Life among War Ruins

For a long time, Bosnia has been associated with nothing but war. But in 2001 with the film "No Man's Land," we were finally reminded that Bosnia has a cinema tradition. Thanks to state funding and the largest film festival in Southeast Europe, Bosnia's film industry is burgeoning again

For a long time, Bosnia has been associated with nothing but war and destruction. But in 2001 with the film "No Man's Land," we were finally reminded that Bosnia has a cinema tradition. Thanks to state funding and the largest film festival in Southeast Europe, Bosnia's film industry is burgeoning again

photo: AP
A destroyed city with a remarkable cultural tradition - Sarajevo after the war

​​A silver airplane circles through the evening sunset over Sarajevo. But the plane is not allowed to land because it is full of happy people, and in the land below poverty, drugs and corruption are rampant.

So the pilot circles around and then flies off to another country. Srdjan Vuletic's "Summer in the Golden Valley" ("Ljeto u Zlatnoj Dolini"), a biting caricature of the filmmaker's hometown Sarajevo, is one of four feature films by Bosnian directors that featured in the program of last year's ninth annual Sarajevo Film Festival.

Pjer Zalica's "Gori Vatra" ("Fire!"), Ademir Kenovic's "Secret Passage" und Branko Djuric's "Cheese and Marmalade" ("Kajmak i Marmelada") demonstrated the fruits of the recent boom in Bosnian cinema. And Bosnian cinema also dominated the awards.

In No Man's Land

This was not always the case. In postwar Bosnia, only a few homegrown short films could be seen on local screens, and they were mostly about war, destruction, the plight of refugees, homelessness and returning home. These films were an important contribution to working through the horrors of the war, but artistically they were rarely above average.

This trend changed in 2001 when Danis Tanovic's debut film "No Man's Land" ("Nicija Zemlja") was a surprise winner of several awards, including an Oscar for the best non-English-language film.

This success reminded the world that Bosnia is not only a synonym for war, but also the home of a respectable film tradition. And it reminded officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina that film can be something to brag about internationally, as well as a profitable export product.

Since then the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina has developed not only film promotion policies but also a fund for domestic filmmaking – which is astounding considering the state is notoriously broke and cultural policy is otherwise non-existent.

Bosnian filmmakers, who were used to shooting films with no budget to speak of, began to produce fantastic films with very little money. And the themes they were addressing also multiplied. "Cheese and Marmalade" takes on the difficult relations between Slovenians and Bosnians; "Summer in the Golden Valley" tells about the rap-oriented youth subculture in Sarajevo; "Secret Passage" is about the fate of Spanish Jews during the Inquisition.

Low Budget or No Budget

The most successful films remain those that deal with the war and its aftermath. But even here a development can be observed. Tanovic already addressed the war directly in a film made in 2000.

In 2002 Ahmed Imamovic did the same in his film "10 Minuta," in which he contrasted ten minutes in the life of a Japanese tourist in Rome with the bloody drama of a Bosnian family taking place in the same moments less than an hour's plane trip away in the besieged city of Sarajevo.

Pjer Zalica's "Gori Vatra" from 2003, on the other hand, was not about the war but about the postwar situation in which those who were against the war are still a long way from feeling reconciled. But this film left audiences with a spark of hope.

The question remains as to how it is possible to create 90 minute feature films with almost no budget. Tanovic and Djuric produced in Slovenia, Kenovic in France and Luxembourg, Zalica needed four years to pull together enough money, Vuletic bet his money on a cheap production with hand-held cameras and sixteen-year-old actors.

In almost all these productions, the actors worked without pay, friends and family helped out, and debts were piled up. Everyone agrees that this kind of self-exploitation cannot go on. But for the moment this has become the basis of filmmaking in the Balkans.

The greatest asset of Bosnian film is the excellent actors. Swiss filmmakers have already taken note of this. Rolando Colla moved the production of his Italian-Swiss-Russian refugee drama "Oltre il confine" (2002) to Bosnia after he met the Bosnian actors Senad Basic, Ajla Frljuckic and Bojana Sljivic. Colla has planned another film set in Bosnia, and Daniel von Aarburg has just finished shooting "Ina, Amer and Elvis" here.

The relationship between Swiss and Bosnian filmmakers goes even further back, however. Marco Müller, former director of the Locarno Film Festival, traveled to Sarajevo in 1994 to support Miro Purivatra in the realization of a crazy idea: founding an international film festival in the middle of a besieged city.

The Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) began in 1995. When the war was over in 1996, the Swiss financed the renovation of the studio cinemas Obala Meeting Point, which is the SFF's organizational center today, and Swissair became one of the festival's first main sponsors. Purivatra still praises the Swiss allies who supported him when it all began, but he also lets it be known that he has now found even more important sources of funding.

Sarajevo Film Festival

Today the SFF is not only the most important cultural event in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also the largest film festival in Southeast Europe. Over 100,000 tickets were booked last year for 162 films from 44 different countries. The festivals in Portoroz (Slovenia), Dubrovnik or Motovun (Croatia) are no comparison in terms of audiences and the number of films on the program.

The SFF program is ambitious, but its resources are ample for the task. Feature films that can pull in a large audience are screened in the open-air cinema Metalac, a spacious courtyard at the largest Sephardic synagogue in the Balkans that creates an impressive atmosphere.

Premieres in the National Theater are received on a glamorous red carpet. Film specialists can enjoy experimental avant-garde films in the "New Currents" section and a large selection of international films in the "Panorama" section, as well as engaging with the specific themes selected by the "Tribute to" section.

The focus of the festival remains, however, on feature, documentary and short films from Southeast European countries from Slovenia to Albania. The new promotional program CineLink also supports regional cooperation.

The large presence of short films at the festival testifies to an appropriate adaptation to the financial situation of the film industry in most Southeast European countries, and short films offer young filmmakers a chance to develop their talents. The free midday screenings are also more than just a nice gesture to students and the unemployed; no-budget filmmakers who cannot afford to travel to foreign festivals are also able to keep up with current productions.

Blemishes remain
It remains more than just a cosmetic blemish that those directors who serve on the film commission have been in the position to distribute state funds to their own projects.

The closing of last year's festival with the world premiere of Ademir Kenovic's "Secret Passage" also turned out to be an embarrassment when the only copy of the film available in Sarajevo turned out to be missing its soundtrack.

The incident showed that the Bosnian film industry is still standing on thin ice. In "Summer in the Golden Valley," the silver plane still didn't land after its third approach to the city of Sarajevo.

But if it had, the passengers would have found among the ruins below a lively film industry that is not only able to keep small time criminals and corrupt policemen in check and to breathe a new soul into this war-ravaged country, but also to make waves that carry beyond the borders of the Balkans.

Raphael Nägeli

© Qantara.de 2004

Translation from German: Christina M. White

This article was previously published by the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung.