I Am from Titov Veles
Studio: Silkroad Production
Rated: NOT RATED
Cast: Labina Mitevska, Nikolina Kujaca, Peter Musevski
Director: Teona S. Mitevska
WorkNameSort: I Am from Titov Veles
Our Rating: 3.00
Who is this barefoot, mute siren Afrodita (Labina Mitevska) who observes the people of her town, the pollution-ravaged Macedonian city of Veles (formerly Titov Veles)? She experiences everything with a physicality that’s both raw and sensual, yet she never truly knows anything. She slinks in the shadows and windowsills of a barbershop, lies naked in the kitchen she shares with two sisters and sits on stone walls as protesters fight for clean air. In a whispery narration, she gives us the basics: Her mother abandoned the three sisters when they were very young; their father died shortly thereafter; she stopped speaking after that. Now she likes to imagine herself immaculately pregnant and has visions of babies being churned out on an assembly line and carried into the ocean. All right, sure, but again I ask: Who are you?
Mitevska’s real-life sister, Teona Strugar Mitevska, wrote and directed the film, and she offers teasingly fascinating tidbits about the area. Rich with cultural history and natural beauty, the Balkan municipality was named, for a while, after socialist World War II Yugoslavian hero Marshal Tito, a man with whom the townspeople still share a conflicted relationship. At the heart of town lies a smelting factory for iron and lead that chugs poisons into the air in plumes of black smoke. (The factory has closed in recent years.) Also permeating the air is a thick sense of invisible death that panics the residents but barely concerns their politicians.
If any of this affected Afrodita, it would be a shocker. Although she’s constantly shaken ‘ physically, at times ‘ by those around her, telling her to wake up and smell reality, she prefers her Technicolor (and highly symbolic) world of bright color and ominous motifs that never pay off. To the film’s credit, Afrodita is forced to deal with the terrible turns her life takes, but she is unbreakable in her pixie manner and, thus, fails to achieve a character arc. For all its beauty, the film itself is dragged down along with Afrodita by its implicit choice to stay with her.
That makes her sister, Slavica, the hero of the piece by default. Although the big-boned, inelegant sister resigns herself to marrying a slob of an older man, she at least escapes Afrodita, a girl who won’t even move her nude ass off the kitchen table long enough for Slavica to eat. Yes, there is much to be felt deeply in this world, preferably through open toes and an open mind, but sometimes a woman just wants to enjoy a sandwich in peace.
(I Am From Titov Veles airs 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 9, and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, as part of Orlando Museum of Art’s Global Lens series; $7-$12; 407-896-4231; www.omart.org)
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2009.