Yugoslavia,
1992, 93 min
Shown in 1993
CREDITS
- dir
-
Goran Paskaljevic
- prod
-
Goran Paskaljevic
- scr
-
Gordon Michic
- cam
-
Milan Spasic
- editor
-
Olga Skirgin, Olga Obradov
- cast
-
Nikola Zarkovic, Miki Manojlovic, Ina Gogalova, Mija Aleksic
- source
-
Capitol Films
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Goran Paskaljevic in person.
OTHER
“I began to make the film and then the war began,” recalls director Goran Paskaljevic (Special Treatment, SFIFF 1980). “But in the course of war, the other problems people have to deal with don’t disappear.” Set in the post-Communist, prewar period, Tango Argentino follows ten-year-old Nikola as he negotiates around his eccentric family. His father is a philandering music teacher, who plays weddings to supplement his income. His mother, who cooks and shops for elderly people, is too concerned with finding her own identity to look after Nikola and his ailing sister. As he begins to absorb his mother’s responsibilities, Nikola befriends the people he works for, in particular, the charming singer Sénor Julio Popovitch, portrayed by former pop singer Mija Aleksic. They begin to substitute for his family, giving him the attention his parents were not capable of. The film explores the difficulty of holding together a family in an unstable political climate, yet still upholds the necessity of family bonds. Like its title song, Tango Argentino intertwines the gentle with the harsh, the nostalgic with the ironic. Although it never explicitly deals with politics or the war, the film's concerns are clear. “People should not be divided into the young and old,” says Paskaljevic, “but rather into the human and the inhuman.”
—Lisanne Skyler
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
