November 3, 2005 @ 7PM
A WONDERFUL NIGHT IN SPLIT/ TA DIVNA SPLITSKA NOC
2004, Alka Film, Croatia 100 MIN
Director: Arsen Anton Ostojic 
Cast: Dino Dvornik, Marinko Prga, Mladen Vulic, Marija Skaricic, Coolio
Croatian (English subtitles)

The official Croatian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Annual Academy Awards, Arsen Anton Ostojic’s Ta divna splitska noc (A Wonderful Night in Split) has already won numerous awards at prestigious film festivals all over the world.  A black-and-white film constructed around three interlocking and overlapping stories, each with fatal consequences, Ta divna splitska noc takes place between 10 pm and midnight on a New Year’s Eve in the narrow streets and corridors of Split on the Adriatic coast.  A smalltime drug dealer Nike has just abandoned his mother and widow Maria to go to Germany with a shipment of drugs – a plan that fatally backfires. Maja, who urgently needs money for her next fix, is supposed to prostitute herself with the dejected US Marine Franky (played by Coolio). And teenagers Luka and Angela want to lose their virginity under the influence of LSD before midnight. A smart screenplay ties all three stories into an expertly made film noir.

Arsen Anton Ostojic
Arsen Anton Ostojic received his BA in film directing from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, Croatia in 1990, and his MFA degree in filmmaking from New York University in 1994. He has made several award-winning documentaries and short films, in addition to the recently completed full length feature film. He worked on about twenty feature films in Europe and in the United States as an assistant director, production manager or line producer. He is currently teaching production at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, following several teaching assignments in New York City and in Salzburg, Austria.
www.arsenantonostojic.com
 

December 1, 2005 @ 7PM
HERE / TU
2003, Interfilm, Croatia, 90 MIN
Director: Zrinko Ogresta
Cast: Zlatko Crnkovic, Ivo Gregurevic, Marija Tadic, Jasmin Telalovic, Ivan Herceg, Nikola Ivosevic
Croatian (English subtitles)

The Balkan conflict and its legacy continue to make their mark on the contemporary Croatian cinema. A success with the audiences and the critics, Zrinko Ogresta's Here (Tu) makes no attempt to find heroes or apportion blame. It opens with the story of a mentally disabled man in a village recently devastated by civil war.  What follows are five loosely linked portraits from contemporary life: a young female drug addict, a lonely retired man who is deluded into accepting a young neighbor's offer of a date, a television actor who has become an alcoholic, and two soldiers who have been traumatized by war.  The stories present situations in which the characters find themselves at odds with an apparently normal world, living essentially private lives and unable to establish relationships. There is a no narrative resolution although the film ends with the ironic use of the national anthem before the camera retreats through a tunnel similar to that with which the film begins. The war frames and inflects a sympathetic and humane portrait of everyday life that recognizes how all generations of the Croatian society have been permanently marked by the horrors of the recent war.

Zrinko Ogresta
Zrinko Ogresta was born in 1958. He is a graduate of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. After two short films (The Forbiden Toy in 1985 and A Tin in 1986), he directed several TV features for Croatian TV. He directed his first full-length feature film Fragments in 1991, which won numerous awards at home and abroad. His other films include The Washed Out (1995), Red Dust in (1999) and Here in (2003).
 

January 5, 2006 @ 7PM
FINE DEAD GIRLS /FINE MRTVE DJEVOJKE
2002, Alka Film, Croatia 77 MIN
Director: Dalibor Matanic  
Cast: Olga Pakalovic, Nina Violic, Inge Appelt, Kresimir Mikic, Ivica Vidovic, Jadranka Dokić, Milan Strljic, Zdenko Sertic Krieger
Croatian (English subtitles)

Iva and Marija, a lesbian couple, rent an apartment in a seemingly quiet building in Zagreb, but what initially appears as a safe love haven, quickly turns into a nightmare that is loosely based on Balzac’s novel Father Goriot.  Among the couple’s neighbors are a hack gynecologist, a prostitute, a former soldier suffering from PTSD, and a controlling landlady, Olga, who is obsessed with her son Danijel.  When Olga finds out that Danijel has a secret crush on Iva, her fury is inevitable and the fate of the lesbian couple sealed.  A winner of the Best Croatian Movie Award in 2002, Matanic’s Fine Mrtve Djevojke (Fine Dead Girls) has been named one of the best Croatian movies of the last decade, and has garnered much attention due to its controversial subject matter.

Dalibor Matanic

Born in 1975 in Zagreb, Dalibor Matanic is a graduate of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.  He has made numerous short films, commercials and videos since the late 1990s.  In 2000 he made his first full-length feature entitled The Cashier Wants to Go to the Seaside.  Fine Dead Girls followed in 2004, and most recently Matanic authored a biopic about a Croatian painter Slava Raskaj.
www.dalibormatanic.com
 

February 2, 2006 @ 7PM
SORRY FOR KUNG FU /  OPROSTI ZA KUNG FU
2004, HRT,Croatia, 73 min.
Director: Ognjen Svilicic
Cast: Daria Lorenci, Filip Rados, Vedran Mlikota, Luka Petrusic, Vera Zima, Ivica Basic, Yong Long Dai
Croatian (English subtitles)

After waiting out the Balkan conflict in Germany, Mirjana returns unmarried and pregnant to her war-torn village in Croatia. Plans by her shocked parents to marry her off hurriedly are derailed when the birth brings an even more unwelcome surprise -- a bundle of joy with Asian features. Mirjana’s not talking, but everyone else is, in this satire on xenophobia with obvious parallels that, director Svilicic dryly notes, are rooted in “far smaller ethnic differences.” A critically acclaimed selection of the Berlin, Vancouver, and Warsaw international film festivals.

