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Guests | April 30, 2013
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This title in other editionsTerror and Joy: The Films of Dusan Makavejevby Lorraine Mortimer
Review-A-Day"It is time, however, to return to our mystery — and to Mortimer's insistence on links between Makavejev and Yugoslavia's wars. In many ways, Terror and Joy seeks to conjure up Yugoslavia, that film that Makavejev never made, by using the director's own mash-up techniques and poetic images to tell the story of his career. But there is another story to tell, for Makavejev did make a new movie after Manifesto, and he looked not to Yugoslavia — where ethnic tensions were already bubbling openly by 1986, just six years after Tito's death — but once again to the cold war and the Berlin Wall." Richard Byrne, The Nation (read the entire Nation review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Dusan Makavejev is a filmmaker, teacher, and intellectual whose films intersect with major historical and political upheavals in Eastern Europe — World War II, the unification and breakup of Yugoslavia, and the fall of communism. Subversive and moving, his films remain touchstones for transcultural and political cinema. Matching the intensity of the films, Lorraine Mortimer takes a radically interdisciplinary approach in this first book-length critical analysis of Makavejev's work.
Studies in contrasts, Makavejev's films combine documentary and fiction, tragedy and comedy. Mortimer examines seven of his films made between 1965 and 1994 — including Montenegro (1981), Sweet Movie (1974), and WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971)—looking at them historically, politically, and aesthetically and highlighting their implications for the contemporary world.
Both Makavejev's films and Mortimer’s scrutiny of them are haunted by the specter of apocalyptic revolutionary movements that sacrifice people and the planet in the name of ideologies and idealisms. Mortimer argues that the aesthetic dimension is vital to our conception of old and new tribalisms and, ultimately, our understanding of being in the world. Book News Annotation:Mortimer (sociology and anthropology, La Trobe U., Australia) conducts readings of eight films directed by Serbian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev between 1965 and 1994, examining them historically, locally, politically, and aesthetically. Central to the films of Makevejev and the discussion here is the dangers of apocalyptic revolutionary movements. As Mortimer notes in his introduction, when he argues "that the aesthetic dimension is vital to our understanding of being in the world," he is "also contending that it is vital to understanding the phenomena of old and new tribalisms and toxic identity movements." This argument is furthered through analysis of Makavejev's films in connection to Albert Camus's notion of the "relative utopia," Ursula K. Le Guin's rejection of the "grand refusals" of apocalyptic utopianism, and Milivan Djilas's advocacy of the "unperfect society." Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Arts and Entertainment » Film and Television » History and Criticism
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