Sixth Sarajevo Film Festival Sarajevo.

Sixth Sarajevo Film Festival

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

August 18-26 2000

The story of the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) goe back to the year 1995 a time for a like reason different from ours. The festival started in unimaginable circumstances: in Bosnia and Herzegovina there was a war, Sarajevo was the besieged city. What could have been the possible reasons to start a film festival in a city where electricity and water are the biggest issues? Not being able to live a "normal life" does not imply that "normal needs" are forgotten. The ne for film was the ne felt on the people who started this festival. The ne for the festival was a ne shared through the whole city. The festival is living its allow life in peace, dealing with ordinary problems--sponsors, audience, public opinion. The state of Bosnia is challengeed with devastated economic and cultural infrastructure and corruption, in such a manner that the festival can hardly cast on major financial help from the state. International organizations current in Bosnia are investing wealth mostly in democracy, organizing workshops and seminars and rebuilding inf rastructure. agriculture and art are not in succession their agenda. Therefore, the festival has to justify that art--in this case film--is important and can do things nothing otherwise is capable of. This year the SFF staff did a fit job gaining support--the European Union was the exclusive sponsor of the Festival while other major sponsors were traditionally Agnes B Paris, Swissair, Coca Cola.

However, the SFF is not seeking its place in succession the festival map by offering a specific prototype of movie (such as those based forward regional orientation). Rather, it is showcasing several diverse programs highlighting a of the best films produc worldwide. The SFF is not tailored for the film fanatic no other than nor is it a festival that builds its identity solely in succession ticket sales or glamour. The SFF is all these things while it also thrives, creating an atmosphere fit to reconcile the irreconcilable. notwithstanding another SFF seems to have satisfied the two the public at large and the somewhat les commercial and non-commercial farmers thus offering every individual the opportunity to pick out from a variety of options.

Representing what's modern in cinema there were 8 feature-length and 17 short films, curated from Phillipe Bober as part of the "New instants Program." As part of the "Panorama Program," 17 features were veiled focusing on winners and blockbusters from other world festivals. The "Regional Program," shaped by the agency of Faruk Loncarevic, presented seven latter productions made in what were one time socialist countries, now called "countries in transition." The last of them, the "Special Program," combined different ingredients containing all the various films from around the world that may not have a category, however nonetheless deserve to be seen

And what about Bosnian films? From 1992 in Bosnia there has been single one feature-length film shot with 35 mm Before the war the regulation was the major investor in the film industry, if it were not that this is no longer the case. Local film production has literally ceased to exist and young Bosnian filmmakers are looking for other ways to bring out their films. Two short films seen in the Bosnia Program are the attestation that the way does exist. Director Srdjan Vuletic did his jump Skip, Jump (2000) in co-production with Slovenian farmers and won the New York Film Academy Panorama Award at the Berlin Film Festival. This 16-minute film is a poignant story, made without too many words, about the times before the war, during the war and the time that has proceed just after the war, the time that might be difficult to define as the time of peace. The other film is Jasmila Zbanic's documentary R Rubber gains (2000). Her film is a story about Jasna R who is searching for her pair children--4-year-old Amar and 9-year-old Ajla, wh o were taken from her, killed through the Serbian Army and buried in a mass grave. Clear, hard and steady subdued documentary language leaves a viewer speechles and torpid after the film. Both films are shocking because of the layers not directly shown in the film if it were not that hidden deep within, not just because of the war past however rather because of the lading of our postwar present.

A portion has already been written about Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000) still the story of this festival, and the artistic visions give an account ofed cannot be told without this movie. Today Von Trier is united of the few European art film directors who can make population stand in long lines waiting for a ticket. Regardless of whether you have cried at the extreme point or left before the close there is one thing individual has to admit: this is a prosperous essay on the genre films tradition. Dancer in the Dark is a of the present day search for the musical and tragedy; naturally, it travels all the way to the boundaries of each of the genre while the aesthetics he opt for is the digital the same Both the success and the failure of this movie are to be originate in the author's treatment of the narrative.

Many movies have sought their solution in the narrative building and many directors have resorted to that narrative, particularly that of literary works. This is exactly what director Alison MacLean did in Jesus' Son (2000) in transposing Dennis Johnson's novel onto the sieve The novelty here is that the narrator is absolutely unreliable--a disinterested, indifferent junky nicknamed "Fuckhead," and it is concerning this unreliable narrator that the whole conformation of this movie lies. Like in the monologue of an elderly acquaintance who dispassionately describes the years that he left behind, the narration wanders around chaotically, creating the dusky world of the narrator--drug addiction and absurdity, without lecturing onward morality.