Variola Vera | |
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Directed by | Goran Marković |
Written by | Goran Marković Milan Nikolić |
Produced by | Aleksandar Stojanović |
Starring | Rade Šerbedžija, Erland Josephson, Rade Marković |
Music by | Zoran Simjanović |
Distributed by | Art Film 80 Croatia Film |
Release date |
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Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | Yugoslavia |
Language | Serbo-Croatian |
Variola Vera (Cyrillic: Вариола вера) is a 1982 Yugoslav film directed by Goran Marković. [1] Due to its subject matter and tone, the film is often described as horror. [2]
The film is a satirical dramatization of the 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak, which was the last outbreak on European territory. [3] It comments on the corruption of medical professionals and government officials. [1]
An Albanian Muslim pilgrim returns to Yugoslavia from Saudi Arabia infected with an unknown disease. He is moved from Kosovo to a hospital in Belgrade, where his symptoms worsen and eventually lead to his death. By the time hospital officials realize he was infected with smallpox, which they had trouble identifying due to the belief that the disease had been eradicated, it is already too late.
The disease spreads as the disorganised staff attempt to isolate the infected. An epidemiologist arrives to assist doctors and function as a means of communication between the now quarantined hospital and the outside world.
The film follows the behaviour of numerous groups of people, including patients at the hospital, medical staff, ordinary citizens and government officials, commenting largely on the corruption and cowardice of politicians and high-ranking medical staff (such as Superintendent Čole, who locks himself in his office and steals medicine), but also displaying the humanity and self-sacrifice of the medical staff in times of crisis.
Twenty-one days pass after the final case is documented, and the hospital is officially declared smallpox-free. The quarantine is lifted and government officials announce that the disease has been once been again eradicated.
In a 2012 interview, director Goran Marković said about the film: [5]
Even as a student, I was obsessed with the idea of making an adaptation of Albert Camus' The Plague. That novel left a strong impression on me in my early youth. Later, during my studies, I realized that the real theme of the novel is not the disease, but the moral discourse between the individual and the 'dark force'. When I experienced the arrival of Soviet tanks into Prague in 1968, which also meant the complete loss of illusions about the possibility of living in a just world, I decided to make a film that would somehow oppose that dark force. The plague seemed to me the best frame for the story. But at the time no one wanted to finance such a film, for understandable reasons, and since then we had a smallpox epidemic in 1972, after which I realized that it would be better to deal with our own reality, and not some kind of literary one. Variola Vera is absolutely the most difficult project I've ever filmed. There was always something standing in its way. I've spent months preparing to shoot in one hospital, only to be given another, completely different hospital some one-two days before the shooting. 'Take it or leave it', was the dilemma. Soon the set designer left me, and the shooting itself took place in complete poverty. We worked 14-16 hours a day. I was completely exhausted, both physically and morally.
Variola Vera was filmed at the Clinic for Plastic Surgery and Burns, near the Partizan Stadium in Belgrade. [6] The music and sound effects, which are a prominent feature of the film, were composed by Zoran Simjanović. [7]
The film garnered Marković the first prize for Best Director and the Best Screenplay at the 1982 Valencia Film Festival. [1] It received the Golden Arena for Best Costume Design at the 1982 Pula Film Festival. [8]
A poll of 30 Yugoslav critics and journalists conducted in the newspaper Oslobođenje named Variola Vera the best Yugoslav Film of 1982. [9]
The Yugoslav Film Archive, in accordance with its authorities based on the Law on Cultural Heritage, declared one hundred Serbian feature films (1911–1999) as cultural heritage of great importance on December 28, 2016. Variola Vera is also on that list. [10]
The 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak was the largest outbreak of smallpox in Europe after the Second World War. It was centered in Kosovo, a province of Serbia within Yugoslavia, and the capital city of Belgrade. A Kosovar Albanian Muslim pilgrim had contracted the smallpox virus in the Middle East. Upon returning to his home in Kosovo, he started the epidemic in which 175 people were infected, killing 35. The epidemic was efficiently contained by enforced quarantine and mass vaccination. The 1982 film Variola Vera is based on the event.
The New World of the Western Hemisphere was devastated by the 1775–1782 North American smallpox epidemic. Estimates based on remnant settlements say at least 130,000 people were estimated to have died in the epidemic that started in 1775.
