MIS-IHP 2nd year student Fiona Ziegler has sent in the following story about an unusual experience during her memoire research:
"From January 8 to 14, 2009, the internationally known director Emir Kusturica organized a film and music festival in his own village in the mountains of South-Western Serbia.[1] Only 50 km away from Nobel-Prize winner Ivo Andric’s famous “Bridge over the Drina,”[2] symbol for the encounter of Bosnian Islam with Serbian Orthodoxy, the festival’s location symbolizes the director’s own controversial identity.
Sarajevo-rooted Kusturica built up far away from any big city - 259 km from Belgrade and 136 km from Sarajevo, yet only 5 km away from the Serbian-Bosnian border - his own town:
“I have lost my own city that’s why I am building myself a new one - that’s the one.”[3] Its name: Küstendorf.
Praised as “the architect and creator of a perfect life that is out of the ordinary,”[4] Emir Kusturica’s Küstendorf appears like a cultural island in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by mountains, it seems to be a revolutionary fortress, referring to the director’s own vision of utopia. Restoring traditional houses of the region, Kusturica wanted to construct an authentic, cultural place - a fortress that resists the influence of the globalized money-driven world. A fortress which Kusturica considers as “a home of a sweet dictator,”[5] who decides who is going to live and stay there and who doesn’t.
And as it is a fortress for Kusturica himself, it is also a fortress against the entire commercialized world of Hollywood. As Kusturica put it, “Küstendorf wants to create a new vision of the world,”[6] and in order to achieve this, culture is a necessity: “This place wants to bring tradition and the modernity together in the sense in which cinema becomes again a place where you have mostly authors as main mythical characters of cinema and not the events, not stupidity (…)”[7] And: “We choose always great artists to come here, not the stars. Because we hate stars.”[8]
In other words, the Küstendorf Film & Music Festival was envisioned as a platform mainly for young artists and filmmakers - “A place open to young artists from all around the world that have the possibility to meet each other, to see and hear each others work, to listen and speak with great international artists.”[9] And under that motto, the festival’s competition was about short features, shot by students of film academies and young independent filmmakers.[10]
One example of a great international artist who was specially invited to the festival is the American film director Jim Jarmusch. Within the festival’s program Retrospective of Greatness, Jarmusch presented his latest film Broken Flowers (2005). After showing the film, Jarmusch answered in a workshop patiently for more than two hours every single question asked by the audience.
Goran Gocic and Jim Jarmusch
Other special guests at the festival were the controversial Austrian author Peter Handke and Thierry Frémaux. The latter, a key figure within the Cannes Film Festival, gave an excellent workshop and later presented Cannes’ 08 Grand Prix-winner Gomorra (2008), directed by Matteo Garrone. Kusturica himself was presenting his latest production Maradona (2008), a documentary about the most famous football player of all times: the Argentinian Diego Maradona.
Emir Kusturica and Thierry Frémaux
*
As I am writing my Master’s thesis about Emir Kusturica’s film Underground (1995), the international debate/controversy about it and the image of Serbia, I accidentally found out about the festival in Küstendorf on Mokra Gora. Convinced that this festival must be something really special, I made my way up there into the far-away Serbian mountain region. Quite a trip! Olivia Spahni (MIS-IHP 2nd year) and Christophe Cachelin (Licence HEID 2008), the latter who works as a video journalist, came with me. And so the three of us, accompanied by all of Christophe’s film equipment (he was supposed to shoot a brief report on the festival for Swiss internet TV), flew on January 8 from Zurich to Belgrade.[11] There, we took a shuttle that brought us, together with an Ukrainian music band, to Küstendorf.
Approaching Küstendorf by car, on curvy roads and after a car ride of more than four hours from Belgrade, the town appeared like an island on the horizon within an ocean of mountains. What struck us from a distance was a brightly shining moon, lighting up the roofs of the small town. Finally, we arrived. It was bitterly cold. The town is surrounded by a wall; it really appears like a kind of fortress. Through a narrow gate, guarded by two huge, albeit very friendly security men, we could finally enter the town we heard so much about. What we see appears somehow unreal.
Amazingly, the “moon” we saw approaching uphill by car is a giant balloon, illuminating the centre of the village. The village’s narrow streets are named after Kusturica’s idols, such as Fellini, Bergman or Che Guevara and Diego Maradona. Down the main street, there is a little Orthodox church, a restaurant, a café, a souvenir shop, an art gallery, and a reception hall.
We enter the reception. The young woman there welcomes us warmly and gives us our accreditations to the festival. That includes one colourful plastic bag. Curious, we open it - and are taken by surprise as music jumps out of it … wonderfully energetic Balkan music (it was a bit like with those birthday cards which, when opened, play “Happy Birthday”). The bag was packed with the festival’s program and the festival pass and, of course, the music welcomed you, embraced you, made you realize that you had arrived in Kusturica’s wonder-world.
As the music box in the bag indicated, the festival was not only about films but also very much about music. Therefore, every night after the screenings, the projection screen was rolled up and a huge stage appeared behind it. The whole cinema changed within one hour into a vibrant music hall, and after midnight, concerts of selected musicians from all over the world created the ambiance. I have never seen people dancing so ecstatically as there - probably it was a mixture of: the end of a culturally overloaded day, Balkanic passions, consumption of Rakjia and Pivo, all heated up by the rhythms, beats, voices and moves of the musicians on stage.
*
A great asset of the festival was that Emir Kusturica and Jim Jarmusch were always present and reachable, day and night.
Jim Jarmusch talking to Christophe Cachelin
Although Kusturica himself mostly stood or sat in a narrow corner, more overviewing and observing than directing his festival, he and his family were all part of it. On the whole, the festival seemed to me like a platform for young film-makers and film-students, like a stimulating and at the same time easy going, happy workshop that was lasting for one entire week. It was not “Cannes”, “Venice”, “Locarno”, it was a truly unique, even crazy international film festival. And that made up its special charm.
We stayed in a hotel close to the train-station of Mokra Gora, reachable by an old steam engine locomotive.
Every morning around eleven o’clock, one hour before departure, a smell of burned carbon entered our room and finally, it was on the third morning, that we couldn’t stand it anymore and thus decided to take the train instead of being woken up by this uncomfortable smell.
After having had some Burek and yoghurt for breakfast, we got a round-ticket valid for a two-hour ride.
Olivia Spahni and Fiona Ziegler, MIS-IHP 2nd year students
Slowly, the train climbed up the snow-covered mountains, passing by traditional wooden houses, wild valleys, crossed stone bridges built over small rivers. Finally, we arrived at the turning point of our trip and the most beautiful spot to see Küstendorf from above.
At this spot, all passengers went out of the train and took a rest. On the way down, there was an additional stop for kissing the crazy rock - a rock that is supposed to bring everyone who kisses it luck.
Of course, I had to kiss it too. And all of a sudden, I found myself in front of that very house where Kusturica’s film Life is a miracle (2004) was shot.
Inspired by this last image, I went back to Mokra Gora. Next, I climbed up one last time the hill to Küstendorf where Serbian New Year’s eve was celebrated (Serbian Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7 and New Year’s Eve on January 13). On that special night, Emir Kusturica and his “Non Smoking Orchestra” played - and they gave everything!
The concert and all the madly wild dancing ended with warm wishes for a happy Serbian New Year.
And as daylight set in, the festival came to an end.
*
Looking back, participating in the festival of Küstendorf was an enormously intense and enriching experience, and I keep on thinking again and again about that special place in the mountains at the Serbian border to Bosnia, built up by a controversial and very talented film director and visionary - a place which was described on the festival’s own web-site as “the demonstration that, even nowadays, a utopia can exist.”[12] And I wonder: why not?"
-----------
[1] The second International Küstendorf Film & Music Festival was organized by Rasta International and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. See more: http://www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4&&ni=141&nd=1.
[2] See: The novel by Ivo Andric Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge over the Drina), 1945.
[3] Kusturica, Emir: Tendre Barbare, directed by Marie-Christine Malbert, 2004 (ARTE, Une production Illégitime Défense), (00:47:43 – 00:47:48).
[4] See: Küstendorf tourist dossier, p. 1. For more information: http://www.mecavnik.info/.
[5] Kusturica, Emir: Interviewed in Küstendorf on January 10, 2009 by Christophe Cachelin and Fiona Ziegler, (00:03:25 – 00:03:37).
[6] Ibid., (00:00:23 – 00:00:28).
[7] Ibid., (00:01:20 – 00:01:30).
[8] Ibid., (00:03:00 – 00:03:18).
[9] Press and News 2009, Festival-website: www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4, accessed on March 4, 2009.
[10] Film students from 16 countries competed for the Golden, Silver and Bronze Egg awards. Japanese director Kohki Hasei was awarded for the best short features film.
[11] You can access the report on: http://www.blick.ch/people/star-regisseur-wird-zum-dorf-diktator-109977.
