A statue of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky stands in a park in the town of Zitiste in Serbia. Filmmaker Barry Arvich went to the town to talk to citizens and the officials responsible for the statue for Amerika Idol.

Barry Avrich admits he thought he would be filming a real-life Borat when he undertook the documentary Amerika Idol, about a Serbian town's quixotic plan to boost civic morale with a statue of Rocky Balboa.

"I mean the whole story is nuts. And the idea that you could turn this tiny village with nothing in it into a tourist attraction is definitely overreaching," the Toronto filmmaker and ad exec says of the project that overwhelmed the tiny town of Zitiste for two years.

"So yes, I did show up thinking I was going to make some kind of Borat film.

"But you spend an hour with them, without even understanding the language, and they're extremely charming. There's a purity of heart that's absolutely disarming."

Disarming enough that Avrich broke one of his cardinal rules.

"I read about the story in the New York Times, and started a dialogue with the people. And the next thing I go to one of their websites and we're listed as producing a documentary about them before we agreed to do anything.

"So I sort of broke this ridiculous rule I have of not ever making a film before it's sold. I said, 'Let me go down with a crew and see if there's a story there.' "

Heading into the Balkans more than a decade after the strife that tore apart the former Yugoslavia, he says he found a place so down-on-its-luck "nothing happened there (during the war), there's no reason to, because there's nothing there."

Indeed, the eventual sculptor of their Rocky statue was a Croatian with no apparent animus against Zitiste.

It should be mentioned that there is one thing in town -- the largest chicken processing plant in Eastern Europe, a concern whose financial involvement, and the rabid passion of town leader Bojan Marceta, brought the project to life.

But in search of a larger theme, Avrich decided to counterpoint the for-and-against debate in Zitiste with similar arguments in Philadephia that followed the installation of the original bronze statue of Rocky at the top of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum Of Art.

(The well-connected Avrich, who's been a longtime creative contributor to the Toronto International Film Festival, even managed to corner Sylvester Stallone himself, choking up at the honour during breaks in editing last year's Rambo movie).

The larger question -- is pop culture art? -- turns out to be cross-cultural. The museum had the statue removed, but later agreed to a compromise after a public outcry. "It took some convincing for this spokesperson from the museum, Shen Shellenberger, to talk to us and acknowledge there was a controversy, because it was a PR problem for them. The museum standpoint to this day is they didn't want it on their f------ property. It's in a park on the grounds of the museum."

"I think the verdict is the public sets the tone. Art really is in the eye of the beholder."

As for Zitiste, it opened its statue to a crowd of 100,000, and is looking forward to celebrating when Avrich brings Amerika Idol there in June.

"They wanted to get international attention for this town, and they did," Avrich says. "It's on the map, like the place where the giant ball of string is. They're on the map of Eastern Europe, and they succeeded in getting people focused on something other than constant bad news.

"And who knows? Maybe they're on to something. Two weeks after the unveiling, some Romanian town announced they were going to build a Tarzan sculpture." (Movie Tarzan Johnny Weismuller was born in Timisoara, Romania).

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