In 1978, an outbreak of smallpox in the United Kingdom resulted in the death of Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, who became the last recorded person to die from the disease. Her illness and death, which was connected to the deaths of two other people, led to the Shooter Inquiry, an official investigation by government-appointed experts triggering radical changes in how dangerous pathogens were studied in the UK and named after the panel's leader.
The Killer That Stalked New York is a 1950 American film noir directed by Earl McEvoy and starring Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin and William Bishop. The film, shot on location and in a semi-documentary style, is about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start a smallpox outbreak in the New York City of 1947. It is based on the real threat of a smallpox epidemic in the city, as described in a story taken from a 1948 Cosmopolitan magazine article.
Slobodan Aligrudić was a Serbian actor known for some of the most memorable roles in the history of former Yugoslav cinema.
Zoran Simjanović was a Serbian and Yugoslav musician, composer and music educator.
Rahima Banu Begum is the last known person to have been infected with naturally occurring Variola major smallpox, the more deadly variety of the disease.
Ali Maow Maalin was a Somali hospital cook and health worker from Merca who is the last person known to have been infected with naturally occurring Variola minor smallpox. He was diagnosed with the disease in October 1977 and made a full recovery. Although he had many contacts, none of them developed the disease, and an aggressive containment campaign was successful in preventing an outbreak. Smallpox was declared to have been eradicated globally by the World Health Organization (WHO) two years later. Maalin was subsequently involved in the successful poliomyelitis eradication campaign in Somalia, and he died of malaria while carrying out polio vaccinations after the re-emergence of the poliovirus in 2013.
Tito and Me is a 1992 comedy film by Serbian director Goran Marković.
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus, which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
Odbojkaški klub Partizan commonly known as OK Partizan, is a volleyball club from Belgrade, Serbia. OK Partizan is a part of JSD Partizan. The club formed in 1946. In its history, Partizan won 12 national championships, 9 cups and 1 supercup. The women club formed in 1950. In its history, it won 9 national championships, 2 cups and 2 supercups. The female team ceased to exist in 1972. but was re-established in 2016. One of the best volleyball players in the world, Ivan Miljković, started his professional career with OK Partizan.
The Meeting Point is a 1989 Yugoslavian fantasy/comedy-drama film directed by Goran Marković and starring Rade Marković, Bogdan Diklić, Dragan Nikolić, Mirjana Karanović and Anica Dobra. It is based on Dušan Kovačević's play of the same title translated in the U.S. as The Gathering Place.
The 1974 smallpox epidemic in India infected 188,000 people, leading to the deaths of 31,000 Indians.
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National Class Category Up to 785 ccm is a 1979 Yugoslav comedy film directed by Goran Marković.
Isao Arita was a Japanese physician, virologist and vaccination specialist who headed the World Health Organization (WHO) Smallpox Eradication Unit in 1977–85. During this period, smallpox became the first infectious disease of humans to be eradicated globally. He and his colleagues were awarded the Japan Prize in 1988 for this work. He also advised the successful programme to eradicate poliovirus from the Western Pacific region.
In 1721, Boston experienced its worst outbreak of smallpox. 5,759 people out of around 10,600 in Boston were infected and 844 were recorded to have died between April 1721 and February 1722. The outbreak motivated Puritan minister Cotton Mather and physician Zabdiel Boylston to variolate hundreds of Bostonians as part of the Thirteen Colonies' earliest experiment with public inoculation. Their efforts would inspire further research for immunizing people from smallpox, placing the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the epicenter of the Colonies' first inoculation debate and changing Western society's medical treatment of the disease. The outbreak also altered social and religious public discourse about disease, as Boston's newspapers published various pamphlets opposing and supporting the inoculation efforts.
John Michael Lane was an American epidemiologist who was a director of the Epidemic Intelligence Service's Global Smallpox Eradication program from 1973 to 1981, and who played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox in 1977.
Mahendra Dutta was an Indian public health official, best known for his efforts to eradicate smallpox in India as the appraisal officer for smallpox in Bihar during the 1974 epidemic. He later served as Health Commissioner of New Delhi, Chief Epidemiologist of the National Centre for Disease Control, and Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's public health operations. Additionally, he was a founding member of the Indian Public Health Association, serving as its president in 1987. Dutta's career is featured in an episode of Céline Gounder's 2023 podcast series Epidemic: Eradicating Smallpox.