By Rada Šešić
Once Upon A Time
If there was anything that distinguished Bosnian filmmakers within the former Yugoslavia, and even within Europe, during the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was their remarkable, courageous, poetic and discoursive documentaries. Film critics at a Leipzig festival in the 1970’s praised this style of Bosnian cinema, calling it the “Sarajevo School of Documentary Filmmaking.”
Why Were The Documentaries So Great?
As part of the former Yugoslavia, and not even equipped with a film lab or a 35mm camera, the Bosnian production of fiction films always depended heavily on collaboration with Zagreb and Belgrade. Documentary production was, however, more self-sufficient, simply because it was able to utilise the 16mm cameras owned by Bosnian production companies and the laboratory services of the the TV Sarajevo.
Although differing in their subject matter and style of cinematic expression, most of these documentaries were unified by their makers’ ability to concentrate on the powerful language of visuals. Another important attribute of the Sarajevan documentary filmmakers was their pronounced critical attitude toward social issues. That resulted in so-called "black" and often satirical documentaries. Certain directors, using a lyrical, quite minimalist style, with almost no verbal content, created distinct miniature studies and cinematic discourses on the confrontation between tradition and modernity, the struggles of the country folk and the city workers, on poverty and social injustice.
An important film from that time, known for its powerful irony, is FASADE / FACADES (1972), by Suad Mrkonjić. He portrayed Sarajevo on the eve of a huge Communist congress, with delegates from all over Yugoslavia coming to Sarajevo. Poverty, ruined houses and backyards full of junk were covered up with huge propaganda billboards. In his film, Mrkonjić satirically showed the images of Sarajevo that the congress delegates were supposed to see from their cars, but he also peeked behind the boards, exposing the side that officials did not want to be seen. This film, completely free of the spoken word, but full of powerful images, was highly regarded and awarded at major European festivals.
Most of those films were shorter than fifteen minutes and were regularly shown in cinemas. Vlatko Filipović, who later switched to fiction, made one of the most beautiful documentaries in the history of Bosnian production: HOP-JAN (1967) is an eleven-minute masterpiece on the stone cutters in Herzegovina, celebrating man's devotion to work and his struggle with nature.
Vefik Hadžismajlović’s documentary U KAFANI / IN THE INN (1969) features almost no spoken words, but eloquently portrays the mentality of the Bosnian people, whose rhythm of life conflicts with the hectic pace of the city. Hadžismajlović made some twenty documentaries and managed to fathom the psychology of children who had to struggle either to go to school – ĐACI PJEŠACI / WALKING SCHOOL CHILDREN (1966) – or to earn a living – UGLJARI / THE CHARCOAL BEARERS (1973), SANJARI / DREAMERS (1971) – without disrupting the integrity of their emotional world. One of his most powerful films is DVA ZAKONA / TWO LAWS (1969), depicting the conflict between the official law on education, and the unwritten law of the Bosnian villages which states that daughters have to stay at home.
This was a fruitful period, in which Bosnian documentary filmmakers like Žika Ristić, Mithat Mutapčić, Vefik Hadžismajlović, Vlatko Filipović and, later on, Zlatko Lavanić, Mirjana Zoranović, and others, achieved their peaks, making remarkable documentaries that were screened and celebrated around the world.
The War Years
During the terrible years of the war (1992-1995), the years of the siege of Sarajevo, of dying and suffering, many relevant, impressive documentaries were made.
Altogether, some fifty documentaries were made; each of them has enormous value, both as a document about an unthinkably difficult time, and as artistic achievements, depicting human pain and suffering through moving visual poetry. The films of Sahin Sišić (PLANETA SARAJEVO / PLANET SARAJEVO, 1994), Srdjan Vuletić (PALIO SAM NOGE / I BURNT LEGS, 1993), Vesna Ljubić (ECCE HOMO, 1994), Antonije Nino Žalica (ANĐELI U SARAJEVU / ANGELS IN SARAJEVO, 1993), Zlatko Lavanić (MOJIM PRIJATELJIMA / TO MY FRIENDS, 1993), Haris Prolić (SMRT U SARAJEVU / DEATH IN SARAJEVO, 1994), Nedžad Begović (WAR ART, 1993; FADILA, 1994), Mirza Idrizović (DNEVNIK REDITELJA / DIARY OF A FILMMAKER, 1993-94), Vuk Janić (ČEKAJUĆI PAKETE / WAITING FOR THE PARCELS, 1994) and many, many other remarkable were made in the period between early 1992 and late 1995. The amazing documentary compilation MGM SARAJEVO: ČOVJEK, BOG, MONSTRUM / MGM SARAJEVO: MAN, GOD, THE MONSTER, d.: Ismet Arnautalić, Mirza Idrizović, Ademir Kenović, Pjer Žalica, 1994) made by the Production Company SaGA (Sarajevo Group of Auteurs) – which won the Felix Academy Award in 1995 – is one of the strongest documentary testimonies of the war.
