Croatian Cinema. 3.

I'm sitting in a kind of combination storeroom/interview room at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's NYC offices. Gathered round the table are three extremely affable and talented Croatian filmmakers who almost perfectly represent three different generations and whose command of the English language is shockingly good.

At age 73, Krsto Papic has been making movies since 1965 (his 1973 A Village Performance of Hamlet is part of the current FSLC series, Beyond Boundaries: The Emergence of Croatian Cinema). Dejan Sorak, 53, directed his first film in 1979 and is represented here by his award-winning 2005 feature Two Players from the Bench. The youngster of the bunch is Ognjen Svilicic, 36, whose first full-length feature arrived in 1999 - and this year's Armin (site), which makes its US debut here at the festival, is Croatia's choice to compete for this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar. As Mr Papic is the senior in the group, we'll start the conversation with him.

Papic: I was born on the border of Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, so I have three mentalities - and... [laughing] three of them very bad! In the ex-Yugoslavia, as we now call it, we had six republics and each republic had its own productions and its own small film industry. When a film would be released, it would be known as "Yugoslavian," but the general public would always know from which specific republic that film had come.

Svilicic: Even in the US, a New York filmmaker such as Abel Ferrara still refers to himself as a Bronx filmmaker!

JVM: For most Americans of an adult age (and perhaps others around the world), hearing the words Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and the like brings to mind the war and the atrocities of a decade past. After seeing several recent films from your part of the world - Armin, Two Players from the Bench and Vinko Bresan's Witnesses - I can't help wondering if there is anything except the war and its aftermath for modern Croat filmmakers to explore?

Svilicic: I think it goes both ways. Yes, you see the effects of the war, but Croatian cinema has always been so good about developing relationships between characters. Armin is basically about a father/son relationship. But as a journalist you have to make connections, and so you make the connection with the war because that is all you have seen on CNN. But it is not fair to the movie to do just this. My character Armin is an accordion player first. But in all movies, you do start with a set of circumstances. In a western, you have the wild West. And in Armin, you have a movie-within-the-movie being made about the war. So, yes, you do make those connections. But still, we try not to make a political statement. We try to stick to characters. We feel we should use our movies to tell stories rather than make political statements.

JVM: This seems true particularly about Armin, while Two Players from the Bench does seem to make more of a broad political statement.

Sorak: Yes, this does seem to be, but still I hope it isn't. It's a sort of paradox because my purpose as filmmaker is not to send a message, not to be a postman, not to change the world. With Two Players from the Bench, I want to create a fictional world that is entertaining and touches you that also attends the question of human destiny. I am taking the reality I see around me in my world and creating a story with it. After this war, when the International War Crimes Tribunal was set up by the UN, this became a very politically hot issue and very interesting to all the regions of the former Yugoslavia - the question of guilt and innocence for the war. We had our first screening in the biggest outside cinema in all the world, in front of thousands of people and the audience was delighted. Both sides, Serbia and Croatia, liked the film. The film seems to be about politics but the reality is that it is really about the mentality of an open mind and open eye without prejudices. And though audiences delighted in it, the media did not. Perhaps because the film does not spare anyone or anything. It is ironic and has something of a cathartic effect.

JVM: The ending of the film struck me a hugely cathartic. I was also impressed with the technical achievements of Two Players; everything from the sound to the music, the photography, editing. It's a big canvas and it looked as good as anything Hollywood might have done on maybe 20 times the budget.

Sorak: When you have a big production, you need to get all the details correct. Then, even if you are doing a low-budget movie, it is going to look high-budget. We do professional work!

Svilicic: Every Croatian movie now tries to achieve this level.

Sorak: Nowadays in Croatia, we are living in the golden age of moviemaking.

JVM: That's funny, because I had heard that the golden age of Yugoslav moviemaking happened back in the 60s, 70 and 80s.

Papic: Well, that was the first golden age! Now it is the second.

Sorak: And you [pointing to Papic] have lived through both of them!

Papic: Well, it is a very good thing right now, I think, because the government gives us the money to pay for the budget for the film and they don't ask any kind of questions.

JVM: In the press materials for the festival, there is mention made that the Yugoslav film industry had become at one point almost extinct. Was this due to the war, or to something else?

Svilicic: Yes, the war, but more for our filmmaking, because we ceased to make any money from the films.

Papic: We never really had any "industry" the way you have in Hollywood. It's not like that in Europe. It always had to be supported by government money. Here you have a big film industry, big corporations and a very big audience. You are competing better than anyone else in the world in the field of cinema. In Europe, film is considered part of culture, so governments help pay for that culture.

JVM: I don't think so many people over here - at least the ones making most of the mainstream movies - consider film as part of culture. It is primarily something to make money from. Culture may follow if we are lucky.

Papic: Also, there is a difference in our countries because we were formerly a socialist country and now we are not, so it is a long story and depends on a number of things. Also, our cinema has always been different from that of Austria, Denmark and the rest. Originally, Yugoslavian cinema was part of one system, and each of our republics - Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia - competed against the others for who would be the best of all. It is also about living under a one party system without democracy. Now we have democracy, but we have new problems.

