Ciganjska

….''Ciganjska is a movie of a thoughtfully balanced rythm, harmonious expressionistic configuration of images and functional ethno-music naturally grown into animation which allows us while watching to discover and recognize are own feelings. It is a short-form film which, although made with sophisticated computer technique, depends on minimalism of a primary visual artisany, the one that lingers in our memory the longest. Ciganjska is constructed as a musical animated film whose structure and rythm are formed by dance expressed primarily by interplay of black surfaces on top of a grey ones, by rainy background, details like black umbrellas and hats, dark glasses on a singer's face, guitar's black ''eye'' and a dark hole in the grave. In spite of its musical basis, or precisely thanks to it, Ciganjska is a damped, silent movie, whose story is told whispering. It is a visual musical story about old age and evanescence, about futility of human duration and music as the best means of getting through life with not so many scars on one's soul. At the same time, it is a collective portrait of the Balkan people who drown their sorrow in brandy which is usually not pungent enough so they spice it even more with a snake poison.
We find the film's participators on a tiny island of their mother-tongue and memories (which are forms of oblivion, as Kundera would say) where they dance their death-bed dance and only at the end, after a bottle with a snake and brandy inside it is being drunk, we begin to understand that it is all about a group of outsiders which are at the bottom (or in a getto) of megalopolis, people caught in a gigantic concrete-trap sick of depression which came about as a result of industrialisation, inhuman projects, demolished monuments, of factories and chimneys throwing up death for the nature surrounding them. In a world which feels like a trap, it is impossible to desert from one's own life, to evade into another one and into a different reality, in any other way except by abondaning life''…

Midhat Ajanovic, ZAREZ, 01.07.2004.

‘’…Animated film by authors Marko Mestrovic and Davor Medurecan is the only Croatian movie that entered competition of this year’s Animafest. We are talking about a really excellent achievement in so much that authorities in the field of animated film Stiv Cinik and otherwise classically reserved Josko Marusic, unisonously claim that ‘’Ciganjska’’ is a true little miracle and the best thing that has happened to an animated film over the last 15 years. With particularly dark atmosphere and anxiety, this animated film is based on one of ‘’Balade Petrice Kerempuha’’ texts by Miroslav Krleza, the ballade ‘’Ciganjska’’ written in 1936.
All 9 minutes and 19 seconds of duration of this supreme 3D computer animation, strongly draw us in the character’s inner world, and, as the authors themselves said, emphasise estrangement on an asphalt jungle and confusing urge for auto-destruction. Parallel with the poetics of German expressionism is drawn quite clearly and additionally emphasised by eerie music played by ethno group ‘’Cinkusi’’, probably the single most important contribution to creating atmosphere in ‘’Ciganjska’’. Music is incredibly powerful and it draws us hypnotically into the world of Krleza’s ballade characters…’’

"13TH CROATIAN FILM DAYS", Zagreb, Croatia

„EBENSEE FESTIVAL 2004“, Linz, Austria

„UNICA 2004” Veitshochheim, Germany

„BALKANIMA 2004”, Belgrade, Serbia

„INTERNATIONAL FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL 2005", Dugo Selo, Croatia