Film Preservation in Macedonia

Office in Skopje, Macedonia | The Carrera-Linn Cultural Exchange (CLCX):

An organization dedicated to music and film preservation from obscure places, and member of the Shore Management Service Group.

My humble apologies for being so quiet these days. Things are moving quickly, and hopefully, we should have our Skopje office ready and raring to go before Summer. Trips to Serbia and Bulgaria are being scheduled for early Summer, and if all works out, we may make it as far as Tbilisi, Georgia, in order to search out talent to sign for the company. More on that later."

Again! Message for the Queen

More reviews on the song for the Movie "the 300". If the "message for the queen" sounds Macedonian, what about Troy or Titus?

Music On Film Reviews - 300:
Reviewed by Justin Bielawa
February 27, 2007

Tyler Bates has made a name for himself within the horror score circle. His fine (unreleased) score to the retread/remake of Dawn Of The Dead was followed by his lackluster score to The Devil's Rejects. He seems to be stuck in a sort of genre rut and someone needs to save him because 300 is exactly what film score fans dislike about Hollywood.

Borrowing to such a degree that Zimmer's pending lawsuit over Gladiator looks frivolous, Bates lifts music from Gabriel Yared's rejected score to Troy and even more directly from Elliot Goldenthal's Titus. So note for note, that Bates doesn't even bother changing instruments at times - 'Come And Get Them' features the same metal clanging that accompanied the entrance of soldiers in the opening of Titus and the phonetic choral in 'Returns A King' is not unlike hearing the crunch of a plastic bottle inside the recycling machines at your local grocery store.

There are moments where Bates is given to write his own music (!) and he creates an interesting musical tapestry that while nothing new is at least his own. The synth-n-sample Randy Edelman approach pays off in a couple of tracks like 'A God King Bleeds', where a steady beat builds before descending to an unsettling near-silence.

Macedonian Documentary on Boris Trajkovski

This documentary sounds really good. I only hope that it can be translated into English. Maybe someone should approach the Ford Foundation and what the hell, why not ask for a grant from the Onassis Foundation. It can't hurt.

Boris Trajkovski "I believe in Macedonia"

"An especially rich visual documentary story about the life and mission of President Boris Trajkovski.The film shows the aspects of his character as a devout man and politician. The film contains statements from about twenty eminent people from Macedonia and abroad, including those closest to him. The documentary also contains some of his most inspiring speeches taken from a huge source of exclusive archive material. The motto of the film is the belief in Macedonia, which was the main slogan in his campaign during the presidential elections. The 60 minute documentary is produced by Macedonian Television, in co-production with the Boris Trajkovski foundation.

Screenplay - Mirjana Vasileva, Goran Trencovski
Camera - Sokole Josifovski
Sound - Filip Popovski
Lighting - Aco Spasevski
Editing - Dragica Lazarevic
Directed by Goran Trencovski

The promotion of the film will be on the occasion of the three year anniversary of Trajkovski's death, on Sunday 25.02.2007 at 18:00 h., in Macedonian National Theater, while the premiere will be broadcast on Monday 26.02.2007 on Macedonian Television at 20:00 h."

Whose Is This Song?

I would like to see this movie, it sounds good. Here is the Google Video.

The strains of a Balkan ballad
By Nicholas Wood International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, November 16, 2004

SKOPJE, Macedonia And you thought the Balkan wars were just about
politics. One evening five years ago a group of friends - a Serb, a
Turk, a Greek and two Bulgarians - were at a restaurant in Istanbul.
As they ate, a band struck up a familiar tune. A dispute broke out,
each of the diners claiming that the tune was a famous national song
that belonged to his or her country.

The idea that the same song could be shared by nations that had been
at each others' throats for hundreds of years enraged and infuriated
some of them. It was also grounds for one of those diners to spend the
next four years making a film about it.

The result, a 70-minute documentary entitled "Whose Is This Song?" by
the Bulgarian filmmaker, Adela Peeva, has recently gone on general
release in Bulgaria after winning prizes at several specialized film
and television festivals, notably in Paris and in Nashville.