  
Ognjen Svilicic

Ognjen Svilicic was born in 1971 in Split, Croatia. He has made two feature movies, both produced as low budget TV films. Wish I Were a Shark (2000) won the critics’ award for the best Croatian motion picture at the national film festival in Pula. It was shown at several European film festivals, including Mannheim- Haidelberg Film Festival.  Sorry For Kung Fu (2004) is SviliÄ?ić's second feature which it had its world premiere at the 55th Berlin Film Festival, International Forum of New Cinema.
 

March 2, 2006 @ 7PM
WITNESSES / SVJEDOCI
2003, HRT / Interfilm, Croatia, 90 MIN
Director: Vinko Bresan
Cast: Mirjana Karanovic, Alma Prica, Drazen Kuhn, Leon Lucev
Croatian (English subtitles)

Set amid the atrocities of war in the Balkans, Svjedoci (Witnesses) is retold, Rashomon-style, from various characters` viewpoints, adding new information about the complexity of war and humanity.  The film traces a murder and police investigation in a small town in Croatia where, fueled by alcohol, three Croatian soldiers try to plant a bomb at the home of a Serb alleged to be a smuggler and black marketer. Startled to find him home -- he is supposed to be away -- they are forced to shoot him. Then they discover a witness whom they capture and hide in a garage belonging to the mother of one soldier.  An honest cop and a female journalist launch separate investigations. Then a crippled soldier, the boyfriend of the journalist and the mother's elder son, returns home, and more secrets and lies spill out.The different viewpoints reveal the interconnections of nearly everyone in the small town, a microcosm for what happened in Croatia, where everyone, in a sense, bore witness to crimes committed during the war.

Vinko Bresan

A native of Zagreb and son of a famous Croatian playwright Ivo Bresan, Vinko Bresan created reputation of his own with three films which, each in its own way, broke taboos in Croatian cinema in the 1990s. In 1996 his comedy Kako je poceo rat na mom otoku (How the War Started on My Island) depicted Yugoslav Wars in humourous way and did away with the black-and-white characterization typical of Croatian cinema's depiction of those events in earlier period.  Three years later his comedy Marsal (Marshal) was seen as not particularly subtle attack on personality cult and other negative aspects of Franjo Tudman and his regime.  The most controversial part of Bresan's opus is the 2003 war drama Svjedoci (Witnesses). This was the first film to depict Croatian Army committing atrocities against ethnic Serb civillians. Another taboo broken was the casting of the Serbian actress Mirjana Karanović in the role of a Croatian war widow.
 

April 6, 2006 @ 7PM
A HAPPY CHILD/ SRETNO DIJETE
documentary
2003, Gerila DV Film production, Croatia, 97 MIN
Director: Igor Mirkovic
Performances by :Azra, Bijelo dugme, Elektricni orgazam, Film, Haustor, Idoli, Pankrti, Patrola, Prljavo kazaliste
Croatian (English subtitles)

During the eighties a fantastically popular music scene was born on the streets of the otherwise gray and sleepy Zagreb. The filmmaker recalls it all from his boyhood years. Twenty-five years on he realizes that the period was critical in creating his personality. He travels from Zagreb to Ljubljana, Vienna, Belgrade, Budapest, Paris, Utrecht, and New York in search of the heroes of his youth. He seeks to put together a story combining punk-rock and decaying socialism in order to understand his roots.

Igor Mirkovic

Born in 1965 in Zagreb, Igor Mirkovic has worked as a TV reporter, a journalist and a documentary filmmaker.  He is the author of films Orbanici Unplugged (1998), and Happy Child (2003).  He co-directed Who Wants to be a President (2001).

 

Curator Jurica Pavicic

A native of Split, Jurica Pavicic works as a film critic for the Jutarnji List daily. He is the author of the play Poisoner and of two novels, The Plaster Sheep (1997) and Sunday Friend (1999). He has won several journalism prizes. His prose has been translated into German and English.



 

VOTE FOR URBAN & 4, MASSIMO, LEUT MAGNETIC, LEELOOJAMAIS or SIDARTHA
Go to the Best Adriatic and vote for your favorite Croatian band.
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Mediterranean Sounds - Croatia's Mystic Voices
Klapa Sinj in Concert
 

The prize-winning Klapa Sinj has been one of the most revered singing ensembles on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia for over 20 years. The group is a leading proponent of the extraordinary polyphonic vocal tradition known as klapa, an all-male vocal style heavily influenced by Italian harmonies and melodies. In addition to a cappella vocals, the ensemble will perform songs accompanied by Nenad Bach on guitar and piano, and musicians on tamburitza (lute), percussion, piano and bass. New York debut.
 

Friday, December 2nd - 8 PM Concert at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, New York City.  www.nysec.org, as a part of the World Music Institute program for 2005/2006 season. 

Sunday, December 4th 6 PM Concert at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC. www.kennedycenter.com/ , as a part of the Millennium Stage

Wednesday, December 7th 7 PM Concert at the Chicago Cultural Center - Preston Bradley Hall  in Chicago.  www.cityofchicago.org/CulturalAffairs/ . 

For more information please visit www.NenadBach.com
 

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