photo: Robert ChobanVladislav Skarić Street
Vladislav Skarić was born and died in Sarajevo. This well-known historian and corresponding member of SANU comes from a wealthy Serbian bourgeois family - his father Kosta Skarić was a tobacco merchant who became rich through trade and built one of the largest houses in Sarajevo at that time. It is located in Sime Milutinovića Street, not far from Hotel Central, and today it houses the Museum of Literature and Theater Arts. The street named after him connects two famous Sarajevo streets - Ferhadija and Street of the Green Berets, and during the Sarajevo Film Festival it separates two worlds - Istanbul (some Sarajevans will say Damascus) and Amsterdam.
Namely, Ferhadija, the former Vasa Miskina Street and Baščaršija, which it continues to, are full of people dressed according to the rules of the Muslim faith. From headscarves that cover women's heads to ferajes that reveal only their eyes. And men also look according to the rules prescribed by Islam. Among them there are tourists from Turkey and Arab countries, but also more and more locals. Handicraft shops, buregdzinia and kebab shops intertwine with teahouses and hookah bars. Loud folk music blares from some bars in the passages.
Then you pass less than "206 steps the length of that alley" Vladislava Skarić Street and enter directly "into Amsterdam". Namely, during the seven days of the SFF in the afternoon and evening, the Street of the Green Berets in the section between Hotel Evropa and the National Theater is closed to traffic and full of young people standing at the bar tables of cafes, drinking craft beers and cocktails and dancing to foreign music. . From one bar you could hear loudly and Is Sarajevo where it used to be? Dina Merlin to the general delight of the guests who raised their hands high in the air. Two worlds, Asia and Europe, separated only by Vladislav Skarić Street.
photo: Robert ChobanMural by Davorin Popović
IN THE COURTYARD OF FERHADI MOSQUE
The next morning I passed through that alley and in the courtyard of the Ferhadija mosque I saw a new grave with the inscription "Abudlah Sidran 1944-2024". The famous writer and screenwriter was buried just a few steps from the Viennese tavern of Hotel Evropa, where he liked to sit the most. We met there for the first time when I (successfully) persuaded him to come to Novi Sad for the "Book Talk" conference in 2019.
Sidran's grave in Vladislava Skarića Street is located right next to the garden fence of the neighboring cafe. Some Sarajians I spoke with are against the fact that the dead are still buried in cemeteries in the city center. "In Venice, Napoleon stopped it in 1807 when he opened a cemetery for them on the island of San Michele and forced them to stop burying in the gates of the city's churches," says one of my interlocutors.
"Think global, read (eat, drink...) local" is my motto that I follow wherever I travel around the world, especially in a region where we all speak and understand more or less the same language. I bought "Dnevni avaz" and "Oslobođenje", the only two daily newspapers in the Federation of BiH, sat in a cafe right next to Sidran's grave and ordered Turkish coffee, which is called "Bosnian" here, and "homemade" in Republika Srpska.
I'm flipping through the daily press while the 2000 hit Red Apples is playing from the coffee shop speakers: "Pictures are lined up / Miskin's girls are walking like fairies / a long time ago / you were all mine".
The former Miskinova, Vase Miskina Street is a few steps from where I am sitting, and it is also known for the massacre that took place there at the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 27, 1992, when 26 people were killed in line for bread from grenades fired from the positions of the RS Army. and 108 Sarajevo residents were wounded. Immediately after that, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on FR Yugoslavia. This street bore the name of Ferhadija until 1928, when it was merged with Sarači in Baščaršija and named the Street of the Crown Prince Peter, after Peter II Karađorđević. During the occupation in the Second World War, it again bore the name Ferhadija, and after 1945 it was given the name Vasa Miskina Street, after Vasa Miskina Crna, the pre-war and post-war secretary of the Local Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for Sarajevo, NOB fighter and national hero. The name Ferhadija street was returned in 1993.
I return to the daily press and current events: the reports from the Sarajevo Film Festival dominate, of course, the red carpet of which, apart from world stars like Meg Ryan and John Turtur, (and) this year our Jasna Đuričić, officially the best European actress, dominated. Jasna owes her popularity in Sarajevo to the title role in the film Quo vadis, Aida, as well as the Bosnian hit series I know how you breathe, where she also appears as the lead actress.
Another topic in both diaries was the triple murder in Sanski Most. Some columnists harshly criticized the government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its ministers for not even deigning to end their vacation, let alone declare a Day of Mourning. Last year's triple murder in Gradačac, which by the way was also femicide, caused a Day of Mourning, due to which SFF canceled all film screenings and accompanying programs one day (August 16, 2023) and organized a forum on femicide. The columnist insinuates that this year's Day of Mourning was not declared before Monday, August 25, so that the festival would end and many guests and tourists would leave the city. On the same day, we received news about the tragic fire in Novi Sad, in which a family of six died, which is why the Day of Mourning was declared in the city.
That same afternoon, while I was buying water in the market across the street from our hotel, I overheard a conversation between the cashier and a woman: both mourned the dead, but said the same thing as the murderer's brother to "Dnevni avaz" - "he wouldn't have just done this!" Everyone says that mobbing of the "little man" is something that happens at every step.
SERBIAN WOMEN IN SARAJEVO
On the other hand, there are also "smaller people" than our "little man". Namely, they are migrants. Neither in Serbia nor in BiH, no one even mentioned the possibility of commemorating in some way the deaths of "at least 11 migrants" who drowned in the boat that was transporting them across the Drina. As if we were talking about kittens or some kind of impersonal statistical numbers.
