Olivera Katarina

Olivera Katarina (born 5 March 1940), also previously known as Olivera Vučo is a Serbian actress, singer and writer. She was one of the leading stars of Yugoslav cinema in the 1960s and the 1970s, and is probably the best known for her performance in Aleksandar Petrović's film I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), which won the Grand Prix at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. As a singer, Olivera Katarina has performed music of various genres, varying from Serbian traditional to pop music, and in numerous languages. Her version of "Đelem, đelem", which she performed in I Even Met Happy Gypsies, has been considered as one of the best rendition of that song ever recorded. For a role in Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment in 1971, she was awarded at festivals in Moscow and Venice. Her major success was in Aleksandar Petrović's I Even Met Happy Gypsies, where she played a gipsy singer named Lenče. Film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards, for a Palme d'Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, and for Best Foreign-Language film at the 26th Golden Globe Awards. It won the FIPRESCI Grand Prize of the Jury at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. Olivera closed this festival with a concert together with Nana Mouskouri and Dionne Warwick. She also had a very prominent singing career. She recorded in Serbian language, as well as in Russian, Japanese, Romanian, Greek, Romani, and Indonesian. In famous Paris Olympia she held 72 consecutive concerts. In 1969, she participated in the national choice to represent Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 with the song "Poigraj, poigraj, devojče". RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana) proclamed Olivera Katarina as The Most Unique Medditeranian Voice. Olivera Katarina is also known as "the only woman Salvador Dalí knelt in front of", being amazed by her beauty and voice, after her concert in Paris. In 2007, Katarina contributed songs for Marina Abramović's Balkan Erotic Epic, and portrays a goddess in Uroš Stojanović's film Čarlston za Ognjenku.