A WEEKEND OF DECEASED PERSONS (Âčęĺíä íŕ ěđňîâöč)
Movie from: 1988
Duration: 94 minutes
Director: Kole Angelovski
Screenplay: Mile Popovski
Leading Roles: Vladimir Angelovski - Dadi, Blagoja Chorevski, Djordji Jolevski, Dimche Meshkovski, Goce Todorovski
Content: The film is about an absurd situation where because of the impatience of an employee at the hospital, the corpses
of the dead patients are replaced on delivery and the families get another different corpse, so that they start searching for their own
lost family members. Tase Stoparevski, a clerk from the city of Prilep, becomes a widower for the second time. His wife Kata dies in
hospital in Skopje. The corpse is taken by Tase's son from his previous marriage. He byes the most expensive coffin and together with
the corpse lifts it onto the roof rack of his small car, named "ficho". Meanwhile, Tase – expecting the recovery of his wife – hires two
house painters to decorate his house. The house painters, who do their private business during the work-hours, come to his house and
start working. Also, the soldier Vladimir – the boyfriend of Tase and Kata’s daughter Mica, arrives at the house, as well as Mica and
all other relatives who are expecting the arrival of the coffin with the dead body of Kata. During an argument between the house
painters and the people present, Tase arrives and pays the house painters. They leave for Pretor expecting another job there. Soon,
Tase's director and his secretary arrive to express their condolences. Tase's brother returns as the funeral is scheduled for 12 o'clock,
as there are a lot for burying. The director uses his connections to enable the funeral to take place at any time. The church-bells are
ringing. Tase's next-door neighbor has the wedding of his only son. Therefore, they agree their ceremonies should go on alternately, by
turns of 15 minutes. The coffin with Kata arrives. According to the customs, the relatives want to wash the corpse and so they discover
that Kata is not in the coffin, but some other person. After calling the hospital in Skopje, Tase finds out that his dead wife has been
delivered to Klime in Ohrid. Tase and Klime arrange meeting on Djavato, where they are to exchange their dead bodies. On Djavato it is
chaos. There, the families from Prilep and Ohrid meet, as well as the two house painters and two German female hitchhikers. The house
painters come to the conclusion that the families are making bargain with human organs from the dead for transplant. After opening the
coffins, the family from Ohrid also discovers that their dead grandmother Zora is not in the coffin either, and so they leave with their
coffin empty. Tase remains with the two female dead dies. Desperately he promises his dead wife Kata that he will find all the dead and
wandering women, and she will be buried with great pomp and escort.
Resume: The permanent lack of comedy in Macedonian feature film production becomes increasingly evident with the rare
instances of comediographic attempts in the Macedonian film repertoire. Also, the constant statements of support for this genre remain
without any visible results. The constant search for comediographic motifs which undoubtedly existed in the planning of the repertoire
but the realization of which was for the afore-mentioned reasons constantly delayed, is not an exception to this. Thus, it happened that
as far as the repertoire was concerned we have a vacuum of almost three decades between "Quiet Summer" made in 1961 and "A Weekend of
Deceased Persons" made in 1988.
On the other hand it is well known that comedy in film is a genre with strictly defined dramatic principles. The potential of its
reception is virtually unlimited but it is for this very reason that comedy and its production raise a considerable number of creative
problems. The practice of this genre with its universal tendency points to the fact that film comedy is harder to produce than the films
with so-called "serious" subject matter. The same is confined by the history of drama and the experiences in dramaturgy, built on the
principles of theatrical expression.
The screenplay for this film written by Mile Popovski and Kole Angelovski the working version of which was called "There is No More Room
in Heaven" and out of which both the film and the TV series were formed, is constructed around a rather unusual event. Therefore it is
certain that this comediographic text, at least in its initial form, has a classical comediographic structure especially when it comes
to the formation of the basic line of the plot. To be more precise, everything starts with the death of the wife of a small-time clerk
in a little provincial town. The coincidence of the fact that the authors at first placed the action in Prilep, this time undoubtedly
has its own logic since one entire dimension on which this comedy is based draws upon a series of toponyms, relations and their local
characteristics. Thus, poor Kata dies in the State Hospital in Skopje and her foster son Cande goes to collect her body. However,
slightly taken back by the big city and trying to seize the opportunity once it has presented itself, Cande goes into the beauty shop to
by some "Becutan" baby cream, which there is obviously a deficiency in Prilep. Meanwhile, his buggy with the coffin on top of it is
towed away.
Setting off from such an initial situation which possesses a moderate amount of comedy and also enough of the primary paradoxes which,
as we have already said, are absolutely appropriate in the well-guided and well-designed comediographic structure, the rest of the text
promises a firmly built comic situation. Thus, there follows a series of paradoxical events connected to the exchange of the coffins,
which enter the genre of what is known as a comedy of errors. Their primary characteristic in the comediographic sense lies not only in
the action itself but also in the perfected ambiguity of the dialogue.
Unfortunately, neither the director Kole Angelovski, nor the actors maintained this initial tempo in the remainder of the film. The film
featured a cast of superb comedians such as Dimche Meshkovski, Vladimir Angelovski–Dadi, Goce Todorovski, Blagoja Chorevski, Todorka
Kondova–Zafirovska, Igor Dzambazov, Jovica Mihajlovski, Gjorgi Jolevski, Tasko Nachic, Bata Zhivojinovic, Jelisaveta Sabljic, Ljiljana
Jovanovska–Bogoevic, Katerina Kocevska, Mladen Krstevski, Sonja Zdravkovska, etc.
The film was very professionally and with respect for the technical laws filmed by the veteran Misho Samoilovski, the setting design was
made by Nikola Lazarevski, and the musical basis for the film was composed by Dimitar Masevski.
Awards:
1988 FF, Golubac, The First Prize "Golden Little Fish" for direction / Kole Angelovski
1988 FF, Golubac, Third Prize from the audience
Sources: Macedonian Cinema Information Center and Cinemateque of Macedonia.
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