Sarajevo FF: Talk With Mila Turajlic
The theme was how to deal with archives in a creative way; it was a bit more than one hour skype conversation with Mila Turajlic talking to us from her home in Belgrade – the flat those of us, who have seen “The Other Side of Everything” know so well. Turajlic was excused not to be in Sarajevo, because of illness but as the fighter she is, she had prepared clips for the presentation and the conversation went very well giving the audience of primarily young people inspiration to their film work.
The first clip brought us back to the film Turajlic made in 2010, “Cinema Komunisto”, the scene from the partisan feature film (Battle of Neretva, 1969) where Tito has given the order
to blow up the Neretva Bridge. In the clip you see how Turajlic mixes fiction and documentary having wonderful interviews with a couple of film people, who took part in the film. How did you get “the old boys” to agree to take part, I asked. I met them again and again and had them talk about how it was and finally I had their ok. In the clip shown you also see how this place today is – with Turajlic’s words – a place of memory and commemoration.
From “The Other Side of Everything” Turajlic showed the scene, where the mother and friends at the dinner table talks about “Hafner’s Finger”, referring to the event in Parliament, where the old parliament member is warning Comrade Milosevic that Yugoslavia could fall apart if he proceeds with his Great Serbia politics. For Turajlic this scene makes her mother Srbijanka Turajlic become “the guide” for reading the archive of this excellent film (I have written a review of the film: http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4090/)
Third film is coming up – the trailer for the film about the lovely old cameraman Stevan Labudovic – working title “The Labudovic Reels” – that is, with Turajlic words, “an archival road trip with Stevan Labudovic, cameraman to Yugoslav President Tito and cinematic eye of the Algerian revolution, investigating the role of cinema in the liberation struggles of the Third World and reconstructing the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement…”. The trailer shown is wonderful, can’t wait to see the final result!
And finally some photos from the video installations made for MOMA in New York, “a commission to contextualise the story of Yugoslav architecture and modernisation”… well to have made two films, have one that soon is coming up and to be at one of the most famous museums in the world, Bravo, and thanks for the conversation, where we also had the chance to say hello to her mother Srbijanka. More about Mila Turajlic on
