Balkan Rhapsodies by Jeff Daniel Silva
Run time: 55 minutes (2007)
Balkan Rhapsodies is an experimental documentary poem made up of 78 visual and sound episodes that weave together a mosaic of encounters, observations and reflections from Jeff Silva’s travels through war-torn Serbia and Kosovo. Jeff was the first American allowed into Serbia after the NATO bombings in June of 1999, and the filming he did while there makes up the heart of the project. Jeff returned back to the Balkans later again in 2000 and a final time in 2005 to complete the project.
The seventy-eight part episodic structure of the film was inspired by the musical rhapsodies of the 19th century that featured a series of short, free-form, and emotionally infused compositions with high ranging and contrasted moods, colours and tonalities. This fragmented rhapsodic structure captures the essence of the video material that Jeff has gleaned over the years, from his documentary travels to his various cultural appropriations and re-enactments he uses in Balkan Rhapsodies.
Using the 78 days of NATO bombings of Yugoslavia (March 24 – June 10, 1999) as a structural reference point to explore the post-trauma of innocent people caught in a web between the politics of then president Slobodan Milosovic, the Albanian separatist movement, and the United States led NATO coalition, Balkan Rhapsodies looks beyond the moment it captures and seems to become more relevant everyday. As old wounds fail to heal and new conflicts arise around the globe from the ashes and residue of past traumas, the shards of memories, evidence, and experiences in Balkan Rhapsodies creates a ! melodic echo that resonates with the absurdity of the situation and reflects a political and social imperative beyond the conflicts in Yugoslavia into of our present day crises.
http://www.jeffdanielsilva.com/balkanrhapsodies.html