Once upon a time there was a country...

... on the banks of Danube called Yugoslavia, a leader called Marshal Tito who showed the world how to remain non-aligned at the height of cold war, and a director called Emir Kusturica who gave us a wonderful movie called "Underground" - winner Palm D'Or, Cannes 95.

Collective Chaos promised to bring Cannes to Bangalore last weekend, showing five of the previous Cannes winners. For an annual subscription fee of just Rs 400 (they promise to screen atleast 100 movies a year), it can't come any cheaper than this. But with cranky seats atop Sona Towers (off Cunningham Road) and (although they promise to promptly throw out anybody found using a mobile inside the hall) with some female patrons hell-bent on "checking" time on their flashy mobiles every other minute, it wasn't such an enjoyable experience watching movies. I watched three out of the five shown. And while Kagemusha and Taste of Cherry were descent, it was Underground which really made my weekend.

Underground spans the entire life-span of Yugoslavia. Starting from the Nazi bombing of Belgrade, to the comrades fighting from underground, through the days of Tito and finally the break-up and bloodshed of 1990's. Story of two friends and their passion for one woman, story of a group of people who are put in a cellar underground to avoid Nazi bomb's, and who even 20 years after the war was over, were still made to believe that there was a war happening outside and the Germans were still in power, and weren't allowed to come out. Exhilarating comedy and satire, a brilliant sound track, passionate and sexually explicit at times... this is one gem of a movie you can't miss.

Just last week, the last remains of the erstwhile Yugoslavia decided to split again. After the worst blood-bath that Europe had seen since WW2, there are now seven different chunks, one for each ethnic group. And like the chunks from the erstwhile Soviet Union, they are all queuing up infront of the NATO HQ in Brussels. All that will remain will be memories of Tito and NAM and ofcourse, the movies of great men like Emir Kusturica.