The film has touched a raw nerve among audiences in the Balkans,
questioning what many see as an integral part of their national
identities and ultimately, Peeva believes, showing just how much they
have in common.

The documentary follows Peeva through Macedonia, Turkey, Greece,
Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria.

In most countries, the tune is a love song with varying lyrics, but in
others, such as Turkey and Bosnia, it has also been used as a war
song. In each country the reactions are the same as people display
shock, anger, or disbelief when Peeva suggests the same tune is also
claimed by their neighbors.

"The Turks took it from us," says an Albanian in Tirana, explaining
that the song was originally theirs. "We are one of the most ancient
peoples."

In Vranje, a town in southern Serbia, Peeva's hosts storm out of the
restaurant they are entertaining her in when she plays a Bosnian
version of the tune that has been used as a call to arms.

"This is theft!" shouts one man before leaving.

"Music and song are one of the strongest parts of our identities,"
Peeva explained. "But when someone comes along and say it is not, they
are very sensitive."

The film does not attempt to define where the song originally came
from, although Peeva said she was given numerous differing
explanations, including the possibility that it had been introduced by
soldiers from Scotland who were based in Turkey during the Crimean
War.

In Greece it is known as "Apo Xeno Eopo," or "From a foreign land,"
and in Turkey it is called "Uskudar," after the region of Istanbul.

The Turkish version was the subject of a film, "Katip" (The Clerk),
directed by Ulku Erakalin in the 1960s, and the singer and actress
Eartha Kitt recorded a version of the song, also called "Uskudar," in
the 1970s.

However many different versions there are, Peeva says they all point
to the fact that most Balkan nations share a tradition passed down to
them by what was once the Ottoman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire
before that. This goes against what most people in the region have
been brought up to believe, viewing the Turks as oppressors who sought
to crush their true national identities.

The idea that the same song could be shared by several nations has
enraged some people.

"We tend not to accept we have a common identity," said Peeva.

The rise of nationalism in the 19th century saw everyday traditions
shared throughout the region redefined in national terms, according to
Alex Drace-Francis, a research fellow at the University of London who
also writes about the culture of identities in southeastern Europe.

"Basically there was a common culture, in terms of cuisine, domestic
life, music and clothing," he said. "There were regional differences
but they were not defined in terms of nationhood."

Those differences were re-emphasized and exacerbated towards the end
of the 20th century, with the exchange and expulsion of populations in
Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, as well as the interethnic conflicts of
the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

Peeva claims that, just as the film has shown how sensitive people in
the region are about identity, it has enabled audiences to see the
absurdity of the different claims. "It makes us laugh at ourselves,"
she said.

Reactions to the film have been positive throughout the region, she
said. "People laugh and sing in the same places. The Bulgarians even
sang the Bosnian version of the song and clapped during the
screening."

Greece is the only country in the region that has not shown the film.
"I think they have a problem with it," said Peeva.

Mark Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University and author
of "The Balkans," a book that explores identities and nationalism in
the region, says that the film is the latest in a series that
challenges long-held images of national identity.

He cited two recent Greek films, "A Touch of Spice" by Tasos
Boulmetis, released last year, and "Ulysses's Gaze" by Theo
Angelopoulos, starring Harvey Keitel and made in 1995, as recent
examples that explore the blurred and mixed national identities in the
region.

"There is clearly a mood to question the national myths about the
Balkans," Mazower said in a telephone interview.

Peeva would now like the film to be used in schools throughout the
Balkans. She acknowledges, however, that not everybody who sees the
documentary accepts its lesson.

"The reaction of some of the people are the same as in the film, even
when it has ended," she said. "It needs time."

Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Patriot Games

This is an old story from our friend Fiachra about Colin Farrell's Alexander. I saw the movie. Not much of a story, just enough to make Macedonians and Greeks look foolish. Wouldn't be proper to mention the role of US/EU in this comedy. Wouldn't be prudent!. People are watching! Mum's the word.

Patriot games

Which people are the true descendants of the greatest military
commander in history? Fiachra Gibbons reports on how Oliver Stone's
epic Alexander is reigniting an ancient, bitter feud.

