Director Aleksandar Manic’s The Shutka Book of Records was filmed in the biggest predominantly Roma settlement in the Balkans. Sutka, or Suto Orizari, near Skopje, was originally set up by homeless families following the earthquake that devastated the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia in 1963. The film introduces a number of lively local characters, all of whom claim to be champions of some bizarre discipline, be it exorcising evil genies, spending the biggest amount of money on a circumcision party, training ganders to fight, or collecting old Turkish music on audio tapes.

This well-crafted and entertaining film is the latest addition to a rich and enduring tradition of cinema about the Roma of this region, the best-known among them directed by Emir Kusturica. Time of the Gypsies (1988) became a major art-house hit, and its sequence featuring the ritual collective river bathing on St. George’s Day is analyzed at length at film schools across the globe. In Black Cat, White Cat (1998) Kusturica abandons the magic realism characterizing his previous films for a more cartoonish and farcical feel. This style is a world away from Western logic and norms, yet it is rich in composite allegory, such as the recurring image of a pig munching on an old Trabant car. Kusturica’s homeland critics attacked him for romanticizing and mainstreaming a marginal culture, instead of representing the urban, European aspects of Serbian society. He is drawn to Roma primarily for its people who are economically and culturally distinct from the dominant order–the same fascination that inspired the earlier masterpieces of “Gypsy cinema,” like Aleksandar Petrovic’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Skupljaci perja, 1967) and Emil Loteanu’s Gypsies are Found Near Heaven (Tabor ukhodit v nebo, 1975). Manic, who made a documentary on the set of Kusturica’s Underground, enlisted Bajram Severdzan from Black Cat to act as the guide through the weird world of Shutka.

Local music is an essential ingredient of these films. The emotional impact of the brass music of the Balkan Roma owes a lot to a strange and intoxicating combination of the thunderous rhythms full of joyful energy and the concurrent supremely melancholic melodies that accompany them. There may be a cinematic analogy to this, exemplified by an odd common thread underlining the documentaries that deal with the social issues facing the Roma in this part of the world. While their subject matter is about extreme deprivation, grief, and injustice, their tone is distinctly comical. This also applies to other recent films by Serbian filmmakers, such as Boric Mitic’s Pretty Diana or Zelimir Zilnik’s Kenedi Goes Back Home. The protagonists’ language and attitude frequently send audiences into rapturous laughter. This may seem paradoxical or dubious, but it helps to make these films popular. If they were not funny, they would most probably end up being ignored, much like the people they portray. …