Karpotrotter is a road movie about place, time, and memory, as well as an homage to filmmaker Karpo Godina, whose work flourished during the Black Wave of Yugoslav filmmaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Contemporary filmmaker Matjaz Ivanisin retraces the footsteps, 40 years later, of his compatriot’s road trip through small villages in the rural countryside. Constructed from Godina’s 8mm footage from this journey, Ivanisin interlaces this material with landscape footage from his current road trip and contemporary interviews of the citizenry who recall Godina’s visit decades earlier; period folkloric music augments the soundtrack. The filmmaker structures his film in five sections that articulate the local character of different villages. Richly multi-layered in both temporal and spatial terms, the filmmaker constructs a poignant meditation about the local village culture and inhabitants of this rural region of the former Yugoslavia.

-Jon Gartenberg

Directed by

Matjaž Ivanišin