Friday November 19, 2004
The Guardian

The first western imperialist ... Colin Farrell as Alexander

"We will come and kill you in your beds, cut your throats, and wipe
you from the face of the earth ... if Alexander the Great were alive
today he would grind you gypsy dogs into the dust, dig your dead from
their graves and silence forever your filthy language that insults his
name ..."

Internet chatrooms have never been the most decorous of forums but
even in the free-for-all that is cyberspace, those dedicated to
discussing Oliver Stone's new film, Alexander, are a case apart.

Since the combative director of JFK chose to make his first foray into
historical epics with a biopic of the most fought-over figure of the
ancient world, rivers of blood have been spilt - figuratively at least
- in a propaganda battle between Greek and Macedonian nationalists
over who has the right to claim the all-conquering hero as their own.

This very modern ethnic turf war is being fought with tortuously
argued historical blogs about which Macedonia Alexander conquered the
known world for - a tiny new Balkan republic that has only recently
come to see itself as the keeper of his flame, or a province that was
officially known as "Northern Greece" until the former Yugoslav
republic of Macedonia declared itself independent and bagged the name.

But the real blood and guts of the battle, the part Alexander would
have so enjoyed, is in the chatrooms, where fanatical foot- soldiers
taunt each other with blood-curdling threats heavy with echoes of the
short but brutish Balkan wars that carved up ancient land between
Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria almost a century ago.

Stone has remained uncharacteristically silent, preferring to wrestle
on set with war elephants and his leading man, Colin Farrell. Even for
such a seasoned controversialist, this is a scrap to stand back from.

For the struggle over who have the right to call themselves
descendents of the greatest military commander in history, and the
first real western imperialist, is neither pretty nor edifying. In the
early 1990s, Greece nearly invaded the newborn Republic of Macedonia
for "stealing" Alexander's symbol, the Star of Vergina, for its flag,
as well as the White Tower in the Greek Macedonian capital of
Thessaloniki for its banknotes, something the millions of ordinary
Greeks who took to the streets saw as "blatant acts of aggression".

The flag and the banknotes were hastily withdrawn, but Greek pride was
far from restored. To the horror of its European partners, Athens
briefly contemplated carving up its defenceless northern neighbour
with the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. In the end, Greece
stepped back, choosing instead to blockade the tiny republic of barely
two million people in an attempt to strangle it at birth. Since then
millions have been spent on a war of attrition to claim the name - and
Alexander - back.

You cannot walk more than a few hundred metres in any town in northern
Greece without tripping over a new statue, bust or monument to
Alexander, who extended the Hellenic world as far as India in the
fourth century BC with such slaughter that even today in Iran and
central Asia his name is used to scare unruly children. You will find
the most pointed statue of all at the border with Macedonia at Niki -
named after the Greek god of victory - where a giant Alexander angrily
brandishes a javelin at the upstart state across the frontier.

All over Greek Macedonia, streets, schools and airports have been
hastily renamed, while archaeologists, having all but ignored ancient
Macedonia until relatively recently, are digging furiously for its
traces. The spectacular tomb of Alexander's father, Phillip, at
Vergina near Thessaloniki, and the city's revamped museum, hammer home
the kingdom's Greekness.

Still, passions had cooled somewhat after an unhappy compromise over
the name that burdened Skopje with the cumbersome temporary moniker of
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or "Fyrom" for short. Greek
investment also began to build bridges - until Stone and his army of
Hollywood stars appeared on the horizon to put nationalists on both
sides back on a hair-trigger.

It is into this fraught and febrile atmosphere that George W Bush has
now wandered. With the world waiting and wondering where the president
will start the next war, Bush chose as his first major foreign-policy
decision of his second term to recognise Fyrom by its "proper" name as
the Republic of Macedonia, prompting paroxysms of Greeks anger across
the globe and Athens to vow to block Macedonia's entry into the EU and
Nato.

Even before Bush's intervention, the very mention of the M-word in
Greek Macedonia risked a stern lecture on how it has been Greek since
antiquity. I nearly lost an ear to a particularly patriotic barber in
Thessaloniki last month when I mentioned that I had just arrived from
the "other Macedonia".

