Competition


WHOSE IS THIS SONG?
CIA E TAZI PESEN?




Country of production: Bulgaria, Belgium
Year: 2003
Language: Bulgarian, Turkish, Greek, Macedonian, Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian
Mins: 70

Director: Adela Peeva
Cinematography: Joro Nedelkov
Producers: Slobodan Milovanovich,
Paul Pauwels Production company: Adela Media
Source: Slobodan Milovanovic
Adela Media
3, Babuna planina Str.
1126 Sofia
BULGARIA
Phone: +359 2 9624859
Fax: +359 2 9624789
adelamedia@adelamedia.net
www.adelamedia.net

From a statement by the director:
"In a nice little restaurant in Istanbul, we were having dinner with friends from various Balkan countries - a Greek, a Macedonian, a Turk, a Serb, and me, a Bulgarian. There I heard the song whose story is told in the film. As soon as we heard the song, we all started humming it, each of us in his own language. Everyone claimed that the song came from his own country. Then we started a fierce fight - whose song is it? I knew from my childhood that the song was Bulgarian. I wanted to find out why the others also claimed the song as their own."

Full of irony and barbed humor, WHOSE IS THIS SONG? is a comic road movie across the Balkans, gives a microcosm of the area's infamous ethnic rivalries through the story of a song everybody claims as his own. Traveling through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, Adela Peeva explores the many claims people make about the national origins of the song. She also suggestively reveals the many genres the lilting melody falls into: love song, religious hymn, patriotic tune, and so on. This is comedy - and documentary - with a point, made pleasurable through incomparable irony and deep wisdom.

Adela Peeva studied direction in Belgrade, then worked in Sofia. In 1990, she established Adela Film and TV Productions. THE UNWANTED (1999) screened at over twenty film festivals. WHOSE IS THIS SONG? recently won the critics award at the Mumbai International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Prix Arte, the European Film Academy Best Documentary award.

filmography as director
WHOSE IS THIS SONG? (2003)
BORN FROM THE ASHES (2001)
THE UNWANTED (2000)
WHEREFORE BY THEIR FRUIT YOU SHALL KNOW THEM (1997)
PATRIARCHEN, POPEN UND PROTESTE (1997)
THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE (1994)
BATCHKOVO (1994)
CHRISTMAS IN SERBIA (1994)

Monday 05-Apr-2004 9:00 PM Doc Films
Thursday 08-Apr-2004 9:00 PM Facets Cinematheque