”The film Life is a miracle looks like a very probable mixture between Shakespeare and the Marx Brothers”, so does Emir Kusturica define his new film. As a producer, he prepares the first screening of Jagoda in the supermarket (strawberries at the supermarket) at the Berlin film festival. He is also finishing his new film, and preparing the promotion of his Serbian monograph which Belgradian Goran Gocić wrote. During the shooting, the discipline is very strict. The journalists will know more about the film when it is ready. We say that we are from Politika and between two scenes, Emir takes some time speaking a little…
The film Life is a miracle (working title Hungry Heart) is a love story. It is about the refugees and the insane time of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. Can you give your impressions and your doubts when you started to work ?
Emir Kusturica :
This film simply follows the interest I carry to the destiny of the people in this area, and I frame them in a social and historical context. Since 1992, each one of us passed by difficult moments and has its own history on what occurred. The death of Yugoslavia, the war, the fall of the social system… When I read the story of a Serb, who at the beginning of the war in 1992 must choose between his son in jail in the other camp and a Muslim woman who was his hostage, I realize that this case has the dimension of a Shakespearian dilemma, but that it is also the true life. As usual at home, I start working on a small love story which deals a little of the war. But I realize that while finishing, it is much more than a love story. This film tells how war has grown and was nourished in Bosnia, and of the demystification of the family, which I had begun with my first film and which is characteristic of all my following films. At the end, the film loses its illusions, and looks like a very probable mixture between Shakespeare and the Marx Brothers.
Your production company ”Rasta international” produced the first film of the young director Dušan Milić Jagoda in the supermarket, film selected in the section “Panorama” of the festival of Berlin. Is this your new mission ? Do you want to build a school of cinema in Yugoslavia ?
EK : We produced this film, not because Maja or me need to make films, but because we think that we can help young people and talented authors while bringing our energy. In this country, the dominant idea is that, in my opinion, the professors hide the secrets of directing to their students. I wanted to make things differently. I met people of the television channel ARTE, they read the script and understood that it could be a very interesting film with a small budget. Now, this film goes to Berlin and in the theatres of Yugoslavia. I am pleased because I helped a young man to make his first film.
MILAN VLAJICIC, translation by Matthieu Dhennin & Nina Novaković
en/itv_03-01_politika.txt · Last modified: 2008/02/17 16:09 by matthieu1