Those people are not Macedonian, he raged. "That is a Slav lie. We are
the real Macedonians. They are prostitutes and Gypsies and worse than
Albanians," he declared. His family, it turned out, were recent Greek
immigrants from Georgia who, he claimed, went "east with Alexander".
He liked to take his son on Sundays to the massive equestrian statue
of Alexander on the city's seafront promenade, where Greek
right-wingers gathered after Bush's bombshell to burn American and
Macedonian flags. "I tell him to be proud of his ancestors and how
lucky he is to have returned to the land of his forefathers."

But ask anyone four hours north in Skopje what Alexander was and they
will smile sheepishly and say, "Macedonian, of course!" And when
pressed about the obvious absurdity of a country that has a majority
Slavic population claiming a man who was born nearly 1,000 years
before the first Slav appeared in Macedonia, they answer, "Well, he
was certainly not Greek."

If the Macedonians were Greek, why did Alexander have to address his
troops in both Greek and ancient Macedonian, they argue. And every dog
can quote the Athenian orator Demosthenes' famous condemnation of
Alexander's father Philip as "not only no Greek, nor related to the
Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with
honour, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet
possible to buy a decent slave."

"No one is saying that Alexander spoke modern Macedonian, that is
ridiculous, but who is to say that there isn't something of him still
floating around in the genome," says Vojislav Sarakinski, a lecturer
in ancient history at the city's main Cyril and Methodius university.
It is easy to ridicule all this as archetypical Balkan lunacy until
you realise how much of the emotional heat of the dispute stems from
the insecurity of both countries about their borders, fears fully
justified by the region's recent history.

Stone has been well aware of these sensitivities from the start,
though initial Greek outrage at his film focused on Alexander's
omnivorous sexuality, in particular his fondness for eunuchs. His
film, he insists, is purely about the historical "man god", and so has
made no secret of showing Alexander's love for his friend Hephaestion.
There is, however, none of the lurid decadence promised from Baz
Luhrmann's planned film about Alexander, if it ever gets off the
blocks.

Evangelos Venizelos, the formidable former Greek culture minister and
a Macedonian, attempted to get Stone onside early on, offering him
Greek locations and the use of the army for battle scenes, but the
director demurred and instead diplomatically chose locations far away
from controversy in Morocco and Thailand. Confronted with angry MPs
unhappy with what they were hearing about Alexander's bisexuality,
Venizelos despaired, "What can I do? It's Hollywood."

Generally, though, most Greeks see the Stone film as a chance to
strike a blow against Skopje, given that it is based on the biography
by the Oxford academic Robin Lane Fox, whom both sides see as a
Hellenist.

None of the previous, deeply disappointing attempts to bring
Alexander's extraordinary life to the screen have had to walk the same
tightrope because, until Skopje broke away from Belgrade in 1991,
Alexander's origins were not in dispute. In fact he barely figured in
the old Yugoslav textbooks, and even in Greece he was something of a
forgotten figure - relegated to the second and third division of
Hellenic heroes behind Pericles, the great philosophers, and warriors
such as Leonidas. While the great Greek director Theo Angelopoulos
dealt obliquely with him in his film about a 19th-century Macedonian
brigand, Megalexandros, there has been no biopic in either country.

"Alexander lived long before nationalism and so is our common hero,"
says Vasil Tupurkovski, a former deputy president, who has written
four popular histories about him. "He would be laughing at us arguing
about him now."

Ah, but would he be laughing in Greek or Macedonian? Professor Nade
Proeva, the expert on ancient Macedonia in Skopje, thinks both.
"Alexander certainly spoke and wrote Greek, but then it was the lingua
franca of the time, like English is now. I speak French but that does
not make me French."

With such treacherous ground to negotiate, and amid thunderous
lobbying from both sides, Stone has chosen a remarkably adroit middle
course. His masterstroke has been to give Alexander and the men of the
Macedonian phalanxes Irish accents, while the Greeks speak clipped
English RP.