There were many documentary filmmakers who miraculously found the means to make a film during the exhausting years of hunger and constant danger. In Tuzla, central Bosnia, Mirjana Zoranović made the documentary EVROPI S LJUBAVLJU / TO EUROPE WITH LOVE (1993), an ode to the passivity of Europe towards the Bosnian war tragedy. With the collaboration of the Bosnian Public Television, Vlatko Filipović documented several strong war stories, such as KRIŽNI PUT U SARAJEVU / A CROSSRADS IN SARAJEVO, 1993) and KAKO UBITI GRIEGA U SARAJEVO / HOW TO KILL GRIEG IN SARAJEVO,1995), while Vefik Hadžismajlović followed the wartime activities of musicians and made the impressive SARAJEVSKI GUDAČI / THE SARAJEVO QUARTET (1994).
These films are relevant not only because they captured a specific period of history, but also because they became a testimony on how human spirit can survive and be creative even under utterly inhuman conditions. Several films achieve a great mastery of the medium, and will be forever noted as moving stories or impressionistic tone poems on the reality of war.
The Period of Post-War Struggle
Bosnian filmmakers used all possible means and sources to make documentaries during the war. After the war, the real problems started – there was neither money nor infrastructure to continue making films, while at the same time film professionals, their enthusiasm and energy now sapped, lost the motivation to work for free as they did during the war, when they were committed to a higher goal. At the same time, some film directors were eager to start working on the fiction feature productions they were deprived of during the time of war.
However, a new generation of graduates from the Sarajevo Film Academy started appearing on the documentary scene. The talented Jasmila Žbanić with her film CRVENE GUMENE ČIZMICE (2000), a powerful story of a mother who seeks her small child in the mass grave excavations, or the remarkable compilation of war video footage taped by the citizens of Sarajevo and edited by the brothers Kreševljaković, in collaboration with Nedim Alikadić, into the feature length documentary SJEĆAŠ LI SE SARAJEVA? / DO YOU REMEMBER SARAJEVO? (2002), are examples of fresh and interesting documentary approaches. Haris Prolić, one of the rare filmmakers from the pre-war generation, continued making documentaries after the war, and made several interesting films, like SARAJEVSKI PAS / A SARAJEVAN DOG (2002).
Around 2001, after a film shot mainly by a crew from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and dealing with a Bosnian-Herzegovinian subject, won an Oscar (NIČIJA ZEMLJA / NO MAN'S LAND, d.: Danis Tanović, France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain, Slovenia 2001), and after the Sarajevo Film Festival became a relevant event on the world festival scene, the government begun to structure the cinema production in a more professional manner, and independent companies brought an initial spark to fiction production. However, documentary production remained on the sidelines.
At the moment, most of the documentaries treat of the recent past of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the terrible years of the war – of the search for the missing, the war crimes, the investigation into certain war killings and individual tortures and murders, of the official search for mass graves, and the personal search for either corpses, or news on missing people. Very few films deal with the problems of the postwar economy, or the new political struggle for democracy. The distance between the end of the war and the present time was needed for those topics to ripen and become a serious subject matter for the recent documentary production. Unfortunately, there are so many important and difficult issues concerning the war years that filmmakers will feel a need and urgency to explore these issues in the next decade as well.
Within the documentary form, numerous types of films are being made in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the ten-minute nonverbal, poetic documentaries that Bosnia was known for before – nowadays, such films are being made by Džemal Sabić – to the investigative-journalistic, interview-based films such as IZJAVA 710339 / STATEMENT 710339 (2006) by Refik Hodžić, DON by Sead Đikić (2004) and VIDIMO SE, PRIJATELJU / I SEE YOU, MY FRIEND (2004) by Čazim Dervišević.
