Eddington or the Tragedy of Anti-Political Pintrest Protests

The first truly good film I’ve seen this year is Eddington, the latest feature from Ari Aster – whose Midsommar I also really liked. Unlike more personal Midsommar, this is a dark social satire, incisively dissecting the U.S. (and by extension almost any Western society) during the pandemic and the BLM protests. Without giving too much away, the film explores what happens to a small town when various political … Continue reading Eddington or the Tragedy of Anti-Political Pintrest Protests

Srdjan GarcevicAugust 13, 2025Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Cognac (1988) and Born to be a warrior (1994): Yugoslavia through a “for export” lens

I often criticise Serbian and regional movie production for being excessively focused on “for export” films, which do not seek to portray any real stories, but just fit into the cottage industries of war-time trauma, Eastern European miserabilism or “political commentary”. Still I found myself greatly enjoying two very explicitly Yugoslav/Serbian “for export” films, which, however did not seek any prestige on festival circuits but … Continue reading Cognac (1988) and Born to be a warrior (1994): Yugoslavia through a “for export” lens

Srdjan GarcevicJuly 8, 2024Leave a comment

Culture, Guide to Belgrade, Reviews, The Belgradist

Exploring Džej Ramadanovski’s Dorćol on film and in reality

When I saw that there is a film in the works about Džej Ramadanovski, a Serbian-Roma pop star who passed tragically during at the age of 56 in 2020, I feared it would be another slapdash cash-grab riding on the wave of “Toma”, a hit 2021 film about Serbian folk singer Toma Zdravković. My scepticism was even greater as I did not like “Toma”. … Continue reading Exploring Džej Ramadanovski’s Dorćol on film and in reality

Srdjan GarcevicJanuary 19, 2024February 7, 20244 Comments

Culture, Reviews

Lost Country: In search of Tomasi di Lampedusa and Proust in Serbia

In November 1996, my mother, grandma and I were excitedly chanting „Bando crevna“ (Red gangsters!) during the mass anti-Milošević protests in Belgrade. I was 8 at the time and was mesmerised by the thrill, energy and fun that were on the street of Belgrade for those few months after the contested election. There was a mini-renaissance or music and art happening on the streets, a … Continue reading Lost Country: In search of Tomasi di Lampedusa and Proust in Serbia

Srdjan GarcevicNovember 25, 2023November 25, 2023Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

“Barbie, the Movie”: Different kind of plastic, not fantastic

Whenever I think about the heap of my toys in the basement or even going to a toy store, I feel an intense pang of sadness. Toys promise a simple happy life and sheer joy one can feel by touching something as simple as a piece of industrially-crafted plastic. Like that promise and joy, they also are forgotten and left behind as soon as one … Continue reading “Barbie, the Movie”: Different kind of plastic, not fantastic

Srdjan GarcevicJuly 26, 2023July 27, 2023Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

The new humanism of Ostlund, White and Sorrentino

„What is there to like? It is just rich people talking about their lives.“The guy I was speaking to did not like La Grande Bellezza and could not understand why I was so obsessed with it. I am not sure how I answered, and if I did at all, but in the coming years, since that night in 2015, the global film industry moved more … Continue reading The new humanism of Ostlund, White and Sorrentino

Srdjan GarcevicJanuary 30, 2023Leave a comment

Balkans, Culture, Reviews, Travel

Terra, Kikinda: How a local artist used home turf to create a world’s best terracotta art collection

As a twenty-something third year student at Belgrade’s art Academy in 1960s, Slobodan Kojić dreamt big. A Kikinda native, he envisaged creating an art colony which would make use of his native city’s clay pits – which powered the city’s brick and roof tile industry – so artists could create majestic, grandiose works of terracotta. The use or clay in the arts in what is … Continue reading Terra, Kikinda: How a local artist used home turf to create a world’s best terracotta art collection

Srdjan GarcevicJuly 14, 2022Leave a comment

Culture, Life, Reviews

The Consolation of Hypertrophy: Samuel Fussell’s “Muscle: Confessions of the unlikely bodybuilder” by Samuel Wilson Fussell

Reading Camille Paglia’s essays in “Sex, Art and American Culture”, I came across a book that very much appealed to me, especially given that I only became passionate about going to the gym on the cusp of my 30s. She gave it the highest praise, in her own characteristic way: “Muscle, sympathetically read as an archetypal hero saga of embattled masculinity, exposes the parochialism, preachiness, … Continue reading The Consolation of Hypertrophy: Samuel Fussell’s “Muscle: Confessions of the unlikely bodybuilder” by Samuel Wilson Fussell

Srdjan GarcevicJune 23, 20222 Comments

Culture, Reviews

Art though Politics: “Hitler and the power of Aesthetics”, Frederic Spotts

Imagine a state where the government works hard not only to build crucial infrastructure projects but to elevate the tastes of the people through lavish funding of the arts and protects them from contemporary kitsch. A country where every larger town would have an opera and which would invest in making its citizens healthy and joyful through various initiatives. A country led by a ruler … Continue reading Art though Politics: “Hitler and the power of Aesthetics”, Frederic Spotts

Srdjan GarcevicApril 21, 2022Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Gradually, then suddenly: “And just like that…” review

!Spoilers ahead! It was my Dad who got me into Sex and City. As it started airing on B92, the purveyor off all things Western in the early 2000s, post-Milosević Serbia, my Dad lauded it as an instruction manual of not only the sexual and social mores of the day in the West, whereas I, just entering my teenage years, liked the title. Needless to … Continue reading Gradually, then suddenly: “And just like that…” review