Macedonians of all complexions are content with this, each convinced
it favours their cause. So in another two millennia when people ponder
again the origins of the mysterious Macedonian who emerged from the
southern Balkans to rule the world at 25, they will turn their ears to
Colin Farrell's guttural brogue and conclude that he was in fact a
Dubliner.

· Alexander opens in the US next week and in the UK in January.

Macedonian Cinema Information Center

A Macedonian site about Macedonian Movies. This site needs somebody to help it link to various English language reviews of Macedonian movies. Anyone interested?

Macedonian Cinema Information Center



[January 2006]
World Opening of "Does It Hurt?" at Rotterdam
Aneta Lesnikovska's dogma film "Does It Hurt?" will compete in one of the most prestigious European festivals, 36th Rotterdam Film Festival (24th January - 4th February). The Macedonian director's film has entered the main selection and is competing for award "Tiger".

[December 2006]
Shooting of "The Balkans Is Not Dead" Starts in August
The first scene of "The Balkans Is Not Dead" will be shot on 2nd August 2007. Macedonian producer Kino Oko will shoot director Aleksandar Popovski's film in collaboration with Testament-film from Belgrade and Pi Film Production from Istanbul. Cejda Tufan of the Turkish production said the script will be worked on carefully because the story focuses on Kemal Ataturk.

[December 2006]
Premiere of TV Comedy "Pusto Tursko"
A nostalgic TV-comedy "Pusto Tursko" directed by Kole Angelovski is opening at the Cinematheque of Macedonia. "In the 70-minute comedy, we used information from 'Confession of a Macedonian chetnik' by Albert Sonnicsen, US journalist who traveled across Macedonia in the early last century and whose notes included a lot of interesting details that enriched the picture of Macedonia in the post-Ilinden period", says director Angelovski.

All Shutka, All the Time

Some interesting information about a Rom (Gypsy) village in Macedonia, its music and a film.


The Shutka Music Project:

"The Shutka Music Project, a collection of songs from the Gypsies of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedionia, is the first release from Music That matters, a non-profit group formed by Greg Scarborough. These songs were recorded while Mr. Scarborough lived and volunteered in Shutka, the largest Gypsy community in Europe, located in Macedonia near the Kosovo border. All profits from this CD go to benefit Balkan Sunflowers for their work in Shutka supporting the education and creativity of the Roma (Gypsy) youth."


The Shutka Book of Records
Leeds Film Festival

Shutka, Macedonia is the unofficial, self-governing, world capital of the Roma. Join Dr Koljo (Severdzan Bajram), a character from Emir Kusturica's film Black Cat, White Cat on an exclusive tour of a town usually closed to outsiders. All Shutka (or 'Happy Valley') inhabitants claim to be a champion of something – from boxing to lounge singing to err, goose-fighting. Aleksandar Manic's warm and funny documentary is too extraordinary to be fiction, although some of the local characters 'act' out their stories with a chutzpah and bravado more familiar to melodrama. The Shutka Book of Records won both the FIPRESCI Critic's Award and the Audience Award at the 2005 Serbia and Montenegro Film Festival.

For a Great Greek Director, Who Lives in Florina, Macedonians Don't Exist

The Facts:

1. Fiachra Gibbons interviews Greek director Theo Angelopoulos.

2. She know he lives in Florina where 50% of the residents are ethnic Macedonians.

3. She does not ask him how he can live with people, yet ignore their existence in his movies.

The Assumption:

I don't know Fiachra, but I can only assume that she likes Greece and she does not want to do anything that would make it difficult for her to work or vacation there.(Greek Islands Ya Know) She has no problem discussing Turkish problems with the Armenian genocide.

The Prediction:

Apparently Fiachra Gibbons is writing a book on the Ottoman legacy in Europe. I predict that she will ignore the treatment of ethnic Macedonians in Greece and she certainly won't criticise Theo Angelopoulos for aiding and abetting cultural genocide in Florina. We really need someone who can review his films and life

Tale of the century

Greece's greatest living film-maker has embarked on his most ambitious
project yet. Theo Angelopoulos talks to Fiachra Gibbons

Wednesday January 19, 2005
The Guardian

It is easy to joke about Theo Angelopoulos, maker of such exceeding long and
exceedingly slow intellectual epics as Eternity and a Day, a film that felt
only marginally shorter than its title. It's even harder to resist parody
now the great master is making a trilogy of films that modestly set out to
define the past century.

On the evidence of The Weeping Meadow, however, we may have to find a new
butt for our jokes. No one is saying the famously stern Greek auteur has
gone mainstream, but this is his most accessible film in decades and
contains such nakedly bourgeois fripperies as emotions and characters that
might almost be real.

When I tell him how many people cried when they saw his first instalment,
the story of Greek refugees from the Russian revolution adrift in their
ancient homeland, he jolts back in his chair, momentarily horror-struck. Yet
The Weeping Meadow, which contains several close-ups and other barefaced
sops to populism, clearly shows Angelopoulos is going soft in his old age -
or what he prefers to term his "Aristotelian period". But then, even
arthouse legends have occasionally to consider the audience, particularly
when they are in danger of not having one any more.

I meet him in Thessaloniki, the northern Greek city where the new film is
centred, on one of these bright clear winter days Angelopoulos hates. Living
in Europe's sunniest country is a constant trial for a man who only shoots
in fog or rain. It is so clear, in fact, you can see Mount Olympus across
the gulf, on whose lofty heights Angelopoulos has all but dwelt since The
Travelling Players made him an art-cinema immortal a quarter of a century
ago. It's easy to sympathise with young Greek film-makers frustrated by the
way he has hogged the top of the heap, and the country's limited resources,
for so long.

Which is why he takes me by surprise the next day by revealing how even gods
feel vulnerable when they are staring 70 in the face. Listen, he says,
gesturing with the ghost of the cigarette he is no longer allowed to smoke,
I have only really made one film, and I've made it again and again. "Of all
the thousands of scenes I've shot, there have only been one or two images I
can honestly say were original - that were from my own gaze, my own
experience. The first one was in December 1944. I was nine and Athens was in
the turmoil of civil war - there were dead bodies everywhere and I remember
my mother holding me by the hand as we walked through the city looking for
my father's corpse. I remember looking for him on a plot of land full of
dead bodies. We didn't find him. Fortunately, he had not been executed.

"Then I remember as I was playing in the street one afternoon when my father
returned. He was dressed in rags and I shouted to my mother, and she came
out to meet him. There was a very deep and absolute emotion in this. There
was nothing for supper, we had some thin soup, and we couldn't talk. That is
the first sequence in Reconstruction, my first film.

"In all these years, they are the only images I can say that are truly
mine."

He stops himself, looking for a suitably philosophical rationale for this
uncharacteristic confession. "My earlier films were emotional in the second
degree; now they are in the first degree," he says.

You can see that even in the way this film looks. The usual motifs are
there: the fogs; the tiny figures lost in a huge canvas like matchstick men;
the spectacular, lingering set-piece shots; the eternal refugees with their
suitcases. But there is an intensity now that says we are nothing in the
face of history, and those who try to change its course risk being destroyed
by it. Like Odysseus, his favourite mythological character, we are in the
lap of unfeeling gods.

As is Angelopoulos himself. Taking on the story of the 20th century might
seem like megalomania, but that is not how the small, edgy man appears
without entourage, fuss and cameras.

Though his films divide Greeks, they are undeniably national events. His
shoots are like circuses, with thousands of tourists and rubberneckers
descending on the remote lakes and mountains of Greek Macedonia, where he
likes to assemble his huge painterly tableaux. At weekends there are traffic
jams, fast-food vans and Gypsy bands to entertain the crowds, which stay at
a reverent, un-Greek-like distance as he waits for the weather to close in
so he can shoot. Many of these people will not go to the films; they come
simply because he is great and Greek.

But there is more than national pride at stake now. Angelopoulos's
motivation for so huge and risky a project so late in his career could not
be more personal. He came up with the idea of the trilogy while watching his
mother die.

