Sarajevo FF, Redgrave & Dealing With the Past
Arrived in Sarajevo this afternoon surviving a pretty windy flight from Vienna – I’ll never get used to flight turbulence! And it feels provocative when several people around me has fallen asleep ignoring the most bumpy moments.
But wonderful to be in Sarajevo again invited by Masa Markovic, industry coordinator and responsible for the programme Dealing with the Past”, that includes a well deserved (and so obvious) Tribute to Joshua Oppenheimer, who has, if anyone, dealt with the past in his two films ”Act of Killing” and ”The Look of Silence”. Happy also to see that Danish Lars Feldballe-Petersen’s fine ”The Unforgiven” (photo) is included as is Bosnian ”Restless Dreams” by Muris Beglerovic. I will get back to the exciting initiative ”Dealing with the Past” later.
One who is also dealing with the past is Vanessa Redgrave, who was meant to come to Sarajevo – with me as the one asking some questions after her debut as a film director with ”Sea Sorrow” – but cancelled. I had seen her film or maybe it is better to say her visual statement on the situation for the refugees. She makes a personal journey back to her childhood during WW2, she interviews Lord Dubs, a brilliant man who came to England as a refugee with the Kindertransport and she and he make parallels to the refugee children of today, who come without parents to end up in the Calais ”jungle”, that Dubs and Redgrave have visited. She talks about the Human Rights Declaration that was presented by Elinor Roosevelt in 1948, about the Geneva Convention, about the declaration for rights of children. Redgrave is passionate, but not a filmmaker, and she also includes Shahespeare in her statement for humanity.