JVM: Do the people of the former Yugoslavia ever long for the past and the days of Tito, in the way that some countries of Eastern Europe now seem to long for the relative "safety" of communism again?

Papic: I think our communism was not equal to the Russian communism. It was a more "soft" communism. We had passports and the freedom of traveling all over the world - as long as you were not a political enemy. Tito was constantly dancing between the Russians and America, between East and West and between NATO and the Russian power, so sometimes he was more pro-Russian, sometimes more pro-America. When he was pro-Westen, this was good for us filmmakers. And in general, for the artists because we had more freedom. When he turned toward the Russians - not himself really, but the hard-liners - then we had difficult and hard times.

I had a different experience because I began my film career in the good period when everything was easier in the 1970s. At the end of the filming of A Village Performance of Hamlet, everything changed. We had the Croatian Spring and suddenly Tito stopped everything. The film was attacked - blocked for two years from being shown anywhere. I could not go to the foreign festivals - Cannes, Berlin, Venice - and I could not represent my country. After almost two years, however, the selector for the Berlin festival came to Zagreb and he saw the film and liked it and so he put this condition in front of the government: "If you are not going to give me this film to show in the Berlin festival, then I will not take any Yugoslav film for maybe the next five years."

JVM: Blackmail!

Papic: Yes. And so finally I did go the Berlin festival with the film that year.

JVM: Let's talk about the ironic use in Armin of a filmmaker wanting to make a documentary of the boy and his family's experience in wartime. This is both funny and a real slap at filmmakers, in its way. And yet, it is not really their fault, as they are simply doing what they do.

Svilicic: Of course! They are trying their best. Usually filmmakers from these "big" countries have good thoughts, good wishes to do these things. But it is superficial. I did not mean this as a comparison between the West and the East but between the rich and the poor countries. When you are a rich country, you can just do everything.

JVM: In addition to writing and directing, you also did some of the music for your earlier films, right?

Svilicic: Yes. But it wasn't such a good idea. So I don't anymore.

JVM: The music used at close of Two Player from the Bench is exceptional, I think. It is simply gorgeous, rich and moving.

Sorak: Yes. We had a very talented composer who did this. In fact, this person is a very good screenwriter as well. He has written scripts for some of Papic's films.

Papic: He is very, very good. His name is Mate Matisic, and you should mention this because then perhaps he will get some work! Here, I will write it down for you. [And he does.]

Sorak: He composed the entire score, the folk song, the song sung at the beginning and the wonderful piece that closes the film.

JVM: Have any of these films been picked up by a distributor?

Sorak: No, but last year Two Players had a screening at the Tribecca Film Festival, and the New York Times wrote that this film should be picked up. Also Variety, and Richard Brody in the New Yorker placed this film as among the five best undistributed movies. But still, nothing.

Papic: Getting distribution for a foreign film in America is more difficult now than it used to be.

JVM: Maybe we'll have the chance to see these on DVD?

Svilicic: One of my movies - Sorry for Kung Fu - is now on DVD from a small company here in New Jersey. You can order it from Amazon. You can get a really, really cheap price. Maybe one dollar.

Sorak: DVD or the internet is the only way to see most Croatian movies.

JVM: Anything else you would like to add?

Papic: Yes. I think this festival is really very important for us. A very good thing to have it here at the Lincoln Center Film Society and especially here in New York. I think this festival is the most important thing to happen to Croatian cinema so far - in my opinion.

Sorak: Also, Croatia has just been made a member of the United Nations Security Council for the first time. This, too, is a very good thing.

Svilicic: This is all part of a kind of renaissance for this little unknown country. Maybe we are going to be a big thing, like America's film industry. Or India's.

JVM: There might be Hollywood, Bollywood - and Croatia-wood?

Papic: Once, back in the 70s and 80s, we did have one of the biggest film studios in the world in Yugoslavia. Film companies would come from all over to use it. Now it looks like a Roman ruin. So we lose the great studio. But maybe we'll become something again.

JVM: Now I must ask a really stupid and naive question. But I can't help it. Do you think it possible that something like what happened in the 90s could happen again? Or has the war, the atrocities, been put to rest somehow?

Papic: I think it is not possible to happen again.

Svilicic: I would say for Croatia, not. But I am pretty sure it could happen again in Bosnia because it is still unresolved. In my opinion, there is a reason that the Second World War did not happen again. You had Nazis killing Jews. They were stopped. We knew what had happened. It all came out. But in Bosnia, this is not true. Things are still hidden. They have not all come out.

Papic: Still, I think that this will not happen because the European community will not allow it. It is not in the interest of Europe or the new rich or the big corporations to allow this.

At this point, our time is up, and the Film Society representative clears us out and readies the room for the next interview. But I thank these wonderful filmmakers for their time, energy and talent. And hope more of the world has the chance to see examples of their excellent work.

Posted by dwhudson at October 31, 2007 1:48 AM