Man Is Not a Bird

An engineer arrives in a mining town in Yugoslavia; he is to stay a few months to install a machine at the plant. In the house where he lodges he meets a young hairdresser named Rajka and a relationship begins. Other lives go on in the town: a worker believes his wife is deceiving him, a hypnotist gives a show, a ceremony is prepared for a production record at the plant. At the end of the film the engineer receives his award, and while the applause continues in the hall the woman leaves with someone else. Dušan Makavejev writes and directs. It is his first feature. It belongs to the Yugoslav Black Wave, the current that appeared in the middle of the sixties and drew a picture of the working class outside official optimism. The form is mixed: documentary footage, the hypnotist's show and recordings of the factory ceremony enter between the fictional scenes. Makavejev's method is to set things against each other; what is said and what is seen keep contradicting each other on screen. Its best known scene is the finale; the award speech and the personal defeat are shown at once and the narrative passes no comment. The director went further in later films and was banned in Yugoslavia; this first one is the start of that line. Who it is for: viewers who like Eastern European cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: the structure is loose, the characters are left incomplete, and the film asks for context.