LEADER 01973ngm a22003137a 4500003 hubpceuo 005 20201021074845.0 006 g|||||r|||| 00| 0 007 v| |||||| 008 121017b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0aeng d 040 |bEnglish |chubpceu 041 ukr 041 pol 041 lit 041 |jeng 099 FL Record |f0973a 100 Mucha, Stanislaw, |edirector. 242 The Center |yeng 245 Die Mitte 260 Germany : |bStrandfilm Production, |c2004. 300 VHS (85 min.) 337 Moving image 520 The stated goal of Polish director Stanistaw Mucha is to ascertain the precise middle point of an ever expanding Europe. Though we do indeed get to see our share of maps and markers, produced by many a concerned EU citizen, Mr. Mucha is not interested in geography so much as a kind of anthropology. His intriguing premise is but an excuse to allow he and his film crew to film a real-life human comedy, gallivanting about Germany and everything East, visiting villages with plaques, countrysides with monuments, and townspeople with legends to sell, all proclaiming that the center lies HERE! The joy to be found here lies in its unique status as a road movie without a narrative trajectory, without an ending or completion. It is a celebration of the myriad faces the camera collects and their hopes, illusions, and good-humored resolve in the face of their sometimes tenuous everyday existence. That this journey takes the film crew as far East as Ukraine should speak volumes of not only the uncertain legacy left by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the even more uncertain one beginning in the era of the European Union. 651 Germany 942 |2ddc |cVHS 952 |00 |10 |2ddc |40 |6FL_RECORD_0973A |70 |8FL |994710FL |bFL |d2017-03-10 |l0 |oFL Record 0973a |r2017-03-10 |w2017-03-10 |yVHS |cAudio Visual 920 01 0X52AEYx 966 |cIn the Research Room