INTERVIEW: ADEMIR KENOVIC, DIRECTOR

BOSNIA MUST BE WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN

AIM, SARAJEVO, March 29, 1995 Ademir Kenovic is a director from Sarajevo. His first feature film "Ovo malo duse" (A Little bit of Soul) opened the 1991 "Quinzaine des Realisateurs" in Cannes. His second film, "Kuduz", written by the poet Abdulah Sidran who also wrote scenarios for films of Emir Kusturica "Sjecas li se Doli Bel" (Do You Remember Dolly Bell) and "Otac na sluzbenom putu" (Father on Business Trip), won three "Felix" nominations: for the best film, the leading feminine role and music. That is when the film "Kuduz" won a special award of the jury for "creative spirit of new films coming from Sarajevo".

And while films with a special sensibility were arriving from Sarajevo, war arrived in Sarajevo. Ademir Kenovic gathered a few tens of film creators in a Sarajevo Group of Authors ("SaGA) and shot more than 50 documentary films during the siege of the city. The best known are "SA Life", Sarajevo visual diary, and a serial of documentary notes called "Street under Siege". This chronicle of a typical Sarajevo street which consists of 120 two-minute episodes, was telecast on BBC 2, Canal Plus, WIPX USA, NHK Japan, ZDF and WDR Germany, and about ten other TV stations. His other film "Covjek, Bog, monstrum" (Man, God, Monster) also opened the program "Fifteen Directors", but in 1994. Apart from Kenovic, this film was signed by Ismet Arnautalic, Mirza Idrizovic and Pjer Zalica. European Film Academy awarded this achievement with a Felix for documentary films "as an expression of admiration and solidarity with your achievements and the unique spirit which holds the group SaGA". Together with Sidran and Zalica, Kenovic has finished a scenario for a new feature film. Shooting is expected to begin any day now, as soon as the airport opens and necessary equipment is imported. The actors in the film will be: Mustafa Nadarevic from Zagreb, Branko Djuric from Sarajevo, now living in Ljubljana, Josip Pejakovic from Sarajevo, Zaim Muzaferija and Bozo Bunjevac from the interior of Bosnia. The film will have a metaphorical title: "Savrseni krug" (The Perfect Circle).

• I think that this title reflects some elements of the film, it is a metaphor of some meanings in the film. At the same time, it sounds attractive, different. In a way it is a pleonasm, because a circle is always perfect. I have always played with the titles. In the beginning of the work it is something that pushes you on, lika a little game. I don't think the title is all that important, although in this case, it bears a lot of meaning. We, people from Sarajevo, are in a specific closed space for three years now. The solution of our situation is entangled like in a circle. As if we cannot reach any points.

* Since it is war, will this film be naturalistic, brutal, or will it follow in the recognizable Sidran's style of "laughter through tears", the film style which some like to call "poetic realism"?

• We are all in a way different people than what we used to be before the war, and partly we are what we had never dreamt we could be like. That is why I believe that the film will reflect these very shifts. It will reflect a new development. It is always difficult to define a style. This "laughter through tears" is well said. I think that it explains a part of something that always existed here and that has always defined the local spirit. I also believe, though, that this is something far more complex now, supplemented with new layers, new levels, new feelings and new lack of feelings, new disappointments, new coarseness, tragedies, coldness created by all these developements. I believe that the film will express a part of a feeling known to us, and probably radiate with something completely different, absolutely new to us.

* Will you use any documentary material in the film?

• No, absolutely not. We have shot enough documents in the past three years. The ambience we have transferred from the documents into our consciousness will, unfortunately, be the eternal background for everything we shall ever do, but we will definitely not use documentary material. We are making a feature film. We have tried to inform the world with what is happening to us through documents, and I hope that we have partly succeded in transforming the false picture about us. Due to saturation with documents, saturation with that kind of presentation and communication, we believe that people can achieve a new identification with this space through a feature film. In this way, people will primarily recognize the story as something generally recognizable, and within it, perhaps an even more truthful experience of reality we are living in. That is why there will be mo documents, but everything will be based on the ambience we will be shooting the film in.

* It will be the cheapest and the most authentic scenery ever.

• Yes, one could say that it will be authentic. Film is a complicated matter, though: the apparently applicable scenery elements can hardly be used in a feature film in the way they are used in a documentary. Believe it or not, we will therefore be constructing a lot, adapting things. We will try to make everything convincing, to give the impression of authenticity, but this does not necessarily mean that it will be shot in authentic ambiences. Just as the story will not be about real events. The most important thing is the feeling created afterwards.

* What is actually the story of the film?

• It is a film about a man who is left without his family in the nightmare of the war and whose life is interwoven with the lives of two boys who are also left without anybody in the world and who are trying to reach their relatives abroad. It is a simple story, but like I said, emotions are the most important thing... One of the main roles will be acted by the writer, Sidran.

* Is there a sufficient number of film experts in Sarajevo for such an ambitious project?

• We were lucky to have managed to keep majority of the most professional personnel who have ever worked on the film in Sarajevo. It is a serious, high-quality team. I am judging by the preparations we have made for the film, and by about 400 hours of documentary material we have already shot. I must say that real enthusiasts have remained in Sarajevo. With this war experience, working with teams on the outside and here with SaGA, they have increased their knowledge a lot, so that now we have a great basis for film industry. Concerning the team - consisting of 50 or more people, we will lack just a few for the level we wish to achieve. They are the people we had to bring in even before the war, for instance, a team of experts for lights with the equipment, a pyrotechnics team and a make-up team.

* In your "Street under Siege" you made so many beautiful stories. Has this street remained the same, have the people preserved the warmth and the enthusiasm they had at the time of shooting the serial?

• We shot the serial "Street under Siege" in two turns - at the turn of '93 and beginning of '94, and in January '95. What is essential is that, after all these tragedies, the people in Sarajevo are still trying to live like before - mentally undisturbed, refusing to become nationalists, still believing that all men are equal. They still have enough optimism. I believe that this street managed to tell the world that normal people live here, maybe even more normal than the rest of the world. I think that the viewership of the serial is quite indicative. Before it was telecast, BBC had about 600 thousand viewers at that hour, and at the time "Street under Siege" was carried, the number of viewers increased to 3.5 million. Similar was the case elsewhere. I think it is quite significant that we have managed to telecast this serial and oppose most of the major media centres with which we strongly disagree in the way they picture our reality.

* You have probably met with colleagues from Belgrade at some of the world festivals. Do they have a realistic picture about the reality in Sarajevo?

• I spent quite some time with Rajko Grlic and Djidji Karanovic in Cannes. One is from Zagreb, and the other from Belgrade. They both teach in America, they are both extraordinary men and have the stance we share: ill fascists are destroying people overe here. Those who have not noticed this have either become indifferent or support the crimes and will bear the consequences themselves. Those who support the crimes conceived in Belgrade will have to face themselves for not having done what the entire normal world would expect someone who had the opportunity to do something.

* They say that Emir Kusturica and Goran Bregovic have taken Yugoslav passports, of the latest, so-called Yugoslavia, and recently, at a festival in Florence, in Italy, asked to be announced as Bosnians. Do you have news about them, what is the real truth?

• No, nor am I interested to know. I have no time to think about them. Everyone will have to account for one's actions to one's own conscience.

* This is a time when many servile mediocrities became prominent both in politics and in arts. Was Bosnia- Herzegovina culture presented to the world by proper people and in a proper manner?

• It depends. Those who worked morally, tried to inform the people outside B&H about what is happening here. Most of the people, however, had no opportunity to do it, because they were engaged in activities concerning defence. Some people had difficulties in organizing their potentials in this sense. On the other hand, I think that there is a group of people who did not wish B&H culture to be promoted as it used to be and what it will hopefully continue to be like. But, they are a minority group and I think that the majority realized that B&H cannot but exist as a country like it used to be. That is why it is necessary to support intensely presentation of culture from this region in the world. In that case, all other variants about a different B&H will automatically be pushed to the margins.

* Were the official B&H authorities of any use to you, did they have any understanding for your work or did they hinder you in any way?

• We have regularly informed the official B&H authorities about what we were doing, since there is a war here and since we wished to have the possibilities of movement. And we did. We are a group of independent film authors which is permitted to exist such as it is, and to do its work. We did everything else on our own. Although we are hoping for it, it would be too ambitious to expect institutionalized assistance. All support so far consisted of an understanding that we are an independent, multi-ethnic group of film workers which sees democratic Bosnia as the only option and that we may operate as such. That is what I consider support for our group. But, one should not forget that we are also a finanically, perhaps unfortunately, independent group which toured more than 250 cities in the world and presented our films, ardently speaking about our point of view.

DUBRAVKO BRIGIC