Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator
Adventures in Eastern Europe: a cult cinema playlist from Dan Bird
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1h 6m
Directed by Dušan Makavejev • 1967 • Yugoslavia
This gleefully subversive, formally skittish, and surprisingly moving oddity from the inimitable Dušan Makavejev is a high point of the Yugoslav Black Wave. Centred around the doomed romance between a Hungarian switchboard operator Izabela (Eva Ras) and a Muslim, middle-aged sanitation specialist Ahmed (Slobodan Aligrudić), this parable about the political implications of free love jumps freely between tense personal drama, pseudo-documentary addresses from sexologists and criminologists, and grotesque comedy. A perfect entry point into the radical, off-kilter humanism of the Black Wave, with its concern for the marginal and the unhinged.
LOVE AFFAIR, OR THE CASE OF THE MISSING SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR • LJUBAVNI SLUČAJ ILI TRAGEDIJA SLUŽBENICE P.T.T
Directed by Dušan Makavejev
Written by Dušan Makavejev and Branko Vučićević
Cinematography by Aleksandar Petković
Starring: Eva Ras, Slobodan Aligrudić, Ružica Sokić
In Serbian with English subtitles
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