Celebrating the European Anthropology Days
Online Documentary Screening
Croatia
To join the EASA initiative in celebrating the European Anthropology Days, The Croatian Ethnological Society is organizing an online screening of a documentary dedicated to carnival customs in Končanica by members of Czech national minority in Croatia.
The documentary will be available this week on this website and right here on this page, until the end of February.
The firs documentary Carnival in Končanica documents the carnival customs of Czech national minority in Končanica (Croatia).
The second documentary Pesniki documents the carnival traditions in Crni Lug (Gorski kotar region)
The third documentary The Busó March documents the carnival traditions in Mohács.
The documentaries will be available until the end of February at https://hrvatskoetnoloskodrustvo.hr/european-anthropology-days-online-2025/
CARNIVAL IN KONčANICA
(2023, Ivo Kuzmanić, Aleksej Gotthardi-Pavlovsky)
On Shrove Tuesday in the past, and since the 1980s on the Sunday preceding the Shrove Tuesday, in the village of Končanica – situated near the town of Daruvar, region of Western Slavonija where the Czechs form the majority in this county – from the early morning till the evening, there is a carnival procession which has to pass through the whole village visiting all the houses to which they get invited by the hosts. The procession consists of thirteen traditional characters and is accompanied by the brass orchestra. All the characters, including the female ones, are played by unmarried men. The tradition was, of course, changeable and adaptable – some carnival characters were brought from Czechia, some were adopted here. However, even though it all seems to be just joke and fun, in the same time it is not, because this is something which has to be done, which is considered to be a traditional obligation while, on the other hand, it is a serious and demanding task, for the organizers and the performers alike, hence, everybody in Končanica takes this very seriously.
[The documentary Maškare iz Končanice / Carnival in Končanica was created by the team of the Editorial office for folk and traditional culture program of THE Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT). This department exists since 2003, but its origins trace back to the Entertainment Program of the former Television Zagreb in 1966. In recent years, since 2020, it has produced only eight programs annually. In contrast, in previous years, it produced significantly more—up to twenty—half-hour or short-format programs, along with occasional medium-length productions of various genres: documentary and docudrama films, documentaries, and journalistic reports, musical and music-documentary programs, and popular science programs. These productions present and evaluate forms of traditional and popular culture among Croats in the homeland and abroad, as well as the cultural heritage of national minorities in Croatia.
Additionally, the editorial office annually produces several television broadcasts (ranging from sixty to one hundred minutes) of folk group festivals and concerts featuring artistically adapted folk music and dance (in recent years, within the Music Content Program Department of HTV).
Still-practiced customs (e.g., carnival traditions and various religious celebrations), as well as contemporary phenomena within popular culture, are presented in their current context, reflecting the period in which they were recorded. Thus, the programs and films of this editorial office engage with both the past and present of traditional and popular culture and art, in both rural and urban]
PESNIKI
(Luka Šešo, Udruga Obzor, 2007.)
The film was shot in Crni Lug, a small village at the foot of the Risnjak National Park, where almost unknown but extremely interesting carnival processions are held every year. The masks and customs of the inhabitants of Crni Lug are a combination of traditional and modern elements and do not resemble any of the more well-known carnival performers (e.g. bell ringers). The film deals with the customs pesniki in Crni Lug, which include processions, congratulations, dancing, music and traditional šičanje (throwing the host into the air). In addition, the film focuses on the lives of young people, the actors of the custom itself, who live in a small rural area with a population deficit. It records their considerations related to the custom pesniki and the future of life in a small village.
THE BUSÓ MARCH
(Udruga Obzor, Kolektiv d.o.o.)
In the Hungarian town of Mohács, near the border with Croatia, since the 19th century, carnival processions of specific Busó masks have been traditionally held every year during Carnival time. According to legend, the Busó masks came to Mohács after a Croat, Šokac, invited the refugees from Mohács to disguise themselves in the terrible Busó masks and in this way attack and scare the Turks who had occupied their city. According to legend, the natives really succeeded in this, and since that day, every year the residents of Mohács have re-masked themselves and staged a folk performance, the stage of which is the entire city of Mohács, and the actors are hundreds of citizens traditionally masked in the Busó masks that helped them drive away the Turks.
Carnival King of Europe trailers
Croatian Carnival customs were researched within the EU funded project Carnival King of Europe. The project started in 2007, on the intiative of the Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina, in San Michele all´Adige (Italy). It won the collaboration of museums from France, Croatia, Bulgaria and Macedonia in its first phase (2007-2009), and, more recently (2010-2012), from the Basque Country in Spain, Slovenia, Romania and Poland.
Here are three short trailers that show this traditional carnival customs in Lastovo, Gljev and Rukavac:
