Macedonia
Anyone who has lived in a sharehouse might recognise the hectic energy that defines Goran Stolevski’s third feature, Housekeeping for Beginners. Cinematographer Naum Doksevski’s handheld camera hovers so close to the actors that it seems almost to get beneath their skin; the film opens on a lounge room singalong, loud and unabashed, and barely lets up from there. ... (read more)
Attending a poetry festival is not normally considered a life-threatening event (not even if you are prone to deep vein thrombosis from constant sitting) but when I told my family I was going to Struga, I was greeted by worried looks and expressions of deep concern. Struga is in the Republic of Macedonia. Just days before, Macedonian hotheads had set fire to a mosque in Prilip (not that far from Struga) in revenge for the death of a Prilip policeman in a road-mine explosion planted by Albanian terrorists. The hair-trigger tensions in that country were clearly dangerous, and possibly escalating.
... (read more)