[12] Press and News 2009, Festival-website: www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4, accessed on March 4, 2009.
"From January 8 to 14, 2009, the internationally known director Emir Kusturica organized a film and music festival in his own village in the mountains of South-Western Serbia.[1] Only 50 km away from Nobel-Prize winner Ivo Andric’s famous “Bridge over the Drina,”[2] symbol for the encounter of Bosnian Islam with Serbian Orthodoxy, the festival’s location symbolizes the director’s own controversial identity.
Sarajevo-rooted Kusturica built up far away from any big city - 259 km from Belgrade and 136 km from Sarajevo, yet only 5 km away from the Serbian-Bosnian border - his own town:
“I have lost my own city that’s why I am building myself a new one - that’s the one.”[3] Its name: Küstendorf.
Praised as “the architect and creator of a perfect life that is out of the ordinary,”[4] Emir Kusturica’s Küstendorf appears like a cultural island in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by mountains, it seems to be a revolutionary fortress, referring to the director’s own vision of utopia. Restoring traditional houses of the region, Kusturica wanted to construct an authentic, cultural place - a fortress that resists the influence of the globalized money-driven world. A fortress which Kusturica considers as “a home of a sweet dictator,”[5] who decides who is going to live and stay there and who doesn’t.
And as it is a fortress for Kusturica himself, it is also a fortress against the entire commercialized world of Hollywood. As Kusturica put it, “Küstendorf wants to create a new vision of the world,”[6] and in order to achieve this, culture is a necessity: “This place wants to bring tradition and the modernity together in the sense in which cinema becomes again a place where you have mostly authors as main mythical characters of cinema and not the events, not stupidity (…)”[7] And: “We choose always great artists to come here, not the stars. Because we hate stars.”[8]
In other words, the Küstendorf Film & Music Festival was envisioned as a platform mainly for young artists and filmmakers - “A place open to young artists from all around the world that have the possibility to meet each other, to see and hear each others work, to listen and speak with great international artists.”[9] And under that motto, the festival’s competition was about short features, shot by students of film academies and young independent filmmakers.[10]
One example of a great international artist who was specially invited to the festival is the American film director Jim Jarmusch. Within the festival’s program Retrospective of Greatness, Jarmusch presented his latest film Broken Flowers (2005). After showing the film, Jarmusch answered in a workshop patiently for more than two hours every single question asked by the audience.
Goran Gocic and Jim Jarmusch
Other special guests at the festival were the controversial Austrian author Peter Handke and Thierry Frémaux. The latter, a key figure within the Cannes Film Festival, gave an excellent workshop and later presented Cannes’ 08 Grand Prix-winner Gomorra (2008), directed by Matteo Garrone. Kusturica himself was presenting his latest production Maradona (2008), a documentary about the most famous football player of all times: the Argentinian Diego Maradona.
Emir Kusturica and Thierry Frémaux
*
As I am writing my Master’s thesis about Emir Kusturica’s film Underground (1995), the international debate/controversy about it and the image of Serbia, I accidentally found out about the festival in Küstendorf on Mokra Gora. Convinced that this festival must be something really special, I made my way up there into the far-away Serbian mountain region. Quite a trip! Olivia Spahni (MIS-IHP 2nd year) and Christophe Cachelin (Licence HEID 2008), the latter who works as a video journalist, came with me. And so the three of us, accompanied by all of Christophe’s film equipment (he was supposed to shoot a brief report on the festival for Swiss internet TV), flew on January 8 from Zurich to Belgrade.[11] There, we took a shuttle that brought us, together with an Ukrainian music band, to Küstendorf.
Approaching Küstendorf by car, on curvy roads and after a car ride of more than four hours from Belgrade, the town appeared like an island on the horizon within an ocean of mountains. What struck us from a distance was a brightly shining moon, lighting up the roofs of the small town. Finally, we arrived. It was bitterly cold. The town is surrounded by a wall; it really appears like a kind of fortress. Through a narrow gate, guarded by two huge, albeit very friendly security men, we could finally enter the town we heard so much about. What we see appears somehow unreal.
Amazingly, the “moon” we saw approaching uphill by car is a giant balloon, illuminating the centre of the village. The village’s narrow streets are named after Kusturica’s idols, such as Fellini, Bergman or Che Guevara and Diego Maradona. Down the main street, there is a little Orthodox church, a restaurant, a café, a souvenir shop, an art gallery, and a reception hall.
