Super 8 Stories

Madman Yugoslav director EMIR KUSTERICA (UNDERGROUND, BLACK CAT WHITE CAT) makes a documentary about touring w/ the band NO SMOKING ORCHESTRA throughout Europe. Emir actually plays guitar w/ the band, stogie firmly clamped between his teeth, hat perched on his head. This doesn't give a lot of insight on the band or the way they write their music as we see a lot of various concert footage and then brief interviews w/ the 10 or so who make up the band. NSO play this unhinged fusion of rock, jazz, gypsy and dirge funeral music w/ instruments such as guitars, tuba, violin, accordion and sax all swirling in and around each other. Some of the music I liked, some I didn't. Too much sax and too much bad vocals by the lead singer. NSO do have a tremendous amount of energy on stage and the audience seems to love them as they play to large, enthusiastic crowds. Lots and lots of super grainy super 8 which was neat. Worth seeing for doc, music or Kusterica fans (has a couple of funny scenes w/ Emir trying to wrestle shirtless w/ the beefier drummer who is I believe his son).

I guess this documentary might seem a bit senseless to an outsider, someone not from ex-Yugoslavia. So let me try to explain what it means to me.

First, the lead singer, Nele Karajlić. He's one of the funniest and at the same time most intelligent people I had the opportunity to see and hear. One of the co-founders of the original "No Smoking Orchestra" (before Kusturica joined), the band that was lyrically probably the best in the history of rock in Yugoslavia. He planted so much soul into his songs... One of those songs is performed in the movie, too: "Nedjelja kad je otišao Hase", apparently about a football player but really about the death of Tito, legendary (if not always loved) Yugoslav president. But he was also a lead member of "Top lista nadrealista", a low-budget TV show that unfortunately turned out to be incredibly prophetic. In this movie you also have a chance to see one of the clips that predicted the split of Yugoslavia many years before it actually began: the fight of garbagemen from East and West Sarajevo. (The city was indeed torn into such parts during the war!) Nele is a great character, always willing to accept a joke on his own account, as you can see several times during the film. He may not be the best lead vocal in the world, but to me he is unique in every way.

Although I think that the new "No Smoking Orchestra" is nowhere near the old one, still there is no arguing about their worldwide popularity. So many great musicians, and each of them has his own five minutes of glory in this film. There are some incredible moments, like the bass player's shoulder that got dislocated in the middle of the concert, or the guitarist's preparation for the song "Lubenica". The only one that is extremely unlikeable is Kusturica's son, Stribor, the drummer, who seems to be a guy that likes to bully everybody else, including his father.

To conclude, this may not be an objective sort of documentary, but it being so personal is exactly what makes it good.

This was one of the very few occasions when I've paid to see a film but felt I'd get more for my money by leaving early and going for a beer instead. It seems to be vaguely inspired (if that's the right word) by Buena Vista Social Club, except that none of the characters actually seem to have anything interesting to say and (a matter of taste, admittedly) the music isn't nearly as good. It also seems to be deliberately badly shot and to be completely devoid of editing, presumably to give a "this is real" feel to the whole thing. All it achieved for me was the sense that I was a fool for having paid to watch this boring, self-indulgent trash (the fact that the film was about Kusturica's own band should perhaps have been a warning...) Save yourself the anguish and miss this film, unless you're madly keen on the music. Kusturica's just trading on his name, and helping to ruin it in the process.

I did not know what to expect when I went to see this film. It did not have a story line. It did not have any message to deliver. It did not have glamorous stars to show. It was not directed by Spielberg. Still it worked somehow. Great music, lovely characters, sparkling sense of humor...very entertaining, very European, very Kusturica.

From father's swimming lessons and the Yugoslav highway system, via privileges for officials and Tito's death to Western expansionism ("Drang nach Osten"), house searches and bridges bombed by NATO, Super 8 Stories offers a history of Yugoslavia not unlike Underground.

Of course, the differences are outstanding also. Super 8 says it. This is a private memoir. The memoir of a handful of people who make their living in a cultural spasm between Western and Eastern Europe. On the road in the West, at home in the East. When their bus travels by a pet cemetery with marble terriers and German shepards, each with a carefully engraved name, who wouldn't think of the mass graves of Srebrenica and the Kosovo? Who would? Perhaps, that's the difference between them and their audience.

They joke and they play. They are angry, upset and hurt. And they joke and play again. If the clownesque does not win out, it is at least there. As a survival strategy. As a commentary. As absurd as the pet cemetery and the bombed bridge. As absurd as the applause and the oversized gold jacket.

Unlike any other Kusturica movie, this one shows its materiality, the texture, the grain and the cut, as if to explore what stuff memory, history is made of.

It is a multi layered text and like any other of Kusturica's films, it is also a political statement. Wanting to go home, the accordion player crosses the river like Charon the Styx, because the bridge is destroyed like the Bridge on the Drina.