ŽIVOT JE – LIFE IS
Vladimir Perović | Montenegro 2013 | 25 Min. | OV
Filmmaker Vladimir Perović left Cuce, in southwestern Montenegro many years ago but visited several times. He concluded that life with its habits, daily routines and tools remained the same even through those many years. Thus, he came to the decision to bind those images in film: of people from the karsts, their needs, tools, skills and rhythms. The documentary offers the images of life but does not explain them, while attempting to unveil the secret of living in a Godot-like, wasted and reduced scenery. Life in Cuce also entails an on-going struggle for elementary things.
The inhabitants of Cuce do not draw too much out of their dry rocky soil: an arable field hardly room-sized, grass (for their cattle) sprouting among the stones, a wild tree to engraft, water appearing from the very rocks, a colony of honeybees settled in a tree. But all these little things mean life. But there is one new thing, device of the modern man – a cell phone which also means life as it connects the inhabitants with others.
Strong and condensed images, no words uttered, no music used, compose an ode to the life of man from arid karsts of Montenegro. Literally and metaphorically, it seems the natives need to go further up and up in order to achieve something and make a living.