We enter the reception. The young woman there welcomes us warmly and gives us our accreditations to the festival. That includes one colourful plastic bag. Curious, we open it - and are taken by surprise as music jumps out of it … wonderfully energetic Balkan music (it was a bit like with those birthday cards which, when opened, play “Happy Birthday”). The bag was packed with the festival’s program and the festival pass and, of course, the music welcomed you, embraced you, made you realize that you had arrived in Kusturica’s wonder-world.
As the music box in the bag indicated, the festival was not only about films but also very much about music. Therefore, every night after the screenings, the projection screen was rolled up and a huge stage appeared behind it. The whole cinema changed within one hour into a vibrant music hall, and after midnight, concerts of selected musicians from all over the world created the ambiance. I have never seen people dancing so ecstatically as there - probably it was a mixture of: the end of a culturally overloaded day, Balkanic passions, consumption of Rakjia and Pivo, all heated up by the rhythms, beats, voices and moves of the musicians on stage.
*
A great asset of the festival was that Emir Kusturica and Jim Jarmusch were always present and reachable, day and night.
Jim Jarmusch talking to Christophe Cachelin
Although Kusturica himself mostly stood or sat in a narrow corner, more overviewing and observing than directing his festival, he and his family were all part of it. On the whole, the festival seemed to me like a platform for young film-makers and film-students, like a stimulating and at the same time easy going, happy workshop that was lasting for one entire week. It was not “Cannes”, “Venice”, “Locarno”, it was a truly unique, even crazy international film festival. And that made up its special charm.
We stayed in a hotel close to the train-station of Mokra Gora, reachable by an old steam engine locomotive.
Every morning around eleven o’clock, one hour before departure, a smell of burned carbon entered our room and finally, it was on the third morning, that we couldn’t stand it anymore and thus decided to take the train instead of being woken up by this uncomfortable smell.
After having had some Burek and yoghurt for breakfast, we got a round-ticket valid for a two-hour ride.
Olivia Spahni and Fiona Ziegler, MIS-IHP 2nd year students
Slowly, the train climbed up the snow-covered mountains, passing by traditional wooden houses, wild valleys, crossed stone bridges built over small rivers. Finally, we arrived at the turning point of our trip and the most beautiful spot to see Küstendorf from above.
At this spot, all passengers went out of the train and took a rest. On the way down, there was an additional stop for kissing the crazy rock - a rock that is supposed to bring everyone who kisses it luck.
Of course, I had to kiss it too. And all of a sudden, I found myself in front of that very house where Kusturica’s film Life is a miracle (2004) was shot.
Inspired by this last image, I went back to Mokra Gora. Next, I climbed up one last time the hill to Küstendorf where Serbian New Year’s eve was celebrated (Serbian Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7 and New Year’s Eve on January 13). On that special night, Emir Kusturica and his “Non Smoking Orchestra” played - and they gave everything!
The concert and all the madly wild dancing ended with warm wishes for a happy Serbian New Year.
And as daylight set in, the festival came to an end.
*
Looking back, participating in the festival of Küstendorf was an enormously intense and enriching experience, and I keep on thinking again and again about that special place in the mountains at the Serbian border to Bosnia, built up by a controversial and very talented film director and visionary - a place which was described on the festival’s own web-site as “the demonstration that, even nowadays, a utopia can exist.”[12] And I wonder: why not?"
-----------
[1] The second International Küstendorf Film & Music Festival was organized by Rasta International and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. See more: http://www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4&&ni=141&nd=1.
[2] See: The novel by Ivo Andric Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge over the Drina), 1945.
[3] Kusturica, Emir: Tendre Barbare, directed by Marie-Christine Malbert, 2004 (ARTE, Une production Illégitime Défense), (00:47:43 – 00:47:48).
[4] See: Küstendorf tourist dossier, p. 1. For more information: http://www.mecavnik.info/.
[5] Kusturica, Emir: Interviewed in Küstendorf on January 10, 2009 by Christophe Cachelin and Fiona Ziegler, (00:03:25 – 00:03:37).
[6] Ibid., (00:00:23 – 00:00:28).
[7] Ibid., (00:01:20 – 00:01:30).
[8] Ibid., (00:03:00 – 00:03:18).
[9] Press and News 2009, Festival-website: www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4, accessed on March 4, 2009.
[10] Film students from 16 countries competed for the Golden, Silver and Bronze Egg awards. Japanese director Kohki Hasei was awarded for the best short features film.
[11] You can access the report on: http://www.blick.ch/people/star-regisseur-wird-zum-dorf-diktator-109977.
[12] Press and News 2009, Festival-website: www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2009/index.php?p=4, accessed on March 4, 2009.
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