Skupljaci perja (1967) Online

I saw this film when I was in college in the 1970s. It has vanished completely since then. I think it inspired me to become an "underground filmmaker." I like the style, the scenery, the story, the humor, the depiction of life behind the Iron Curtain--particularly for the Gypsies. I still remember the scene where the one character is throwing feathers off the back of a truck, and the fight scene underneath the feathers. And the "wedding" scene where the "monk" says "Any fish in that river, Tisa?" And where the heroine runs away to the big city and attempts to live by singing on the street. (Is this where she is hitchhiking and gets seduced by a puppet-wielding truck-driver?) Also the use of non-actors--local people--in the film. I don't know if the world presented in this movie is realistic or romanticised, but it was a very good film and it deserves to be seen again today.

Skupljaci Perja, a film by Aleksandar Sasa Petrovic is one of the best film from Balkanian region! It's not just my own opinion. Whay!? It was an poem and sensuous originally made film, about live. Very sensitive, but with a passion. It is made in a way like Italian Newrealisam. With two excellent Serbian actors, Bata Zivojinovic and Bekim Fehmiu, this director successful had doing idea, which hi had imagine before the filming. It maybe some of the best film in the world if we just looking at film atmosphere, which Sasa as film-director have making. Also after this film Sasa start to be idol of many directors in the world. One of theme are now, some of the best in the World. His gypsy aesthetic start to be alphabet for many others film titles. In Balkanian region it means that Sasa was a good teacher for younger colleagues as Emir Kusturica and Slobodan Sijan. And everywhere and every time Themselves thanks to Sasha. Best regards! Robert Petrovic film director.

This will carry familiar echoes for everyone living from the Danube to the Aegean and perhaps as far east as Istanbul and Armenia; it is roughly the same soul in these places, even though the trivial corners of appearance change. It depicts a rowdy, messy life, full of gambling, cheating, childishness, violence, headstrong passions, song and selfishness, the same mentality that explains all the wars in the area, the ancient animosities, as well as why my country is in shambles these days: too long not masters of our world, we still think it is somebody else's business.

But it's not just human idiocy it depicts, it's not a smarmy film. It's something dumb (as in impossible to articulate) in the blood itself, something that is outwards sloppy, as are the people and places, as is the film, but that's because it's still halfway in trying to fathom itself, the need to cry out in song but no words will come. A softer gloom than we find above the Danube, less mannered (less 'European') than the Czechs, less introspective than further north.

Our gypsy protagonist, a drunkard who is always trying to pawn his mother's TV set and hopping between petty jobs, is brought before a judge and asked why he threw feathers from the back of the car; he doesn't know himself, he'll pay the fine. A train whistles by out the window. It all turns around bartering, deceit and desire to escape, all of them evident in the girl's seduction by the trucker with the handpuppet.

It's aimless, sloppy but lovable, the same cinematic air the people it depicts breath out. It is not Parajanov, but it'll do.

One sees how Kusturica must have seen this, and combined it with Tarkovsky's camera to make Time of the Gypsies.

I saw this film in Belgium in the 1970's and it left indelible images in my mind. The whole movie breathes the heavy, misty breath of passion. I particularly remember the cafe scene when a man drowns himself in drink and cuts his hands on broken glass. And another scene of a knife fight in a huge pile of goose down.

To me, this was a window into the very idiosyncratic society of the Roma people, and I would really love to see it again. It won several awards and was even nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film.

But alas, I can't find it on Amazon or Netflix, and I wonder where else I might find it to rent or to buy. Any ideas? Let me know!

When I was a boy, my parents were telling me that in order to stay safe, I need to avoid Roma people. As they were explaining to me, they would kidnap me and sell me into slavery.

At the basketball court and playground in front of our building, the very building I am still living in, there were several Roma boys and girls. They were a lot older than me and we all played together. Yes, there were some incidents and fights amongst all of us, but I can't recall I've ever had problems being safe. There were some violent boys but I always attributed that to problematic upbringing and their social status: they were raised in poor and dysfunctional families.

This film offers fantastic, colorful, stunning, absolutely vivid representation of cultural values and aesthetics of Roma people along with tragedy of their existence. What Petrovic succeeded is to create almost unbearable heaviness of being (yes, the complete opposite of Kaufman's almost similar titled masterpiece). And just when you think of, or rather try to find any hope for protagonists, there is another darkness and tragedy waiting behind the corner. It seems that life of a majority of Roma people, everywhere in the world, is constant struggle against social stigma, prejudice, poverty (which is the output of social exclusion). Than again, those are the very problems other nations/people are facing, too. Which is strange as we are enjoying much higher levels of education, freedom, technology and such. It is obvious that 'Great promise' which followed Industrial Revolution didn't brought what we expected; great happiness for most of the people, unlimited personal freedom, technological advance available to everyone.

Yet, with all those centuries-old problems, Roma people seems much more alive than most of 'us', Western people/nations. Being 'trapped' in poverty and inhumane living conditions, they are living without limits, experiencing strong basic emotions on an everyday basis, constantly trying to overcome their harsh reality.