"In our region, there are so many crimes and tragedies almost every day that it could be a Day of Mourning here all the time," remarks the theater director Haris Pašović, with whom I drink coffee a day later in a Vienna pub. Harris talks about how our societies are becoming radicalized on religious and national grounds especially when it comes to the media and the "elite" and says that he and his colleagues have not done enough to prevent this from happening. Again, on the other hand, we agree that the ordinary world lives its own lives, cooperates, trades and socializes... Pašović is preparing the theater Sarajevo Fest for the middle of September, and at the end of that month he is preparing to come to Novi Sad for our "Book Talk" and Subotica where will his performance be A world of possibilities play at the Festival of Professional Theaters in Subotica. The play is inspired by the lives of children and adults with autism and cerebral palsy, their families and caregivers.
The summer cinema Stari grad is a perfect location from which, in addition to the view of the big screen, you also have a perfect view of Sarajevo's beauty - the Town Hall building that overlooks the other side of Miljacka. There was the festival premiere of the film Megdan: Between fire and water which was produced by Aleksa Balašević, the son of the late singer-songwriter from Novi Sad. Aleksa appears in the film with his wife and daughter in a few seconds long cameo scene, while his sister Jovana, a professional actress, has one of the notable roles. At the end of the film, after the film crew bowed to the Sarajevo audience, the young Balasevic gave a long speech where, in the manner of his father, he selflessly praised the people of Sarajevo and their traditional warmth and hospitality.
Tatjana Kos and Anđelka Matijević have a lot in common. Both are Serb women from central Serbia and are married or in a relationship with Bosniaks from Sarajevo; both did very well in the city. Tatjana hosts one of the most popular regional podcasts, "Balkan Rules", while Anđelka works on organizing events, and is currently a member of the Sarajevo Film Festival team. They say how Sarajevo accepted them wonderfully, but they had to learn to play by the "rules of the city", which is often a problem in our regional centers, which have all changed the composition of the population in the past three decades.
Anđelka knows about my love for film, graphic design and pop-culture references and takes me to the courtyard of the bookstore "BuyBook" to the exhibition NoMAD MOVIE ART - Film classics through the eyes of Croatian authors which was opened a few days ago as part of the 4th Festival in the Center, which takes place in Radićeva Street. Exhibition NoMAD MOVIE ART it was produced by the Split Nomad Gallery, a pop-up art gallery, which with this project presents works outside the borders of Croatia for the first time. It is an exhibition that gives designers, illustrators and creatives complete freedom to interpret film classics through different media such as photography, illustration, graphic design and typography. The exhibition includes 42 interpretations of movie classics in the format of a movie poster created in collaboration with 35 authors. Among them are Studio Šesnić & Turković, who explore the romantic magic of film Kazablanka, Mate Žaja with the exciting atmosphere of Hitchcock Catch the thief. and Vanja Cuculić who interprets the nostalgic charm of Weiler's classic Holiday in Rome.
RED CARPET
On the last evening, we went to the National Theater where the 30th SFF Awards Ceremony was organized. We are greeted by a red carpet with motifs from Bosnian rugs, TV broadcasts, celebrities and an audience that pushes against the fences to see them. It was indicated on the invitations black tie / formal, but almost no one followed that rule. However, there was no lack of glamor with a Bosnian flair. The whole ceremony lasted no longer than 45 minutes, the jury members and awardees took turns on the stage.
Does this mean that after SFF, Sarajevo will only have its "Istanbul" face?
Well, no, despite all the changes and challenges, this city remained a meeting place of different civilizations and influences. During the afternoon walking around the city and climbing the steep streets south of Miljacka in order to burn off the calories collected from kebabs and pies, I saw mosques, synagogues, Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches... A particularly interesting contrast was the sight of the marble MARKETS in front of the Franciscan monastery, where in the background is the old building of the Sarajevo brewery.
On a bridge on Miljacka, the word "Genocide" is written in large letters on a white canvas. I thought that something about Srebrenica would be written below, however, this time it was about Gaza. The radicalization of local Bosniaks on the subject of the war in the Middle East and solidarity with the Palestinians reached its peak at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year, when Coca-Cola and many other brands were boycotted in stores and cafes because they were associated with Israel or Jews.
Respecting this attitude of the public, the SFF also awarded the "Honorary Heart of Sarajevo" to the Palestinian director Elio Sulejmani, who told the media in Sarajevo these days: "Even though I live in Paris, genocide is now taking place in my country." Today, as the two of us talk. At this moment, children are being killed. Some soldiers, actually monsters, kill children. So I don't know why or how the world came together, and I'm talking about that military world, about those colonial countries, in such a pornographic way to support Israel. That's really sick!”
Last year, SFF had problems with a part of the Bosnian public due to the broadcast of a trailer for a Serbian film Heroes of Halliard, in which the Chetniks of Draža Mihailović appear. Credit must be given to Jovan Marjanović, director of the SFF, who, despite his Serbian and Jewish origins, managed to avoid potential landmines in the ever-turbulent Bosnian political and media scene. Recognition must also be given to Sarajevo that, in spite of everything, such an SFF with such a director is possible there. I'm not sure how feasible it would be in some other regional capitals.
