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Date: 03 Jul 1996 08:57:33
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: Ivo Skoric 
Subject: Re: GOING TO MOVIES
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From: "Ivo Skoric" 

Ivo Skoric **************************** iskoric@igc.apc.org

212.369.9197 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 1773 Lexington Ave, NYC NY 10029, USA

http://www.peacenet.org/balkans/
From notes@igc.org Wed Jul 3 13:57:47 1996
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Date: 03 Jul 1996 08:59:34
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: Ivo Skoric 
Subject: Re: GOING TO MOVIES
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From: "Ivo Skoric" 

The story of this year's award winning human rights film
Calling The Ghosts is, to put it succinctly, about the rape as a
weapon of war.  Two women, a Bosnian Croat and a Bosnian
Muslim, both from Prijedor, both lawyers, tell their gruesome
stories of incarceration in concentration camp Omarska in a
rather grey tone of their profession.  There is no narration. 
Yet the film flows seamlessly, because the film makers
obtained footage of every period in life of two heroes.  The film
actually take us to Omarska.  Pictures show everything short
of actual act of rape.  The message is simple: those who raped,
as well as those who nudged them to do so, should be
promptly brought to the War Crimes Tribunal.  The complex
circle in which Bosnian Serb Army used mass rape as a
weapon against the Muslim population has to be broken.  And
in doing so the film unintentionally develops subliminal plot:
Serbs exist only as an enemy - predominantly male - species
and Serbia does not appear at all; Bosnia exists only as a
place where bad things (that Serbs do to Muslims and Croats)
happen and Croatia is a local refuge where people (Croats and
Muslims, which are composed predominantly of women,
children and elderly) seek (and get) protection from barbaric
Serb male rapists in Bosnia.  It is almost too good to be true.

(ps - film as film is GREAT and very powerful - more info at:
http://www.peacenet.org/balkans/mandy.html )

A few years ago such a "side-effect" would make human-rights
vegetarians scowl at the film for political reasons, while today
the same political reasoning (although new political reasons
are in the game) encouraged them to present that film with a
Nestor Almendros award.  Film makers are healthy aware and
kind of worried of that.  Still, they believe that the more
global, the more general, the more far reaching film's message,
fighting the war, destruction and violence against women, will
outlast the contemporary political one.

Yesterday, Mandy threw a barbecue party at her roof on
Bowery.  A strange mixture of South Africans and former
Yugoslavs and all kinds of other New Yorkers that included at
least three film directors from Zagreb (all of them can easily
fool you, Mek more than others since he is an Ethiopian) and
a Macedonian filmmaker with a near-Oscar experience.  Visnja
told me a story about the movie she wants to make: a heroin
addicted heroine is at the center of action (which then
develops around her while she slowly withers to oblivion).
Visnja brought with her an actress-writress-model from
Detroit whose name was Cher, not Chair, as I was becoming
gradually instructed.  Sharon was just in back from India and
had to have lies taken out of her huge hair (several people
worked shifts to accomplish that task). And Jo-Marc, whose
present daytime job is to "make the cyberspace a safer place
for Sony" as he puts it, was playing a good South African
scout, and made barbecue to work.  I mean it is amazing how
difficult is to make fire.  There was wind.  There was a little
rain.  But on the other hand we had this magic self-inflaming
coal and lighter fluid and lighters and all sorts of hi-tech fire-making equipment unavailable to lets say our buddies in
Pleistocene.  How did they make fire?  How didn't my
ancestors starve to death?  Jo-Marc thinks that our ancestors
were the ones who did the cave-paintings letting other folks
care about making fire.  Yeah, that seems about right.

Tony, a musician from Macedonia, who left Yugoslavia nine
years ago to avoid going to army, a deserter was met by Adnan
and Faruk, who joked how they are now Bosnian deserters. 
They confirmed to me the stories how Haris Silajdzic, a former
prime minister of Bosnia and likely presidential candidate,
was indeed beaten by hard-core Alija's SDA supporters in
Bihac, while the security guys watched (imagine the joy seeing
Secret Service watching while Clinton aides beat the shit out
of dissenting Clinton's Cabinet minister).  What do you think
is the biggest issue in Bosnia today?  Housing?  No. 
Infrastructure?  No.  Industry?  Nay.  Food?  Neee.  THE
FLAG.  Bosnia has its own flag (coat of arms with lilies), but
the Bosnian-Croat federation still has no flag.  Both sides of
the federation (Bosnian and Croatian) believe that they NEED
a flag for the federation.  What would be a federation without
a flag, huh?  However, Bosnia, of course, wants its own flag
with lilies to become the flag of federation, and Croats would,
obviously, like that federation has a distinct flag.  How would
this one look like: it would look like Croatian (red-white-blue)
only without the checkerboard coat-of-arms in the middle, and
with the green (reflecting the Muslim color of Bosnia, perhaps,
huhuhu) stripe instead of middle white.  Nobody asks Serbs
for anything any more, since they disagree with everything
anyway, but I bet they'd have their own idea about the flag:
they'd probably agree with Croats, only they'd have flag run
red-blue-green to reflect their red-blue-white flag.  Adnan and
Faruk would vote for Alija over the flag issue if they are in
Bosnia.  Here they won't bother to vote.

Milan brought the case of Samuel Adams he lost to me on a
bet.  He was probably drunk when he challenged me to a race
around the Central Park reservoir.  That was an easy beer. 
Eh, I am looking for more offers, anybody?

Jelena a peace activist globe-trotter actress from Belgrade told
us stories of travails through Bosnian Serb controlled
territories.

And the fire did not go off until 5 am, when I had to pour
water over.  Hi-tech coal calmly continued to burn and
barbecue shrimps through the short summer shower.

-/-

Who is Emir Kusturica?  He is a great Bosnian soccer player
(he almost went pro in his youth) who was also not bad at
playing bass in one of the best Bosnian "new primitivism"
(which is kind of old-school punk with a Balkan bloody twist)
bands (and it was NOT called The Cigarettes, as they write in
Village Voice, but Smoking Forbidden /Zabranjeno Pusenje/,
which is quite different).  But despite all of his healthy
youthful tendencies to hooliganism, he was still a kid from a
privileged Bosnian Muslim Communist home.  His dad, the
Secretary of Culture and Education in the former Socialist
Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, a part of Yugoslavia at
that time, still lives in Sarajevo (he recently posted a letter
opposing September elections if Karadzic and Mladic don't get
arrested and tried in The Hague).  Therefore, in the time when
most of us didn't know that such things exist, Emir got
scholarship to attend the film school in Prague and became a
protege of Milos Forman.  Upon his return he became a
successful film maker.  His films won lions in Venice and
palms in Cannes.  He always stressed his Bosnian origins
(because it helped build him an image of a tough, no bullshit
film maker whom younger generations in Yugoslavia may
trust), while at the same time skillfully navigating through the
arcane Yugo film production: gradually he became estranged
from Sarajevo and its film industry.

Bosnian political structures were neither able nor willing to
support his often irreverent films.  He had to go where the
money is.  And in film, the money is where more movie-goers
live, which in Yugoslavia meant Belgrade.  Also, traditionally
local political leaderships in former Yugoslavia were more
culturally conservative than the central political power: this
was one of the mechanisms how Tito kept Yugoslavia in
check.  If a local party leader would allow some cultural
transgression of some young talented artist in his area, he'd
be severely criticized, maybe even ousted by his superiors,
while the artist would get gradually embraced, guided and
ultimately corrupted by the party's higher-ups in Belgrade.

The beginning of the war caught Kusturica in some heavy duty
schmoozing with his Belgrade pals and sponsors.  He was
disappointed with the West, particularly with America and
American film industry, because he and his first and only
English language film - The Arizona Dream - were failed by
Hollywood.  So, the Serbian anti-American mantra was
digested well by him.  I am sorry, but people from the Balkans
do take things very personally.  Kusturica left his teaching
post at Columbia University, abandoned his green card (which
he got easily after winning the Cannes as an exceptional
artist), packed his things up and left for Europe.

But Arizona Dream sucked, truly.  It was too long, too slow,
and his humor didn't translate as well to English as it does to
Bosnian.  In former Yugoslavia, he was the only Yugoslav film-maker whose movie I went to see at the cinema and paid the
ticket and everything.  I never watched domestic films from no
other author, except if it was a closed screening with free
drinks afterwards.  He even made a film completely in the
Rromani language, once.  Interestingly, that language carried
his message better than English.

Once in Europe he based himself in Paris and in Belgrade.  He
changed his origins from Bosnian to Yugoslav, and he even
went as far as to claim that, despite his name and his parents,
he is not a Muslim, really.  He says now that his folks told
him how their ancestors accepted Islam 300 years ago, and
how they were SERBS beforehand.  That must have been
some music for a Serbian nationalist ear.  He said how his
family told him that they were really Serbs.  His father -
remember: he is still in Sarajevo - must have loved that one.

Emir is not planning on returning to Sarajevo.  He believes
he'd get killed there.  Well, he might be right about that.  He
does feel sorry about individual incidents: like he wrote how
he was appalled with the story of one Rasim who got his feet
hob-nailed in a Serbian concentration camp.  In general,
however, he sees just Nazis in Croatians and Islamic
Fundamentalists in Bosnian Muslims, or is it just a plot to get
funding for his next film in Serbia?  His most recent film -
Underground - that won him the Palm in Cannes (for the
second time in his career), was filmed on locations in Belgrade
with Serbian actors and in Serbian language during the period
of so-called international sanctions against Serbia.  It is again
an epic film that lasts for three hours, but as I've heard there
is enough suspense to fill the entire three hours.

Underground is a story about a triangle (two men love one
woman), like half of the movies made in Hollywood.  Yet, of
course, it has a little Balkan twist to it: one men after the
Second World War became a communist party leader, the
other, however, was fighting for the wrong side and feared to
be executed after the war, so he hid in a basement.  The first
man HELPED him stay in that basement for the next 20 years
(telling him how safe he was there), while, of course, taking
the woman for himself.  Suddenly, he takes him out of the
basement and tosses him into life.  Why?  Because there is
that time again: a war is in the making.  The parable is quite
clear: slick Yugoslav communist party leaders did dig the
nationalist monsters out of their graves and out of their
basements when they needed them to start the war, which
ultimately helped THEM stay in power, when the communist
regimes in Eastern Europe started to fall apart with a
terrifying speed.

In France the film produced a huge debate among intellectual
elites: film isn't bad, but should it be shown, given that the
filmmaker is a half-way war criminal?  The debate however
just helped Kusturica collect more revenue at the box offices
in Europe.  No such luck with the U.S.: a foreign language
film that lasts 3 hours and is made by highly controversial
author, possibly in a breach of the economic sanctions that
the U.S. wanted imposed on Serbia, is simply a bad news for
any distributor.  Plus, Kusturica's sales people asked $ 3
million.  Producers laughing caused a light earthquake in Los
Angeles.

Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg thinks of making a movie about
Zlata's Diaries, a Bosnian Anne Frank story, grabbing
Academy Award winning chance which belonged to Kusturica,
but which he threw away with his usual bitter Balkan I-really-like-to-shoot-myself-in-the-foot arrogance, and-what-about-you?

ivo skoric