THE BELLS OF HAPPINES / ZVONČIĆI SREĆE

ZVONKY ŠTASTIA

In Competition > Documentaries

Mariena and Roman are cousins. Despite the fact that each of them has her or his family, children and everyday life they are freaks in a settlement in which they live. They share one passion which has little to do with their everyday life – admiration of singer stars Karel Gott and Dara Rolins. They collect and exchange newspaper clips from tabloids, they rehearse together songs from the repertoire of their idols and borrow their identities under which they are known by their relatives and neighbours. In spite of all expectations Mariena is Karel and Roman is Darinka. One day they decide that they will sing their favourite hit The Bells of Happiness (“Zvonky šťastia“) and they will send it to them together with their own video-clip on the DVD. The film traces the process of shooting this message on the background of their life in the settlement.

Everything started with an ethno-musicological research in which Marek Šulík cooperated with ethnographer Jana Belišová. He invited a student of documentary direction Jana Bučka to help him. They were collecting new Roma songs and they were taking care of video-documentation. It resulted in the creation of the DVD Neve giľa and the film “Cigarettes and Songs“ – “Cigarety a pesničky“. Music in this film could be labelled basically as “rom-pop”. They visited as many as 50 settlements which made a deep impact on them in the form of a strong social and emotional experience. They also started to feel a need to deal with the so-called “Roma problem”, which means why they are what they are like, why they are poor or how could one deal with their problems, what are solutions of their problems.