Srđan Dragojević: Money is thrown at some film expo

Where do you see the news in that, said director Srđan Dragojević, responding to the proposal to comment on what had just been done the results of the competition of the Film Center of Serbia (FCS) for the co-financing of feature films.

Namely, Dragojević is among the 55 rejected at the mentioned competition, in addition to Zdravko Šotra, Srdan Golubović, Ivan Ikić, Radoš Bajić, so among the authors whose films are already proverbially rejected at FCS competitions.

"First of all, I congratulate my colleagues who won this competition. Under two, when you apply, you have accepted the circumstances set by the Film Center. And it is unsportsmanlike to complain about anything," says Srđan Dragojević.

Expertise and taste

The latest competition is an occasion to recall the earlier decisions of the FCS commissions.

"In light of the fact that there are 40 selected projects from various commissions that are standing because they fail to receive funds from the region and Europe, it is obvious

that the FCS commissions have no idea which films have universal values ​​and potential. There is already a question of the expertise and taste of the people who are selected for the commissions. There are the fewest directors and screenwriters in the commissions, while the majority are people from professions who do not necessarily know how to read a script and assess the value of a future project," says Dragojević.

He explains that "there is no competition, like ours, where writers, theater authors, distributors, actors are invited to the commissions, instead of cinematography experts." It's like you hire volleyball coaches, journalists, football fans for a football coach. No one calls us, experts in our work, to be the selectors of Nin's award and Sterija's theater. The selection of members of the Film Center's committee testifies to the fact that the most common among them are "gynecologists who don't know their job but - like to watch".

"Major and Helena"

Dragojević says that because of this, it should not be surprising why "our films are not included in the programs of the A festival - the commissions of the Film Center have been carefully preventing this for years."

"This is about a provincial taste, a lack of breadth and, simply, a lack of education." Possibly, also about the basic malice that eliminates everything that could be found in Cannes, Berlin and Venice. You have seen the explanation of the project Major and Helena with whom I competed. I have ten companies in Europe who would like to collaborate on this extremely important and interesting story, including Wild Bunch, a well-known French company. Therefore, that project is too serious - how can any mediocrity have the guts to choose it? That simply does not happen in Serbia."

Major and Helena is a true story, writes the explanation of the commission, which takes us through the turbulent decades from Tito's death to the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, following the life path of retired Serbian Army major Helena Vuković, father of four children, and the only high-ranking officer of any army in the world who changed gender The commission is full of praise for Dragojević's project, they remind that it is respected and far beyond our borders, but they still reject it "due to limited budget resources and the production volume of the film".

Srđan Dragojević recalls that both he and "Srdan Golubović have come the farthest this century in terms of the festival success of our films. With that, we acquired a stigma of the unfit, potentially too successful. How can they allow us to succeed again - how will these less successful and talented people feel? In Serbia, everything that sticks out must be cut down, preventively."

Roastery owner level

Again, for the umpteenth time, he publicly repeats that "the appeal of all our authors' associations to propose experts for these commissions does not help." We have 560 female and male authors, everyone who means something in cinematography is here. However, the Film Center will choose an actor from Montenegro to decide who will present the Serbian film. Two distributors in a committee of five? Do they know what the script is? It's already, sorry, Monty Python. That is already the level of a bakery owner for the EPS director, a sex worker for an educational inspector. And that must come to an end if we want our cinematography to achieve the success it deserves, according to the number of talented authors, which is why we are at an advantage in the region."

But, he says, one should always get something good out of everything.

"I, on behalf of the authors represented by UFUS AFA protection, offered the Film Center a round table where the problems of our cinematography would be openly discussed." Without running away from topics such as canceled competition of the Film Center for eminent directors, which was annulled because Vučić demanded from Jelene Trivan (then director of FCS) to punish Goran Marković and not allow him to shoot a film about Radovan Karadžić. You see, you have a commission in which there are really experts, Miloš Pavlović, the dean of FDU who shined on RTS.u some time ago, then the dean of Novi Sad Academy, but the FCS Board of Directors can cancel such an election by order of a tyrant from the top."

What should students expect?

Dragojević recalls that he and Želimir Žilnik were among the winners at that time. We complained to the court, absolutely nothing has changed for two years - let this be a warning to students regarding the 'conducted speed of the judiciary'. The case has been going on for years, and the judges must have instructions that the authors die of old age before they find justice."

"This whole thing is paradigmatic - and students can expect, based on this example, that their attackers, maybe, if they have more luck with the judiciary than us, the attackers will be on trial in three years."

However, all this, he says, "opens up a number of interesting questions, and a democratic dialogue about them can help our cinematography." For example, why is the Film Center not a fund and not a government agency? If it was a fund, the influence of politics would not even be a topic. It would not happen if the Film Center were to impose a senseless competition for "national themes". Because what the hell are national themes? Beautiful Village, Pretty Flame she would never have been chosen in such a competition. If someone wants to enter the zone of patriotic kitsch, let the Government and the Ministry of Culture do it, and not throw the money allocated for cinematography at some film expo".

Invitation to Ivan Karl

He says that professional associations have never participated in the creation of the Statute of the Film Center, and returns again to the problem of selecting committee members.

"According to that statute, for each competition you have to look for five members of the committee and then invite people that no one in our profession has ever heard of?" Instead of appointing one proven author, such as Srđan Karanović, who no longer wants to deal with filmmaking but who is our national treasure in the truest sense of the word, to decide, for example, on his own, for two years about the scripts in the competition. That's what Denmark is doing, and because of that, the boom in their cinematography followed. I think that as a society we are at a turning point and all of us, the authors, believe that the system must start functioning."

"What I have stated is only a few of the numerous ideas that our professional associations have. That is why our call for dialogue, but essential, not formal and forced, stands. I think that Ivan Karl (the current director of FCS) is a person who understands all this and someone who would get involved and support such a discussion and finding solutions for the benefit of the profession."