Film Series: The Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism: "Balkan Spy"

Balkan Spy (Balkanski špijun)
1984, Yugoslavia
Dušan Kovačević und Božidar Nikolić

Ilija Cvorovic, a reformed former Stalinist who spent several years in a prison as a political prisoner, is called in for a routine conversation. He returns home convinced that the police is interested in his subtenant, a businessman returning from Paris to open a tailor shop. Convinced that his subtenant represents the greatest threat to national security Ilija begins his own surveillance operation against him.

The film series “Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism” aim to show and deconstruct the everyday life and humour in in socialist societies through their own representation and language. Five movies from five different countries reveal different aspects of the everyday life during socialism. The film series starts with the Bulgarian bureaucratic and statistical absurdities, continues with a guided tour of the corruption, bureaucracy, bribery and black market in Poland, followed by insights into the common life in the Soviet Komunalka and the Czechoslovak educational system for adults, ending with the conspiracy drama comedy from Yugoslavia. Each of these everyday life “cases” has its own significance and context in the very same way as the movies had their own particular destiny in the given socialist societies – some were censured, other became part of the pop culture of the time and got to be perceived as “classics”, third were approved by the communist parties elites etc.

The goal of the films series is to approach humour in its political and social context from an interdisciplinary perspective. Comedy is here not only undestood as a genre but also perceived as a critical and in the same way handy tool of understanding particular societies and cultures, including those from the socialist era. As Kessel argues, “using humor as a category of analysis allows us to see not only how humour entertained but also how it worked as a cultural practice that both organized social order and revealed shared assumptions about society and politics” (Kessel, 2012:3-21).

The movies will be followed by discussions.