Meeting Points 7 – Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks
In Litany of Happy People, a series of static shots portray villagers in Vojvodina, part of the former Yugoslavia, where many different national groups (Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Macedonians, Russians, Germans, Roma and many others) have painted their homes a specific colour to signal their ethnicity. A joyful song plays on the soundtrack, exclaiming a love for the various communities of the town. The beautiful ethnographic imagery together with the repetitive declaration of love makes for a sympathetic, if decidedly ambiguous, portrait. The authorities at the time were also in doubt, and the film was banned due its perceived ironic stance towards the principle of ‘Socialist Brotherhood and Unity’.