Srdjan GarcevicDecember 10, 2021Leave a comment

Best of Belgrade, Culture, Hidden Belgrade, Reviews, The Belgradist, Uncategorized

Belgrade Post-Modern: Ruins at the End of History

“The only way for us to become great, or even inimitable if possible, is to imitate the ancients.” Johann Joachim Winckelmann “As is the case with the weather: rain and storms from the West reached us and so did Postmodernism. At the very beginning of Postmodernism, a great conference was held in Zagreb on that topic, which identified vectors and positive values of the movement … Continue reading Belgrade Post-Modern: Ruins at the End of History

Srdjan GarcevicNovember 16, 2021November 16, 2021Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Darkness of “Enlightened”

Just as I was modishly repeating Red Scare-induced pieties that truly great pop culture is dead, the White Lotus hit HBO. Nuanced and openhearted as truly great satire should be, it brought back hope that there can be incisive social commentary that does not want to be didactic, but leaves the viewer to assess and re-assess their views of class and personal relationships. This of … Continue reading Darkness of “Enlightened”

Srdjan GarcevicAugust 20, 2021Leave a comment

Culture, Pokretači, Reviews, The Nutshell Media

Bor u Veneciji, Moderni u Beogradu

“Osmi kilometar” je postavka koja predstavlja Srbiju na ovogodišnjem Bijelanu Arhitekture u Veneciji, i koja se bavi jedinstvenim nasleđem grada Bora, ali i izazovima sa kojima se on susreće. Autori postavke su Moderni u Beogradu, grupa arhitekata entuzijastičnih da predstave naše modernističko nasleđe, i sa Snežanom Zlatković i Daliom Dukanac sam razgovarao o Boru, Veneciji, ulogom i promocijom arhitekture i zašto entuzijazam ima limite. Podržite … Continue reading Bor u Veneciji, Moderni u Beogradu

Srdjan GarcevicJuly 16, 2021Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Chemtrails, Country Clubs

I first listened to Lana while I was on a gap year, back home in Belgrade, after my studies in the UK. She was an obvious fit as I always liked over the top imagery and rich orchestration in pop (I am a die-hard Belle and Sebastian and Vampire Weekend fan), but what resonated was the honey dipped sense of gloom. „Born to die“ was … Continue reading Chemtrails, Country Clubs

Srdjan GarcevicMarch 21, 20211 Comment

Culture, Reviews

VIS Idoli and Subversion in the 1980s SFRY

Opinion on Yugoslav pop music among Serbia’s intellectual elite oscillates between breathless adoration (in 1990s, when it was a sign of being “educated” against the onslaught of the ovelry maligned folk and turbofolk) to disgust (currently liking EKV, let alone Bijelo Dugme, is considered a sure sign of pseudointellectualism and/or smarm) and back to ironic appreciation (Zdravko Čolić and Bajaga). As Yugopop was the soundtrack … Continue reading VIS Idoli and Subversion in the 1980s SFRY

Srdjan GarcevicMay 4, 2020May 10, 20232 Comments

Culture, Reviews

The Diary of Diana Budisavljević – Review

The best thing about The Diary of Diana Budisavljević (styled for international audiences without those confusing Slavic last names as “The Diary of Diana B.”) is that this film was made at all, considering all the various barriers to this story being told. Its titular character, Diana Budisavljević (nee Obexer) has only recently become recognised as an unsung heroine of the very bloody WWII in … Continue reading The Diary of Diana Budisavljević – Review

Srdjan GarcevicNovember 18, 2019December 10, 2019Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Ezra Koenig and the Incredible Buffness of Being

If there is something like a leitmotif to the last two Vampire Weekend albums it would be “I don’t want to live like this… but I don’t wanna die”. It first appeared in the middle of their relatively dark third album, Modern Vampires of the City, on the multi-layered, feverish “Finger Back” and then reappeared on the deceptively sunny, deeply political “Harmony Hall” the, lead … Continue reading Ezra Koenig and the Incredible Buffness of Being

Srdjan GarcevicSeptember 12, 2019September 12, 2019Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

20 Yugosphere songs from 2010s that you have to hear before 2020

As the last summer of 2010s is slowly coming to an end, I thought that it was a high time for a listicle celebrating songs from countries of ex-Yugoslavia that marked the past decade for me. I don’t want to claim that they are the best songs made in the past decade in the region, nor a fair representation of what is going on on … Continue reading 20 Yugosphere songs from 2010s that you have to hear before 2020

Srdjan GarcevicAugust 21, 20191 Comment

Culture, Reviews

‘Nemanjici’: the Show that United Serbia

A recent survey by IPSOS showed that Serbia is the world’s most divided society among 27 countries around the world that were included in the study. Some 93 per cent of Serbians agree that Serbia is fairly or very divided, compared to “only” 84 per cent of Americans or 75 per cent of the French. Given the country’s relative ethnic homogeneity and lack of immigration, … Continue reading ‘Nemanjici’: the Show that United Serbia

Srdjan GarcevicMay 6, 2018May 6, 2018Leave a comment

Culture, Reviews

Ederlezi Rising (2018) Review

A Serbian low-budget sci-fi film featuring a renowned adult entertainer in the role of an android designed to help (and pleasure) her astronaut/operator on the trip to Alpha Centauri, sounds like something that could, at best, aspire to be a cult-classic taken apart by trash-movie enthusiasts like Mystery Science Theatre 3000, or, at worst, languish in the depths of IMDB’s Bottom 100, only occasionally drawing … Continue reading Ederlezi Rising (2018) Review

Srdjan GarcevicFebruary 26, 2018February 27, 20182 Comments

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this:

Like this: