Many visually stunning scenes--it's the superior of Turksib, which is on the same video release. Incidentally, Svanetia is not part of the Ukraine, but is in the northwest of the Georgian Republic, in the Caucasus, not the Carpathian, mountains. This area is still very remote. The Svan language is distantly related to Georgian; there are only a few thousand speakers left.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Csinibaba
(1997)
A humanist parody of a short-lived genre
23 February 2001
I must disagree with the other viewer's assessment. I have seen Csinibaba several times, and to me it is a deft parody of the socialist musicals of the 1960s [the documentary East Side Story is a witty exploration of the sub-genre]. It uses the socialist cliches of workers' gatherings, 'competitions' and such, that were used to show the People merrily building socialism in the original musicals, true; but every character in this film is suffused with a 'politically-incorrect' loneliness. The montage during the song "Valaki Kell Nekem Is" ["I Also Need Someone"] highlights the fact that everyone loses in this society. The loss is not tragic, just sad. True, the filmmaker had nothing to say about the seedy side of the reality--the side seen in Karoly Makk's "Szerelem" or Marta Meszaros' "Naplo a Gyermekeimnek"--but this is intentional, since Timar wanted to utilize this framework of the musical. "Megall az Ido" would be a good film to watch this one with--same time, same generation, but without the frame.
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