However, more complex forms that successfully combine visual poetry or essayistic discourse with either voiceover or a cinema vérité approach are being nourished also. These forms require more shooting time, more editing efforts and more production money. But films such as KARNEVAL / CARNIVAL (2006) by Alen Drljević, ADIO KERIDA (2001) by Vesna Ljubić, LJUBAV NA GRANICI / BORDERLINE LOVERS (2004) by Miroslav Mandić,A PROPOS DE SARAJEVO (2004) by Haris Pašović, DJEČAK IZ RATNOG FILMA / A BOY FROM A AR MOVIE (2004) by Šemsudin Gegić, KONTRAPUNKT ZA NJU / COUNTER POINT FOR HER (2004) by Danijela Majstorović, and others, have had quite a successful life at the international festival scene, screening in Amsterdam, Tribeca, Trieste, Bangkok, Zagreb Dox, Jihlava, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
Documentary: An Apprenticeship For The Fiction Film
Every year there are some eight to ten documentary films made in Bosnia and Herzegovina, out of which four or five are produced as semi-professional attempts of film enthusiasts, and some four to five films get made either by newly graduated film students (HALID BUNIĆ – VJEČNI / HALID BUNIĆ – THE ETERNAL, d.: Damir Janeček-Nemir, 2006), or by filmmakers who make a few documentaries while waiting for the opportunity to make a short or long fiction film.
There are not many professional producers exclusively dedicated to documentary production, which leads to the present situation, in which independent and continuous documentary production hardly exists. Producers who occasionally choose to make documentaries invest their time and equipment, but aren’t able to invest cash. Some producers, therefore, make perhaps one film in two years, but that does not give continuity to the national production. With the production output so low, a continuity and a standard of quality cannot be expected. There are exceptions, of course, mainly due to enormous personal efforts, with films like SASVIM LIČNO / TOTALLY PERSONAL (2005) by Nedžad Begović, which became an international festival success and a huge audience favourite, or those by Jasmila Žbanić, who runs her own production company Deblokada, which later turned to fiction films and produced GRBAVICA (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Croatia 2006).
However, the the State Film Fund does not have a defined policy of providing a fixed yearly budget for documentary production. TV broadcasters that often offer financial support have no clear policies toward documentaries either. There are several public broadcasters – Federal TV, TV BiH, The Republic of Srpska TV and many private television channels – all following their own policies and none of them financially able to regularly mount larger-scale in-house productions or co-productions of creatively interesting documentaries. None of them have established a regular slot for documentaries yet, either. In the end, documentary production does not bring money easily. Even for the best documentary makers it is not easy to recoup the initial investment. But the point in this business is not to invest one’s own capital, but to raise money at different film funds and to do pre-sales, co-productions etc. For that, one has to know how and where to do it. One has to invest a lot of time and know-how to become a part of the documentary landscape in Europe. Only as part of it one can perhaps rely on making a living as a documentary producer or filmmaker on a regular basis.
Therefore, Bosnia and Herzegovina needs a regular, continuous support from the State Film Fund that would guarantee at least a minimal production volume on a yearly basis and a system of distributing these films abroad, particularly in the region. Secondly, a producer has to be able to follow the events on the documentary scene abroad and to make sure to attend all available pitching sessions, training programmes, discovery campuses etc., at least in Europe. Apart from some four to five independent documentary makers who pitched their projects abroad and managed to complete their productions with investments from foreign documentary film funds, there was nobody from Bosnia who went abroad for a pitching forum in the last ten years.
Increasing The Value of Documentaries
Last year, the Sarajevo Film Festival introduced an official competition for regional docs and the main Heart of Sarajevo Award, with the annuity of 3000 Euros, alongside the award for the best film dealing with the human rights issues (also 3000 Euros) that has been in place from the very beginning of the regional docs programme. The Talent Grant Award given by the European Documentary Network (EDN) to a promising filmmaker will introduce a new practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the entire region. The award consists of a free participation at a training workshop, and the opportunity to present a new script for a documentary film at any one of the big European pitching sessions organised by EDN, where some 25 commissioning editors from main broadcasters such as ARTE, ZDF, BBC, the Dutch, Belgian, Danish, and Finish TV networks, and film funds like the Dutch Jan Vrijman Fund, come to choose with whom to co-produce, pre-buy or just purchase a film. A young filmmaker from Sarajevo, the already-mentioned Šabić, was the first winner of that talent grant. He was received enthusiastically at the Thessaloniki pitching session.
