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Litany of Happy People

 

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Karpo Godina – JU 1971 — 14 Min. – Slowenisch — 35mm

R+B+K+S: Karpo Godina P: Neoplanta Film


 

 

 

 

With ‚Litany of Happy People’ won Godina two awards at the acclaimed Oberhausen short film festival in Germany, while censorship at home, desperately trying to decipher it’s cryptic subtext, in the end decided to ban the film merely on suspicion that it contains ‚certain’ inappropriate hidden messages. While precious as an ethnographic document, an experimental musical or simply an amazing, rapid display of faces and colors (each ethnic group uses a different color to paint their houses: Croatian houses are golden-yellow, Slovaks use blue, Hungarians green, etc) ‚Litany’ perhaps stands out mostly because of its elusiveness. — Jurij Meden

 

Karpo Ačimović Godina (born on June 26th 1943 in Skopje, Macedonia) is one of the most important operators of the so called yugoslavian „Black Waveˮ, a cinematographic movement that, at the end of the 60ies, beginning of the 70ies of our last century, more or less openly criticized, attacked, or simply satirized the political and socio-cultural state of their country. While he studied theatre in Ljubljana he made several 8mm shorts portraying a pure innocent youth. At this time he met Žilmir Žilnik for whose center piece of the „Black Waveˮ, „Rani radoviˮ („Early Worksˮ, Golden Bear Award, Berlin Film Festival 1969) he worked as director of photography. Godina carried on his work as a „total filmmakerˮ (director, screenwriter, director of photography, editor) for himself independently as well as DOP for other directors. He permanently was carefully observed by his socialist „comradesˮ and was more than once in danger of facing imprisonment. What saved him was his excellent technical knowledge as well as his smartness. At 1990 Cannes Film Festival premiered his feature on Fritz Lang and how he got involved with cinema in abaltic village, „Umetni rajˮ („Artificial Paradiseˮ). He is currently planning another collaboration with his old friend Žilmir Žilnik.