A MAN IS NOT A BIRD (COVEK NIJE TICA) Tribute to Dusan Makavejev: Genuine Revolutionary

In a bleak industrial town in Slovenia, a visiting engineer (Janez Vrhovec) has an affair with a young and carefree hairdresser (Milena Dravic), which does not prevent her making love to a truck driver (Boris Dvornik) she had known previously. With its guiltless eroticism, vertiginous images from hand-held cameras, and satiric attitude to authority, Makavejev’s first feature came as a revelation from Eastern Europe Its light side is balanced by its portrayal of the noisy, dirty, dehumanizing work done by industrial workers. The provocative ending cross-cuts between a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a special event for local dignitaries at a factory, and the lovemaking of the heroine, finding her own ‘Ode to Joy ‘ -Stephen Faber