Hussein isn't some rich corporate thug who deliberately shatters the small, fragile ecosystem that lets Hatidze survive. Despite her efforts to be self-sufficient, political and economic decisions have a … All the material needed for such a film is contained in the first fifteen minutes of Honeyland. She has a simple rule: When you harvest honey, you only take half — and leave the other half for the bees. The situation spirals when Hussein makes a deal with a bigshot merchant to supply more honey than he can possibly harvest. Cinematographers Fejmi Daut and Samir Ljuma do amazing work in both low light and blazing sunlight, whether they’re capturing events on the move or with time to compose their frames. Honeyland follows the life of a woman named Hatidze Muratova, the last in a long line of ancient Macedonian bee keepers. ... Muratova walks four hours and travels 12 miles by train to Skopje, ... Popular Now. hide caption. And as I watched her, I also thought of Patience and Fortitude, the marble lions that flank the stairs to the main branch of the New York Public Library. It's that Hatidze embodies a sane, respectful and engaged way of living with nature. Hatidze Muratova, Self: Honeyland. Terms & Conditions, July 26, 2019 Both qualities are written on Haditze’s face, making it an image to hold in the mind’s eye, now and in the troubles to come. Hatidze Muratova, the star of the documentary Honeyland, was given a new house by the producers of the double Oscar nominated movie. Honeyland closes with a close-up of Hatidze’s remarkable face. A tall, slim, agile woman in her early fifties with a hawklike nose, a snaggletooth, weathered skin, and extremely kind eyes, she is not merely charismatic but a radiant being. Documentary 2019 1 hr 25 min. Paris (AFP) Watch out at the Oscars on Sunday for Hatidze Muratova. All rights reserved. Like the directors, the cameramen took on the difficult task of making the subjects forget that they were being filmed. She has a simple rule: When you harvest honey, you only take half — and leave the other half for the bees. Her village doesn’t have running water or electricity, though, and hence no TV. The ground has barely begun to thaw when Hatidze climbs the hill to the perch on which we first saw her, and yes, when she opens the hive, there are bees. It's a solitary, hardscrabble existence, and Hatidze doesn't enjoy being cut off from the world. At the same time, huge parts of the planet are menaced by climate change. The bonds they formed with their subjects allowed the directors to set up scenes based on behavior and interactions observed when the cameras weren’t on, and to shoot these suggested improvisations so they could be edited like a fictional narrative (with, for example, shifting points of view and expressive cutaways, such as a jet streaking across the sky as if it were a messenger from another world.). This becomes clear in Honeyland, an exquisitely photographed documentary by Macedonian filmmakers Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska. HATIDZE MURATOVA, THE HERO of Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland, is believed to be the last wild female honey gatherer in Europe. The award-winning documentary Honeyland marks the second collaboration between directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska. artforum.com is a registered trademark of Artforum International Magazine, New York, NY. The home she lives in was purchased for her by the documentary filmmakers after they won their first award at the Sarajevo film festival. In Macedonia, the last native beekeeper relies upon traditional methods to harvest honey deep in the mountains. Sign In Honeyland. “A face is a landscape,” said Jean-Luc Godard, probably quoting someone else. Neon And if you send a small contribution to the Honeyland Project, you will receive in exchange a small jar of the best honey you’ve ever tasted. When the filmmakers first encountered Hatidze… Shot over three years, this elegant film — which nabbed several top prizes at Sundance — begins as the intimate portrait of a beekeeper who makes famously good honey, and then expands to become something of a parable. A poignant film following the life and struggles of Hatidze Muratova, a beekeeper in a remote village in North Macedonia. As you might guess, this generosity leads to trouble. They were told that the holes were for the beehives that Hatidze tends to. Hatidze spends her life looking after her argumentative mother, who can't move her legs and is going blind, and keeping bees as her family has done for generations. She will be the only Turkish-Macedonian peasant in the starry audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. In that it has no narration or talking heads, Honeyland is, in part, “direct cinema.” But the filmmaking team members were not flies on a wall. The heroine is 50-something Hatidze Muratova, who lives in a tiny hut in a ruggedly mountainous area of Macedonia, 20 miles from the nearest town and seemingly hundreds of years from modernity. Stefanov and Kotevska offer a more complicated truth. She knows that if you want honey, you must find a way of living in harmony with the bees that create it. 1. 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