MAN IS NOT A BIRD

MAN IS NOT A BIRD (COVEK NİJE TİCA), 1965
Yugoslavia | 35mm, Black-White, 80’ | Serbian
Director: Dušan Makavejev

Engineer Rudinski visits a factory in the countryside to oversee the installation of a new machinery. There, he begins a romantic relationship with a hairdresser who has been taken in by a local truck driver. Although the screenplay and the space point out social realism, the film actually tells a love story. Makaveyev, the bold, mischievous, and unconventional director of Serbian cinema, places a fictional character in a real mining town, juxtaposing fiction with documentary, professional and amateur actors, and the formats of propaganda film and love story. With this debut feature—which also pays homage to the French New Wave—the Yugoslav director begins to make his mark on Eastern European cinema as a satirical critic of reality.