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Lincoln Center has a Croatian Cinema series starting this week, Beyond Boundaries: The Emergence of Croatian Cinema. I haven't seen any of the films that are being shown. Can anybody recommend any of them?

All for Free / Sve dzaba (Antonio Nuic, 2006)

Armin (Ognjen Svilicic, 2007)

The Birch Tree / Breza (Ante Babaja, 1967)

Face to Face / Licem u Licem (Branko Bauer, 1963)

Fine Dead Girls / Fine mrtve djevojke (Dalibor Matanic, 2002)

H-8 (Nikola Tanhofer, 1958)

Here / Tu (Zrinko Ogresta, 2003)

How the War Started on My Island / Kako je paceo rat na mom otoku
(Vinko Bresan, 1996)

Koncert (Branko Belan, 1954)

The Melody Haunts My Reverie / Samo jednom se ljubi (Rajko Grlic, 1981)

The Melon Route / Put lubenica (Branko Schmidt, 2006)

Monday or Tuesday / Ponedeljak ili utorak (Vatroslav Mimica, 1966)

Occupation in 26 Pictures / Okupacija u 26 slika (Lordan Zafranovic, 1978)

One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away / Tko pjeva zlo ne misli (Kresimir Golik, 1970)

The Pine Tree in the Mountain / U gori raste zelen bor (Antun Vrdoljak, 1971)

Rondo (Zvonimir Berkovic, 1966)

Sky, Satellites or Celestial Body / Nebo, sateliti (Lukas Nola, 2001)

Train Without a Timetable / Vlak bez voznog reda (Veljko Bulajic, 1959)

Tressette: A Story of an Island / Treseta (Drazen Zarkovic, 2006)

Two Players from the Bench / Dva igraca s klupe (Dejan Sorak, 2005)

A Village Performance of Hamlet / Predstava Hamleta u Mrdusi Donjoj (Krsto Papic, 1973)

What Is a Man Without a Moustache? / Sto je muskarac bez brkova? (Hrvoje Hribar, 2005)

What Iva Recorded on October 21, 2003 / Sto je lva snimila 21. listopada 2003. (Tomislav Radic, 2005)

Being of (half) Croatian ancestry -- I will be interested in what you discover. (I have never ever seen a Croatian movie).

Me, too. (Both the "half Croatian ancestry" part and the "interested in what you discover" part)

All I've been able to discover about Croatian films is that they produced some well-regarded cartoon shorts many years ago (with one, can't remember the name (about a fellow who arrives at the beach with various inflatables (inflatable raft, inflatable island, etc.)) winning the first Academy Award in the category.

I think a two-volume collection of these was released by Image, but I've never really bothered to check them out.

Looks like the Wikipedia entry has been updated somewhat since I last checked...

I saw a couple of these at last year's Sarajevo Film Festival:

All for Free / Sve dzaba (Antonio Nuic, 2006)

A rather sweet, somewhat Kaurismakian fable about a man who experiences a major shock to his lifestyle (no spoilers, as it's a pivotal scene), and decides to spend all his money on a mobile bar and drive round the country offering people drinks - the twist being that he doesn't charge. Not too surprisingly, established businesses aren't as impressed by his altruism as his customers are...

The Melon Route / Put lubenica (Branko Schmidt, 2006)

If I remember rightly, this was a very disturbing but pretty effective look at the Croatian people-smuggling industry, via the story of an aimless drifter who finally finds a purpose in life when he defends a Chinese woman from the attentions of a vicious gang of human traffickers.

Occupation in 26 pictures (Lordan Zafranovic, 1978) is about a small group of young friends before and during Italian occupation of Croatia in World War II. It is not a war film; it does not depict any front battles, if I remember correctly. Rather it concentrates on the "normal" life of the times: some of the friends turned into fascists, some into communists, and so on. The film is very well done, I keep it in the same section of my brain as Fellini's Amarcord and Bertolucci's 1900. Warning: With all its filmic beauty, Zafranovic's depiction of violence that one group of citizens can inflict on another (back to the future of Yugoslavia's disintegration?) was so shocking and brutal that it made me physically ill.

Here is an interesting article about three Croatian films recently shown as part of a film series in NYC.