Both an homage
to the “anarchist” of Yugoslav cinema,
the late Dušan Makavejev, and an investigation of a repressive political regime, Goran
Radovanović’s The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater is a
refreshingly multilayered documentary.
We “meet” with
the director via Skype ahead of the
film’s Greek premiere (5/6 November) during the
course of the 60th
Thessaloniki International Film Festival (31/10-10/11).
What did Dušan Makavejev mean
to you?
When I was young, in the early 70s, I skipped school
to watch his films.
When I first watched Innocence Unprotected (1968), it encouraged me to try to make
films. In the communist Yugoslavia everything was cold, grey and boring. The
partisan and the “Black Wave” films were too realistic.
It was the first time I perceived film as a game, an
illusion- not only thematically, but also in terms of form. Makavejev therefore
became my favorite Serbian, ex-Yugoslav director.
And a source of inspiration,
as I understand.
A kind of inspiration in the sense of deliberation, of
the quest for a new language. That’s why I decided to make this documentary, more
as an homage to him, but also as an investigation of the 70s, the period of the
so-called “soft” Communism.
After the fall of Yugoslavia, many intellectuals and
ordinary people experience the illusion that, under Tito, it had been a dreamlike
country and that Slobodan Milošević then fell with a parachute and destroyed
everything.
Of course this is not true. Everything was prepared
during Titoism. Milošević was just a good pupil of Tito. So, the totalitarian
consciousness prevailing under his regime was very important for me to analyze.
However, what happens nowadays
in the Balkans, Europe and the rest of the world is not exactly dreamlike,
either.
This is true, but, frankly speaking, in my childhood
we had no idea about the relationship between Serbia and Greece. When I first
travelled to Greece in 1976 I was shocked, because the people were so warm to
me- because I was Serb.
All these religious and historical ties between the
two countries that are so fundamental for Serbia nowadays were banned. Nobody
could talk about the genocide of Serbs by Croatian fascists, either.
And do we have today? A Croatian state denying that
genocide.
Since you personally knew
Makavejev, how come you didn’t choose to interview him on camera for the
purpose of this documentary?
Everything had been told, and personally I didn’t feel
that I could tell something more. So, I decided to talk objectively through
these audio tapes.
I wanted to make a film about disappearance, about the
relativity of existence, something more metaphysical. This was my approach.
Which applied to the vast
majority of the rest of the documentary’s characters, besides the sound
recordist of the (in)famous screening of W.R.:
Mysteries of the Organism back then:
they are, for the most part, confronted with what they had said during that
occasion.
This has been a stylistic choice, that we don’t need
their explanation after 50 years. Of course, those that I didn’t know or were
unwilling to participate were shadows. Black shadows on a white screen. This is
the essence of the film.
This documentary is more about film as a medium. You
have the actors, the stage, the scenography, the props, the camera, the lights.
This case is only a motivation.
I’m also a person who’s against any political or
artistic cult, you know. I’m an Orthodox Christian. On the one hand, I think
that art is an illusion and on the other that it’s a divine creation.
I’m not a follower of Makavejev, but I adore him, I
adore his work.
Do you think that people like
Makavejev, who challenge status quos of every kind, are missing nowadays? And
not just in contemporary Serbia.
We are living in a very strange information time, when
there is no need to study and learn. Everything is on the Internet. Studying,
however, is an experience, not merely a collection of pieces of information.
There are many people who adore Makavejev. This kind
of European enfant terrible is much
needed nowadays. We need his approach.
Today there is no Iron Curtain.
There may not be an Iron
Curtain anymore, but there are “curtains” and walls worldwide- and not just
symbolic ones.
Different “curtains”, as you pointed out, but not of
the same type. Different stereotypes still exist. Regarding Peter Handke, for
example. I’m about to make a film focused on him.
If Makavejev was still alive,
what do you think that would bother him the most, what would he most intensely
criticize?
He was a Communist in this intellectual, modern,
surrealistic way. Like Buñuel. He was dreaming about changing humankind. Deep
in his soul, he was looking for justice and human development.
At the same time, he was a critical Marxist. The
dissolution of Yugoslavia almost killed him emotionally. That’s why he didn’t
like what came after. He was a real Yugoslav citizen.
I remember that he was supporting the people in
Sarajevo during the city’s Siege: he was trying to be honest, a truly
democratic person. He always was an honest voice from the margin, always taking
the side of the marginal people.
He never asked anything from the authorities, and had
a hard life. Nobody offered him to be professor in Serbia, although he had been
a professor in Harvard and in many other distinguished universities.
He was really marginalized and was always acting from
the margin.
More info on Goran
Radovanović and his work may be
found in his personal website.
Goran Radovanović’s The Makavejev Case
or Trial in a Movie Theater will have its Greek
premiere within the context of the
retrospective of Dušan Makavejev work taking place at the 60th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
The screenings will be held at Makedonikon cinema, Tuesday 5 November, 19:30, and Wednesday 6 November, 13:00,
in the presence of the director.
