There is something to be said for the festivals of art and culture in the “countries in transition”, as they are fashionably referred to in global political circles. Last week, Steve Buscemi, in attendance at the Sarajevo Film Festival, which successfully wrapped up for the 13th time a few days ago in the Bosnian capital; semi-jokingly observed that his latest feature, Interview, was seen by more people in its one Open Air cinema projection in Sarajevo, than during its entire US cinema release season.
The first Sarajevo Film Festival was held in the basement of the Bosnian Academy of Performing Arts during the worst year of Sarajevo’s 1990s siege, in 1994. Fitting the surreal concept of a film festival in a war zone, it opened with Quentin Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction.
At the time, a foreign journalist asked a respected local theatre director: “Why a festival during the war?”. The director responded, “Why a war during the festival?”. For those of you wrapped in the reality of mortgage repayments, APEC city shut-downs, Joey’s ecstasy taking, terrorism and economic performance, it may seem like a strange conversation. But the poignancy of it really hits home for anyone who has ever posed an existential question or two.
Sarajevans often felt their tragedy, mediated by the news-entertainment genre, was just another step in radicalising the concept of pulp fiction. Hollywood didn’t let them down, turning the break-up of a country and its each individual drama into mass-entertainment where Bosnians of all descriptions (like the Iraqis in this decade), suddenly got promoted into the fashionable baddie or victim du jour, suitably annihilated or saved by Richard Gere & co.
What Buscemi was implying is that the surreal and the absurd are far from being the staple of war-torn or cultures “in transition”. They are the staple of the American culture (and Australia is not too far behind). Hence, fictional superheros get a lot more air-time (and head-space) in the mind of an average American (and an average Australian), than a serious artistic inquiry of any kind, of which Buscemi’s clever remake of Theo Van Gogh’s Dutch original, exploring the theme of celebrity interview, is but one example.
The pyrotechnics of superhero tales don’t impress the audience of the city still ridden by bullets. But their attitude to film impresses those who make them. It is probably for this reason that the biggest film-fair in South-East Europe creates such a buzz not only in the region, but in Europe as well. Though its 13 streams and 176 films on show were saturated with soul-searching examining war and transition themes, from Romania’s pre-1989 obsession and Turkey’s religious dilemmas, to former-Yugoslav states and their endless psycho-dramatic re-telling of the stories of war, despair, humour and hope; the festival itself is a week-long party-sequence when the locals get to mingle with a superstar or two (Julliette Binoche and Mike Moore were in attendance this year), and talk moving pictures instead of bread prices, corrupt politicians and the long road to the European Union.
Make no mistake, though. This is not a population of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton fans. The triviality of adolescent obsession with a string of adolescent starlets doesn’t cut it here. Rumour has it that the festival organisers have to order their volunteers to line up next to the red carpet, clap and take photos, because the locals are not keen on celebrity-worship. British film veteran and this year’s President of the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) judging panel, Jeremy Irons, hence noted the city’s vibrancy stems from the ‘normality’ of its people. (Not something you would find in a news report about Sarajevo, which makes me think journalists should take social-anthropology a little bit more seriously.)
The fact is that this remains the most prestigious festival in the region precisely because its concept draws heavily on ‘normality’, where everyone and anyone gets to meet everyone else, have a beer and a bit of a passionate discussion about the state of the universe (and the state of film). “Proletarian” is the word that comes to mind, but “democratic” is probably a more politically correct term these days.
One thing is certain. There are no iron fences and Morris Iemma-style infantalising tough-talk about the importance of behaving nicely to city guests. And not one mention of terrorism in 9 days, though one would rightfully expect it in the post-war Bosnia. Life takes precedence here. The superfluous terrorism talk is considered just another by-product of the entertainment culture perfecting the art of pulp fiction. The films on show are concerned with understanding life as it is. But the city’s population is more unforgiving, sending up the West’s cinematic and otherwise obsession with terrorism with a flood of T-shirts sold at tourist hot-spots -- they read: “I am Muslim, don’t panic!”.
Regional filmmakers had an occasional chuckle at their own populations’ idiosyncratic propensity for collective delusion too. An aesthetically magnificent Macedonian social drama, Ja sum od Titov Veles (I am from Titov Veles), directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska, which won the Special Jury Award this year, shows a group of men in a barber shop denying the impact of a local lead factory on the town’s environment. “It’s just a story invented by those World Bank mongrels so that they can privatise the factory for next to nothing, “ a character observes. Transition themes are slowly creeping into the Western Balkan post-war filmmaking, a sure sign that the countries are slowly filing the 1990s away even if the majority of its 2007 production still focuses on war themes.
But 2007 was the year of Turkish films at the SFF, with three out of ten features in the competition program coming from Turkey, and the best feature award going to A Man’s Fear of God (Takva) by the first-time director Ozer Kiziltan. It is a story an Istanbul clerk whose solitary existence of prayer and sexual abstinence attracts the attention of a rich and powerful religious group, which recruits him as a rent collector for their numerous properties and opens his eyes to the hypocrisy of religious practice around him.
For all of its 176 films and numerous industry attendees, the Sarajevo Film Festival remains more of an experience than a film marathon. Its focus on education through the Sarajevo Talent Campus, and regional collaboration, through the CineLink program, experience exchange through Midnight Meetings, and audience involvement through the Family Day and Small Talk and a Big-Ice Cream programs, still makes it one of the most innovative and exciting film events for anyone who likes the excitement of living and breathing film in the truest sense of the word. As the Oscar-winning American film director, Alexander Payne, said this year, “I come back here because this place makes me feel good”. Without the city shut-down.
THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE SARAJEVO FILM FESTIVAL
www.sff.ba [1]