Saturday, October 06, 2007
Film Review : Nafaka
So I turn on FTV, not having been out someplace to get a copy of 'Oslobodjenje' I don't have more than a basic clue about T.V. schedules. So I was expecting 'Nebo iznad krajolika' which is a very funny show. Instead there was a film called 'Nafaka' which by turns irritated the Hell out of me and moved me.
It was pretty well filmed, the characters were a little bit stereotyped, but at times fairly believable.
Some bits were even a little funny, and some were probably P.T.S.D. moments for anyone who actually lived here during the war. Nafaka is a Bosnian word, that means 'fate', but in a wierd sort of way.
It doesn't mean a good fate or a bad fate, it just means the way life can push you around in strange ways sometimes.
I didn't know this word before I saw this film, but I have to say that like 'inat' it was a part of my make-up to think of things that way.
Anyway, the premise is there is a Black American who shows up in some capacity during the siege. I think she's like an aid worker, or a journalist.
She is in kind of the wrong place at the wrong time on New Year's Eve, and a big shell knocks her into a a basement with this guy, who is lightly but scarily wounded by the same shell. They kind of are stuck there.
They form a relationship that lasts the duration of the war.
Anyway, at the beginning, she's explaining to some American Embassy person why she is giving up her American citizenship. (A thing I would NEVER do! I've seen what people go through to get a Green Card and it ain't pretty!)
And she's telling this guy what happened to her in those times. The film is a series of vignettes based on the war.
It's not bad as made for T.V. fare goes. I think there is the beginning of a new genre of war movies based on the recent war. They so far are a LOT like the old Partizan v.s. Fascist type of films. There is a certain amount of graphic realism, but not quite as bloody believe it or not as American war films.
The International Community comes off badly in this film, as the ones who let everyone down by not stopping the war, by assuming that people LIKE that 'about every forty years there is four years of war'
There were moments when the film bordered on propaganda, and t hen moments when it was fairly profound.
Anyway, if it shows up anyplace near you do watch it if you are up for that sort of thing. Not as good as 'No Man's Land' but 'not awful, in fact it was kind of therapeutic'
Update, just saw on BHT that 'Nafaka' won a prize for best entertainment film in a Hungarian film festival. Congrats!
Off to go back and watch the rest of 'Folk Show'
It was pretty well filmed, the characters were a little bit stereotyped, but at times fairly believable.
Some bits were even a little funny, and some were probably P.T.S.D. moments for anyone who actually lived here during the war. Nafaka is a Bosnian word, that means 'fate', but in a wierd sort of way.
It doesn't mean a good fate or a bad fate, it just means the way life can push you around in strange ways sometimes.
I didn't know this word before I saw this film, but I have to say that like 'inat' it was a part of my make-up to think of things that way.
Anyway, the premise is there is a Black American who shows up in some capacity during the siege. I think she's like an aid worker, or a journalist.
She is in kind of the wrong place at the wrong time on New Year's Eve, and a big shell knocks her into a a basement with this guy, who is lightly but scarily wounded by the same shell. They kind of are stuck there.
They form a relationship that lasts the duration of the war.
Anyway, at the beginning, she's explaining to some American Embassy person why she is giving up her American citizenship. (A thing I would NEVER do! I've seen what people go through to get a Green Card and it ain't pretty!)
And she's telling this guy what happened to her in those times. The film is a series of vignettes based on the war.
It's not bad as made for T.V. fare goes. I think there is the beginning of a new genre of war movies based on the recent war. They so far are a LOT like the old Partizan v.s. Fascist type of films. There is a certain amount of graphic realism, but not quite as bloody believe it or not as American war films.
The International Community comes off badly in this film, as the ones who let everyone down by not stopping the war, by assuming that people LIKE that 'about every forty years there is four years of war'
There were moments when the film bordered on propaganda, and t hen moments when it was fairly profound.
Anyway, if it shows up anyplace near you do watch it if you are up for that sort of thing. Not as good as 'No Man's Land' but 'not awful, in fact it was kind of therapeutic'
Update, just saw on BHT that 'Nafaka' won a prize for best entertainment film in a Hungarian film festival. Congrats!
Off to go back and watch the rest of 'Folk Show'
# posted by Katja R. @ 1:59 PM 
