BOOKS
Books by M. Ćurić, S. Hundić and J. Heidl, D. Ilinčić, A. Oremović
The author gives a critical
review of three books dealing with film subjects The
Birth and Renewal by Mate Ćurić, Hollywood Q and
A ’97 by Stjepan Hundić, and Cinema and Video Guide
’98 by Janko Heild, Dražen Ilinčić and Arsen Oremović.
The author of The Birth and Renewal treats various
fields of culture, therefore the book is divided into chapters
dealing with theatre, literature, painting, subculture
and various polemics. Ćurić puts the emphasis on the movies,
which are his speciality. Although formally, he is a film
critic (member of the Croatian Society of film critics)
he is actually a dilettante with a mission to pinpoint
certain social and cultural phenomena and to suggest a
number of solutions for the possible problems. For Ćurić
writing about films is always an opportunity to question
wider social issues which he views from an explicitly national
standpoint. In view of this he could be placed somewhere
between (sometimes-likeable) enthusiasm for his nation,
and (sometimes-aggressive) nationalism. The text offers
a number of examples that illustrate Ćurić’ viewpoints
as well as his amateurism in dealing with the art of film.
Hollywood Q and A ’97 is
a collection of thirty interviews, mainly with Hollywood
star actors and directors. During 1997 the author Stjepan
Hundić published these interviews in some of the most influential
Croatian papers and magazines. In the introduction he explains
how these interviews were made and in relation to that
he points out the problem of authorship (in the light of
the fact that the interviews were not taken individually
but in groups). He continues by stating that it is only
in the form of a book that they realised their full potential,
since they did not function properly as newspaper articles.
Most interviewees share the criticism of the present
state of the American, i. e. Hollywood social and filmmaking
scene, marked by the pursuit of profit and the hypocrisy
of political correctness.
Cinema and Video Guide ’98 is a collection of short
newspaper reviews of the 1997 cinema repertoire in Seagram
initially published in Večernji list (a Croatian
daily newspaper with the highest circulation figures).
This is the third year in a row that the authors publish
this guide. Along with the reviews, the book includes the
interviews of Arsen Oremović with John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson
and Miloš Forman, an overview of the best movies of the
year chosen by the author, the list of film festivals in
Croatia and around the world and their awards (with a special
piece on the Cannes film festival on the occasion of its
50th anniversary) and an index of the original titles of
the movies reviewed in the book. The book is a concise
analysis of the authors’ individual expressions along with
the contribution of their guest associate Zlatka Sačer.
Damir Radić |
