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Super 8 Stories

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Super 8 Stories
Directed byEmir Kusturica
Written byEmir Kusturica
Produced by
  • Carlo Cresto-Dina
  • Raimond Goebel
Starring
Edited bySvetolik Mića Zajc
Music byNo Smoking Orchestra
Production
companies
Release dates
  • February 14, 2001 (2001-02-14) (Berlin)
  • September 6, 2001 (2001-09-06) (Germany)
  • March 29, 2002 (2002-03-29) (United Kingdom)
Running time
90 minutes
Countries
  • Germany
  • Italy
Languages

Super 8 Stories is a 2001 documentary film directed by Emir Kusturica about the Balkan rock group known as No Smoking or the No Smoking Orchestra, in which Kusturica played guitar.[1][2] A German and Italian co-production, it combines concert footage, Super 8 film and other home movies, television clips and interviews shot on a European tour.[1][3][4] It premiered out of competition at the 51st Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2001.[1][5]

Content

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Variety described the film as a road diary of a ten-piece band that began in Sarajevo in 1980 as Zabranjeno Pušenje (No Smoking), a group associated with the New Primitivism scene, and later toured as the No Smoking Orchestra.[1] The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam wrote that the original Sarajevo lineup had been a politically pointed street-language rock band in late-1980s Yugoslavia, that the group broke up as the country collapsed and that a new lineup settled in Belgrade, with a sound more influenced by Romani and Balkan folk music, and sought an international audience.[4] Kusturica had played guitar with the band since 1986. The film follows that later touring group.[4][1]

Eddie Cockrell, reviewing the Berlin premiere for Variety, wrote that the picture mixes theatrical concert footage, backstage scenes, clips from singer Nele Karajlić's television show Surrealist Top List and the making of a new music video.[1] Anette Olsen in Modern Times Review identified a 1999 show at the Olympia in Paris as a structural center, with further material from the band's 2000 European tour, private Super 8 reels, archive footage, sequences from the shooting of Kusturica's feature Black Cat, White Cat and a stills session with an Italian photographer.[3] The Village Voice described the finished film as grainy black-and-white interviews with each musician cut against stadium concert scenes.[6]

Critics noted that the wartime and political history of the band is present only in fragments. Olsen wrote that images of bombed buildings in Belgrade evoke the post-war setting but that the film does not explain how the group survived the 1990s as a band.[3] Jamie Russell of the BBC argued that the documentary immerses the viewer in concerts, Super 8 footage and impromptu interviews without introducing the players or the historical turmoil that shaped their music.[2]

Production

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The film is a co-production of the Italian company Fandango and Germany's Pandora Film, presented with Rasta Films and Cooperativa Edison, in association with ARTE and TELE+.[1][7] Carlo Cresto-Dina and Raimond Goebel produced. Executive producers were Karl Baumgartner, Christoph Friedel, Domenico Procacci, Kusturica and Andrea Gambetta.[1] Kusturica is also credited as writer.[7]

Cockrell wrote that fourteen cinematographers shot the film on digital video and Super 8, later finished to 35 mm, and that Svetolik Mića Zajc edited the picture and designed the sound.[1] The music is by the No Smoking Orchestra.[1] Pandora listed shooting in Berlin, Paris, Nice, Belgrade and Parma among other locations, with Serbian and English as original languages and a running time of 90 minutes.[7][1]

Release

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Super 8 Stories was shown as a noncompeting selection at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 14, 2001.[1][5] It played later that year at IDFA in Amsterdam and at other documentary and music festivals, including Karlovy Vary, Cinéma du Réel, the Chicago International Film Festival and the Bergen International Film Festival.[4][5] Pandora listed a German theatrical opening on September 6, 2001, through Pegasos Film.[7] The film opened in British cinemas on March 29, 2002.[2][8] ARTE broadcast it on May 21, 2004.[5]

Reception

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Reviews were mixed. Cockrell compared the film's volume and grungy look to Jim Jarmusch's Neil Young documentary Year of the Horse and its social framing to Wim Wenders's Buena Vista Social Club. He called it a "free-wheeling" concert film that might play better to audiences already converted by the band's live shows than to Kusturica's arthouse following.[1] Patrick Peters in Empire treated it as a tour diary, a meet-the-band portrait and a document of the video for the title track of the album Unza Unza Time, and praised the mix of talking-head interviews and concert footage.[8] Olsen called the film an "anarchistic essay" on music and the world that produced it, while faulting the gaps in the wartime story.[3]

Russell found the result "indulgent" and said it would bewilder anyone other than devoted fans, adding that a director from outside the band might have supplied more distance.[2] The Village Voice, reviewing the film in a 2002 series of music movies at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, likewise called it a mixed success and "for the fans," arguing that the group's history as television satirists under Tito and as performers through the Yugoslav wars received only scattered attention.[6]

The film was nominated for the European Film Award for Best Documentary in 2001.[9] The German Documentary Film Database records a Silver Plate for best documentary at the 2001 Chicago International Film Festival.[5]

Cast

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Variety's Berlin review credited the following as appearing in the film:[1]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Cockrell, Eddie (February 22, 2001). "Super 8 Stories". Variety. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Russell, Jamie (March 26, 2002). "Super 8 Stories (2002)". BBC. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Olsen, Anette (July 1, 2001). "An entire world of cultural and ethnic influences". Modern Times Review. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Super 8 Stories (2001)". International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Super 8 Stories (2001)". Haus des Dokumentarfilms. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Captive Markets". The Village Voice. August 13, 2002. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Super 8 Stories". Pandora Film. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  8. 1 2 Peters, Patrick (March 29, 2002). "Super 8 Stories Review". Empire. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
  9. ↑ "Super 8 Stories". European Film Academy. Retrieved September 4, 2026.
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