Magical World

Shot during a summer day in 2005, the camera moves between a free after-school centre and its worn surroundings in Dubrava, a suburb of Zagreb. The looped footage of children rehearsing the 1968 Rotary Connection song Magical World acts as an anthem for an uncertain future and presents a glimpse of a country in transition. The children, who were all born after the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, deliver a haunting and hopeful rendition with reservation and pride. In newly learned English, a young Croatian boy sings the enigmatic and defiant first lines: "Why do you want to wake me from such a beautiful dream? Can’t you see that I am sleeping? We live in a Magical World." The psychedelic soul band Rotary Connection was one of the first ethnically mixed bands in the US. Active during the social upheavals and the civil rights movements of the 1960s, they reflected a desire for change without being – at the time – explicitly political.