Giorgio Bertellini
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038891
- eISBN:
- 9780252096853
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038891.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career, Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to produce ...
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Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career, Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to produce subversive, playful, often satiric works. On the way he won acclaim and widespread popularity while showing a genius for adjusting his poetic pitch—shifting from romantic realist to controversial satirist to sentimental jester. This book divides Kusturica's career into three stages—dissention, disconnection, and dissonance—to reflect both the historic and cultural changes going on around him and the changes his cinema has undergone. The book uses Kusturica's Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995)—the famously inflammatory take on Yugoslav history after World War II—as the pivot between the tone of romantic, yet pungent critique of the director's early works and later journeys into Balkanist farce marked by slapstick and a self-conscious primitivism. Eschewing the one-sided polemics that Kusturica's work often provokes, the book employs balanced discussion and critical analysis to offer a fascinating and up-to-date consideration of a major figure in world cinema.Less
Emir Kusturica is one of Eastern Europe's most celebrated and influential filmmakers. Over the course of a thirty-year career, Kusturica has navigated a series of geopolitical fault lines to produce subversive, playful, often satiric works. On the way he won acclaim and widespread popularity while showing a genius for adjusting his poetic pitch—shifting from romantic realist to controversial satirist to sentimental jester. This book divides Kusturica's career into three stages—dissention, disconnection, and dissonance—to reflect both the historic and cultural changes going on around him and the changes his cinema has undergone. The book uses Kusturica's Palme d'Or winning Underground (1995)—the famously inflammatory take on Yugoslav history after World War II—as the pivot between the tone of romantic, yet pungent critique of the director's early works and later journeys into Balkanist farce marked by slapstick and a self-conscious primitivism. Eschewing the one-sided polemics that Kusturica's work often provokes, the book employs balanced discussion and critical analysis to offer a fascinating and up-to-date consideration of a major figure in world cinema.
Giorgio Bertellini
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038891
- eISBN:
- 9780252096853
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038891.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter provides an overview of the political background that has shaped Emir Kusturica's films. Generationally and critically, Kusturica is the most renowned filmmaker associated both with the ...
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This chapter provides an overview of the political background that has shaped Emir Kusturica's films. Generationally and critically, Kusturica is the most renowned filmmaker associated both with the old Cold War's divide and its post-1989 aftermath. His work emerged out of a context that proved to be resiliently unlike any other within the Eastern European bloc. As one of few directors capable of thriving before and after 1989 (and between East and West), Kusturica appears to have adjusted his poetic pitch multiple times, just as critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain have felt compelled to reassess their judgment about his work. In reality, the chapter argues that his productions and activities have revolved around a poetic core that, in a dialogue with pressing historical occurrences, has undergone an expansion in terms of public political engagement and intermedial reach without altering itself.Less
This chapter provides an overview of the political background that has shaped Emir Kusturica's films. Generationally and critically, Kusturica is the most renowned filmmaker associated both with the old Cold War's divide and its post-1989 aftermath. His work emerged out of a context that proved to be resiliently unlike any other within the Eastern European bloc. As one of few directors capable of thriving before and after 1989 (and between East and West), Kusturica appears to have adjusted his poetic pitch multiple times, just as critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain have felt compelled to reassess their judgment about his work. In reality, the chapter argues that his productions and activities have revolved around a poetic core that, in a dialogue with pressing historical occurrences, has undergone an expansion in terms of public political engagement and intermedial reach without altering itself.
