This video essay looks at weddings—and the central figure of the bride—in Kusturica’s films with a mixture of admiration and scepticism, considering that the idealization of the young, beautiful woman as wife and future mother is not without its reactionary undertones.
For this video essay, we propose a playful montage of wedding rituals as represented in Romanian cinema, bringing together films that depict different periods throughout history.
Watching Aleksandar Petrović’s It Rains on My Village (1968) is a brutal and bittersweet experience, keeping its protagonists at a distance in order to portray life in a Yugoslav village with greater fidelity. All the nuances are there, yet this video essay takes a closer look at the dynamics of the (non-)couple.
The following series of video essays is the result of research into the representation of marriage in Romanian and Balkan cinema, conducted as part of the ECHO III: For Memory’s Sake project.
This video essay focuses on the practices and social norms of the Cortorari Roma community as portrayed by Cătălina Tesăr and Dana Bunescu in the documentary O Tahtai (2022). It does so through a dynamic dialogue between the film’s main characters, tracing their transformation - or lack thereof - throughout the film.