Documentary Audience
Twelve years after the war. in which more than 60 percent of cinema houses were destroyed, there are signs of improvement. The Art Company is a new enterprise that promises to build a chain of new multiplex cinemas and renovate the old ones. Meanwhile, the Sarajevo Film Festival has become indispensable for the local film industry, because it facilitates a co-production market with potentials for distribution (Cine Link), gives the national production proper exposure, and nourishes local cinema audience (approximately 100,000 spectators each year, out of which 35,000 for the children’s programme). On the other hand, the number of screens in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still decreasing. There is no precise data, but it is often mentioned that approximately thirty theatres are left in the entire country – before the war, there had been fifteen cinemas just in Sarajevo. Sarajevo is still the city with the largest number of cinema theatres and with the most interesting programme. The very first multiplex theatre in Sarajevo should be finished this year in the city centre, built by the production and distribution company Forum. One big novelty is a student theatre that works in collaboration with the Kriterion student cinema from Amsterdam. It officially opened this May in Sarajevo. There was an exchange programme of films and filmmakers; Amsterdam's Kriterion hosted Nedžad Begović and his film SASVIM LIČNO / TOTALLY PERSONAL, while Sarajevo hosted Eddy Terstall with his last fiction, the Dutch Oscar contender SIMON (The Netherlands, 2005). Most of the smaller cities and towns, apart from bigger centres like Tuzla, Banja Luka and Mostar, have one or no cinema screens left.
However, if we look at the eagerness with which the audience of the Sarajevo Film Festival comes and watches documentary films, we can conclude that there is a hunger to see new, creative and intriguing documentaries. The Regional Documentary Programme that started five years ago became very important for the whole region. Although the festival is mostly oriented toward fiction films, and the documentary slot at 4 PM is not a primetime one, the 400-seat theatre manages, for the most part, to be sold out. Several films even created a festival frenzy when people began queueing in front of the venue. So the interest is there. People do like to see creative, auteurist documentary films. Unfortunately, these films very rarely manage to be sold to the regional broadcasters.
BH Outside Sarajevo
Small production on an individual basis also takes place in provincial towns – in Konjic, Travnik, Mostar and Banja Luka. The latter is the place where Danijela Majstorović produces her films. Every now and then a good film or two produced out of Sarajevo pops up, made by either professional newcomers, or people for whom filmmaking is an exciting hobby.
Funnily enough, the festival situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is much more lively than the production scene. Apart from Sarajevo, there is just one more documentary festival, in Široki Brijeg, Herzegovina. It started small, but now, after nine years, it has become a decent-sized festival, dedicated to creative documentaries from the Mediterranean countries. Many Bosnian films participated, even winning some major awards, such as Haris Prolić with SARAJEVSKI PAS / A SARAJEVAN DOG, Jasmila Žbanić with SLIKE SA UGLA / IMAGES FROM THE CORNER (2003), or Džemal Šabić with KUTAK ZA SPORNI TRENUTAK / CORNER FOR THE SPARE MOMENT, 2003).
Furthermore, documentary films made by the filmmakers from Banja Luka in the Republic of Srpska are being screened apart from festivals, in cinemas in Banja Luka itself, as a special event – as well as in Belgrade – but not often in the rest of Bosnia or Herzegovina.
Apart from festival screenings or very special one-off theatrical exposures, projects made in the Republic of Srpska or in Herzegovina garner more interest and have better chances to be shown in, respectively, Serbia or Croatia. For example, the organisation and selection of the Široki Brijeg festival is closely connected with the Croatian film scene, while a new international festival of short fiction films in Banja Luka is also more likely to request help or creative assistance from Serbia – although both festivals choose their jury members and films from all parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Rada Šešić Biography
Bosnia and Herzegovina/The Netherlands
Rada Šešić, born 1957 in Bjelovar (in today’s Croatia), worked as a film critic and director of several short and documentary films in Sarajevo. In 1993, she came to the Netherlands and has been based in Utrecht since. She established herself as a specialist for the South Asian cinema and Eastern European film. Šešić lectures at the Faculty for Film Theory and History at the University of Amsterdam and works as a programme advisor for the International Rotterdam Film Festival and a selection committee member of the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. She is also a programmer for the Kerala Film Festival (India), and head of the Regional Documentary competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival. From the inception of the Jan Vrijman Fund (part of IDFA), which supports creative documentaries, she has served in its selection committee. Recently, she has contributed in a similar capacity to the Hubert Bals Fund (part of IFFR), which supports feature fiction films, and the Dutch Fund STIFO, which supports television-coproduced creative projects. From 2007, she has been an international documentary selector for the Sofia Film Festival, and the main selector of the Bucharest International Film Festival. Her activities include involvement as a tutor in the Kopenhagen-based European Documentary Network which, established itself as an organisation for training and promotion of creative documentary films in Europe. Šešić still works as a filmmaker (Room without a View, 1997, Soske, 2001, In Whitest Solitude, 2002) and a film critic (Skrien, Film Guide, Dox, Croatian Film Annual, Aitkens’ Documentary Encyclopedia, and a book entitled 24 Frames).
