personal with one of the world’s great film artists.

Gypsy Wednesday

Gypsy Caravan

What really got me thinking about getting this CEERES Blog up and running is the incredible cultural entertainments and events happening in Chicago.

Last night, the Associate Director of CEERES, Meredith Clason, and myself (Jeremy Pinkham, Outreach Coordinator) took a field trip to the historic Chicago theater the Music Box to see the documentary film Gypsy Caravan.

Gypsy Caravan at the Music Box Theater

The documentary follows the Gypsy Caravan, a 2002 concert tour in the U.S. made up of 5 Romani musical groups from Macedonia, Spain, India, and Romania. I'd like to comment on some of the more interesting, eye-opening elements of the film. For one, the music, and variety of musical traditions, coming out of Rom culture is extremely rich and varied. I, for one, was not aware that flamenco music and dance, so associated with Spain, actually has its roots in the Spanish gypsy population. Nor was I aware that an old population of Rom still lives in India (in Rajastan, the supposed ancestral homeland of Rom peoples), though on second thinking it makes perfect sense. The film received favorable comparisons to Bueno Vista Social Club, and I only wish that we were shown more music throughout the course of the film.

There is much talk among the musicians in Gypsy Caravan about the commonalities still shared by these geographically isolated yet culturally linked populations, and about the common soul and rhythm of the gypsies. Something even more interesting to me are the elements that we are shown in passing that give context to the lives of the Romani in the places they live. We get the idea that the success of some of these musicians in the west provides the only income for some of the families and villages back home. One fascinating scene has an interview with a gypsy war refugee from Kosovo, who has found acceptance and assistance from Romanis in Macedonia.

Of note: one of the featured performers in Gypsy Caravan, Esma Redžepova of Macedonia, provided the single Čaje Šukarije for Borat.

I'd recommend this film for a number of reasons: experience great music; find out about a group of people scattered by time, diplacement, and prejudice, but nourished by their community and traditions; visit the wonderful Music Box theater.

[By the way, without meaning any insensitivity, I use the term gypsy, which is often regarded as derogative, interspersed with the more acceptable ethnic terms Rom, Roma, and Romani, because the use of the various terms show how identities are constructed, reinforced, and questioned over time.]

A little more on Gypsies

Watching the film also reminded me that there are other media resources about Rom music that I've been meaning to share. Influences of Balkan, Slavic, Gypsy, punk, jazz, and rock are fusing in lots of different bands in Europe and especially in the U.S. One of the more increasingly well-known bands is Gogol Bordello, based out of NYC, and who seem to be touring across the states all the time. The are fronted by Eugene Huts, a Ukrainian who grew up in the USSR and is a survivor of the Chernobyl disaster. Recently, I heard a couple great pieces of radio about the band and their music. These resources are available online and as podcasts:

• an interview on Fresh Air with Teri Gross with Eugene Huts of Gogol Bordello
  
• a live concert performance of Gogol Bordello on NPR's Live Concert Series
  

That's all for Gypsy Wednesday. I'm sure there's lots more news, events, and bands I could profile in this space, but this media came to my attention, and I hope it's a jumping-off point.