Le tigri di Guca

2010, 52 minutes

Since 1961, in the small town of Guča, 150 km from Belgrade, the Trumpet Festival takes place. Five days of music, dances and heavy drinking. Fifty years of stories and trumpets, that tell the complex and grievous recent history of the Balkans, from the c

Since 1961, in the small town of Guča, 150 km from Belgrade, the Trumpet Festival takes place. Five days of music, dances and heavy drinking. Fifty years of stories and trumpets, that tell the complex and grievous recent history of the Balkans, from the communist regime to the break up of the Ex-Yugoslavia, up to the wounds left by the ethnic war. In a country where nationalist rhetoric doesn’t seem to have been permanently consigned to the past, the undisputed masters of the trumpets are the Gypsies. Their music has gone hand in hand with the most important moments of Serbian life, as Emir Kusturica described in the evocative images of “Underground”. They’re not able to read the notes and they don’t have orchestra leaders but, as Miles Davis said, they are the best trumpet- players in the world. Each summer gypsy bands come from all over Serbia to challenge each other on the stage of the official contest or just to play in the streets and earn some money to bring home. As Tigrovi, who reach Guča from Vranje with Robert, the band’s leader, trumpet- player as a vocation like most of the people of his city.

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