Discreet Poetry of Cinema: Video
A CONVERSATION AFTER THE EXCLUSIVE PREMIÈRE SCREENING OF THE MULTI-AWARDED SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM THEN COMES THE EVENING
Filmmaker Maja Novaković’s film, Then Comes the Evening beautifully depicts the life of two old women living in the isolated hills of Eastern Bosnia. Nature is the entity with which they speak, listen to, and respect. The film emphasizes the intangible cultural heritage through the presentation of chants and rituals for taming the adverse weather, hail, and storm. It reflects the simplicity and purity of their way of life, as well as their painstaking work. In the daily activities that they perform, the excellence and distress of these displays are revealed and revived. Everyday life shows the caring and intimacy the two old women have both in their mutual relations and in relationship with nature. The poetic tone of the frames relies on references from genre scenes of realism paintings, creating documents of bittersweet everyday life in the countryside. Then Comes the Evening is a discreet, loving witness to the lives of these two old women living isolated on the hills of Eastern Bosnia: their intimacy, their relationship to nature, a whole cultural heritage made out of songs and rituals to tame bad weather, hail, and storm.
Maja Novaković’s stunning debut has garnered 32 awards and 52 nominations, won over audiences at all major documentary festivals around the world, and qualified for the Academy Award® in the Best Short Documentary category. The program began with a screening of the short documentary that was then followed by a conversation with Vera Mijojlić, Festival Director of the South East European Film Festival (SEEfest) in Los Angeles, and Logan Crow, Executive Director of The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana. The live, virtual event was presented on December 20, 2020 on the co-watch platform Beem.
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SEEfest program and activities are supported, in part, by ELMA Foundation for European Movies in America, UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies , the California Arts Council, a state agency; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture; by a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill, and with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are deeply grateful for their past and current support of our programs. The Dutch film program is supported by Dutch Culture USA of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.