East of the West 2001 / Slogans / Albania, France 2001
A young teacher named Andre arrives at a mountain village where he’s to be a new teacher at a local primary school. To his great surprise he discovers that the main proof of his expertise will be generating huge slogans proclaiming Communist principles. Considering that he’s new at the school he’s allowed to choose between “Up with the spirit of the revolution!” and “American imperialism is nothing more than a paper tiger.” On the advice of his colleague he chooses the shorter of the two. The next day, after teaching, he and his class set out for a convenient spot to ‘write’ a huge slogan out of white rocks. But the ridiculous tasks awaiting him at the school are far from over. Every week the local party secretary assigns the teachers new slogans, and they soon learn that the huge slogan campaign is intended to impress an important party member who will be passing through. Using these slogans, the director has succeeded in exposing the absurdity of Albanian political life at the end of the seventies.
90 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Gjergj Xhuvani
/ Screenplay Ylljet Alicka, Yves Hanchar, Gjergj Xhuvani
/ Dir. of Photography Gerald Thiaville
/ Music Denis Barbier
/ Editor Didier Ranz
/ Producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint, Pascal Judelewicz
/ Production Les Films des Tournelles, Albanian General Vision, Roissy Films, Les Films en Hiver
/ Cast Artur Gorishti, Luiza Xhuvani, Agim Qirjaqi, Birce Hasko, Niko Kanxheri, Festim Cela, Robert Ndrenika
Gjergj Xhuvani (b. 1963, Tirana) graduated from the theatre department at Tirana’s Academy of Performing Arts. He then worked as assistant director on a number of movies and wrote screenplays for animated films. His feature debut as a director came in 1995 with Last Love. Xhuvani caught the attention of the critics with his thirty-minute film Funeral Business (1999), screened at the Venice IFF. In addition, the film won the main prize at the festival in Montpellier, France and the Special Jury Prize at the Eurofestival. Xhunavi is also the author of the children’s book The Boat of the Poor and the novel Until Noon.
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