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Balkan Rhapsodies2008
78 Measures of War
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BALKAN RHAPSODIES is an episodic documentary poem that interweaves a mosaic of encounters, observations and reflections from Silva's travels throughout war-torn Serbia and Kosovo between 1999-2005. An American filmmaker and ethnographer, Jeff Daniel Silva, was the first US civilian allowed entry into a devastated Serbia in 1999 just days after the NATO bombings. By immersing himself intimately into the lives of people he meets, the film grapples with the inexplicable contradictions he encounters while digging deeper in search for comprehension. Using the 78 days of NATO bombings (March 24 - June 10, 1999) as a structural reference point, this documentary infuses the fragmentation, cultural incongruities and ultimate dissolution of the Former Yugoslavia into the fabric of its editing through a poetic assemblage of 78 episodic movements (measures). Inspired by the rhapsodic musical form as well as a penchant for Serbia's potent national drink (šljivovica), the film weaves Silva's footage gleaned over eight years incorporating it with cultural imagery, archival material and informal conversations with American luminaries Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. BALKAN RHAPSODIES deftly balances a serious and humorous landscape that captures the essence of life in the Balkan's of a generation ensnared in war during the Milosevic years.
Poster & Images
Member Reviews (2)
A disjointed collection of vignettes about the 1999 bombing of Serbia by NATO. We see the destruction wrought by American planes, and the struggles of ordinary Serbs in coping with the bombing- but not the reason NATO intervened. Atrocities against Albanians in Kosovo- and the horrific events in Bosnia earlier in the decade- are barely alluded to. Intentionally or not, the film echoes the Milosevic regime in portraying Serbia as a victim of aggression rather than a perpetrator. Like a Fahrenheit 9/11 of the Balkans, it distorts and omits facts to make a case against American intervention.
2 members like this review
An experimental collage more than a documentary, Balkan Rhapsodies streams together home-movie footage shot with friends in Serbia, interviews with anti-war totems Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and news footage of police violently suppressing protests. Only rarely are scenes or speakers identified. The unifying thread is a series of numbered texts between the film's short clips, which turn out not to be epigraphs but quotations spoken or sung in later segments. The effect is non-linear and anti-narrative, highlighting personal connections on a backdrop of anxiety and (off-camera) violence. Slivovitz, a high-proof plum brandy favored across Eastern Europe, is consumed liberally throughout, standing in for the ways ordinary folk pass time waiting for incomprehensible wars to end.