Why are new Albanian films so ugly?

I also loved Kinostudio for personal reasons. The first Albanian film festival was won by a film that my father made for me. Perhaps because of this weakness, Kinostudio's films made me laugh even when they were weak. Despite its ideological limitations, Kinostudio played its role: it entertained us for 50 years. But even when they made slanderous films, the directors of that time had an excuse: communism did not allow them to create more daring works. Degenerates, speculators, merchants, divorcees, the wealthy, immigrants, maniacs, delirious people, and the mentally ill could not be characters of Kinostudio. also Robert De Niro: In Hollywood, success is never guaranteed Hoping to see a new movie, I went to the beautiful Film Festival these days and was amazed. Just like in the days of Kinostudio, most films in recent years are shot in the countryside. But at that time, more than 50 percent of the population lived in the village. Everything we ate was produced there, and with this food surplus, young people worked in the fields and factories. Of course, the cinema of that time was weighed down with ideological literature: less countryside, less city, and a lot of war taking place in the countryside. That's why most old movies weren't shot in cities. But while I can guess the reasons of the directors of those years, I don't understand why today's directors love the countryside so much. The decor of their films resembles a photograph hanging on the walls of the cooperative. Crooked roads, beat-up vans, engines without engines, a straw mill, a café that doubles as a bus stop, classrooms with toothless students, brandy, cigarettes, cironka, pickles, ugly people, vulgar language, geese, roosters, and underfed donkeys that seem to carry all the troubles of our wayward nation on their backs. The film is a supermarket filled with village products. And since nothing happens in the village at night, the events of the new films take place only during the day. But by the time you realize what's happening, more than half of the film has passed, filled with meaningless dialogue, with canals, wells, agricultural tools, and cows appearing on screen when you least expect it. The window of the peasant's house does not open so that we can see his beautiful wife drying her hair, but the head of a mule with scythes. I myself love the countryside very much, but I don't understand why Albanian directors love it so much. Maybe they think that destruction, ugliness, brandy, tobacco, calloused hands, and a zootechnical landscape sell better in the West. They are wrong. The world's greatest films were not shot in the countryside. Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro have never played the role of a peasant and if they did they wouldn't be who they are. Zapata was only a peasant, but he also made the Mexican revolution go to the city. Cinema is a product of the city. At the time when the village decided the affairs of the world, there were no cinemas. Goodfellas has no villagers, Taxi Driver gives taxis in New York, Pulp Fiction despises villagers, and the Italian neorealists changed cinema when they took the camera out of the countryside and started shooting city dramas. Even the handsome mobsters in The Godfather were American citizens who used Sicilian villagers to kill each other on Mom's birthday. Netflix today doesn't make films about life in the countryside, except in cases where criminals hide there to protect themselves from the police, who also come from the city, blowing the trumpets of civilization. New Albanian films seem to have a hatred for the city. Tirana, home to a million inhabitants, appears only as fuel for vans that leave with a slow urgency towards the village, no villager enters the cafes where we spend time every day, and of course no one goes to the beaches where there is liveliness, style, luxury, youth, and nudity. There were more women in swimsuits in Kinostudio's films than in today's films. You miss seeing a sidewalk, a modern hotel, glass, mirrors, shop windows, skateboards, banks, men in suits, women in heels, dancing, nightlife, boys and girls who run around and create action, that is, they run after everyday life more than our beloved villagers. Unfortunately, no new film has any action, speed, or adventure. Cinema fulfills the need of ordinary people to be inspired by extraordinary people. According to its own ideological box, Kinostudio also produced a category of extraordinary heroes. They were the partisans. They killed, stole weapons, planted bombs, blew up cars, used German uniforms as wedding suits, and sometimes even made love. In a sense, they are the cowboys of our cinema. Compared to the villagers in today's films, the partisans were very adventurous and undoubtedly much more beautiful. But in the new movies, there's no adventurer you can follow for two hours straight. Neither scenario is dystopian, i.e. shocking, but a tearful realism that believes that world change will come from the village. Even the villagers themselves, the cream of our cinema's cheese, if they had the chance to choose, would say, "Oh, we don't want any more films about the countryside." also "The Beauty of the Donkey" reveals this year's audience taste at "DokuFest" This kind of adventureless cinema serves only one function: it saves the villagers from sleeping pills. But unfortunately, it doesn't just target the poor villagers, but primarily the actors. The actors are a story in themselves. Even when they are beautiful, directors wrinkle them, age them, bend them, dress them badly, cover them with gray hair, and make them eat tomatoes, drink brandy, and stink from unfiltered cigarettes. Cinema uses ugliness less than any other sector of society. It is the catwalk of bad people who must be beautiful. I don't know any great actor who is ugly, but even when he's ugly, he's a great talent. And our cinema really likes ugly people. The ugly one passes the vetting, the beautiful one awaits the change of the artistic horoscope. However, female actresses are the biggest victims of directors' obsession with making their characters ugly. The directors don't allow any woman to pee, get painted, wear a sexy dress, get a new car, go to work, and have a nightlife. Women in new films have only one role: to look like men. They are gloomy, have deep voices, curse incessantly, cry before lunch, drink raki, and don't know how to kiss. Even when they have sex, it happens in stalls, on torn seats, or in dirty vans. The love of new movies is a disgusting physical act that cannot even rise to the level of Yugoslav films that were filled with violent sex, usually after lunch. I don't know for what reasons, most of the actors who shrivel up in the bushes of our villages are from Kosovo. Kosovars play the role of villagers from Librazhd, Milot or Berat. This is a separate issue that drives people away from cinemas, which is why new films don't sell any tickets. Who would sit in a movie theater for an hour and a half and not understand a single word? I myself understand Kosovars when they speak, I really like them when they sing, but I don't understand them at all in the movie. Kosovars have an eclectic cinema that seems to have come out of the books of Anton Pashku, a talented writer who explains in three pages how the bathroom faucet works. Kosovo cinema is an endless gloom. Like oil and salt, this dish lacks two essential elements: grandeur and humor. Although small, our old cinema had few great films and many humorous films. The story made it grand, the scripts spread the spices of humor, and the skill of the actors gave it light. Kosovars have not been able to make great films because they lived in a repressive state that allowed them to joke in the streets, but not in art. That's how their literature is, a night without breakfast. That's why Kosovo actors never laugh and when they make love, they look like they're going to kill themselves. New films have taken on the physiognomy of the Kosovar school: a despair that is spent drinking, cursing, and talking to the mountain before going to sleep. But the movie is not like the song. The Kosovarization of our songs has been a success, the Kosovarization of films is a failure. Unfortunately, Kosovars are taking a dig at young directors. The directors believe that by securing a modest budget, a ragged village, and a Kosovar actor, they have completed the film. Therefore, they do not compete for cinema tickets, but only for public funds. Success is when it convinces the Film Center and not the viewer. Directors think like budgeters before they think like artists. Since most of the authors of these films are friends of mine, I hope they won't be bored. also A quarter century of activism with a parallel city of film They have the power to dispel my suspicion that Albanians don't know how to do three things: football, wine, and cinema. I like all three, so I'll write again.