"By the time I got to her bedside she couldn't speak, and I thought, this
woman has experienced the whole century - she was born at the beginning and
is dying at its end. She has seen its hopes and disasters and now it is too
late for her to pass those on to me. I had just returned from Cannes with
the Palme d'Or for Eternity and a Day, and it was not what I was expecting.
I thought it might be a good idea to tell this story through a woman. Women
more than men are tragic figures. My mother, for example, was Antigone at
times or Hecuba other times. In her life she played different roles."

The second part of the trilogy - for which he has not yet found funding,
despite winning a European Film award last month for The Weeping Meadow -
starts in the Soviet Union in 1953, on the day Stalin died, with a train
taking home an international brigade of disillusioned activists who have
lost faith with socialism.

The resonances for Greece, where a popular leftwing government was
overthrown by the British and Americans after the second world war and
150,000 refugees were sent into exile in the eastern bloc, could not be
stronger. Angelopoulos himself had to carve out his career under the beady
eyes of the military dictatorship of the early 1970s, which was again
supported by Washington. In some ways, his distinctive cinematic style grew
from the mists of symbolism in which he had to cloak his early films to stay
out of jail.

"My last film will be about the future, and our visionary relations with
it," he says. But he refuses to elaborate. He has a flight to Rome to catch.
He is receiving another award, this time the Vittorio de Sica prize from the
Italian government. I congratulate him but he looks at me as if I'm mocking
him, suddenly pained. "Prizes are prizes, but I still need to tell that
story. And being simple is the hardest thing."

Macedonian Movie better than Da Vinci Code!

"The Secret Book", a film written by Jordan Plevnes, is Macedonia's entry to the Cannes film festival. I can't wait to see this movie. Fiachra has a good sense of humour. Like her, I smell a plot! I think she should look into the Greek film Ulysses' Gaze, by Theo Angelopoulos through the prism of Greek treatment of its Macedonian minority. We will find a real plot there!

Cannes, Cathars and Conspiracy

Fiachra Gibbons
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian

Purporting to rock Christendom and the Papacy to its white silk slippers, the Da Vinci Code opened the Cannes film festival last week and quickly became one of the fastest grossing films of all time. But has a hidden hand been at work here?

Why, you may wonder, with so much money at stake, did its producers take the risk of releasing it at the world's snootiest film festival, knowing it might suffer the critical mauling it got?

It may be because they knew that another film about the real heretical "bible" suppressed by the church for the past 1,000 years - a film begun before Dan Brown even set pen to paper -was finally about to be shown.

The Secret Book is the official Macedonian entry at Cannes. But you won't have read anything about it. Oh no. They have made sure of that. Call the Cannes press office and you will be told, as I was, "Quel film est ca? Mais il n'existe pas . . ." It may as well not, for its premiere was hidden away in a tiny screening room at the festival' fag end.

Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide. Brown's novel is based on the "discovery" of a set of highly disputed parchments called Les Dossiers Secret identifying members of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, allegedly descended from the Cathars. The Macedonian film is based on Le Livre Secret, a real mystical book written by the Bogomils, a Manichean cult whose ideas, carried back to France and Italy from the Balkans by returning crusaders in the 11th century, became the basis of the Cathar heresy. Like them, the Bogomils were massacred by the church and their name almost burned from history.

Two later copies of the Secret Book survive - one still hangs in punishment from the ceiling of the Museum of the Inquisition in Carcassonne - but the original written in Glagolic, the old Slavic script wiped out by the cyrillic alphabet imposed by the church, has never been found. Strangely, there is no mention of the book, or indeed of the Bogomils, in Brown's book.

Since it wrapped four years ago - a year before the Da Vinci Code was published - the Secret Book has been beset by obstacles. But Jordan Plevnes, one of three brothers who wrote the script (symbologists take note), is too much of a diplomat to suggest that the whole Da Vinci Code phenomenon is an elaborate smokescreen cooked up to obscure the light they shed on the Bogomils. He is after all, the Macedonian ambassador to France, one of the Balkans' leading playwrights, and his latest novel, the Eighth Wonder of the World, has won one of France's top literary prizes, the Silver Jasmine.

"But it does make you think," he confessed. "And yes, there is definitely a conspiracy at work - a conspiracy of blandness. There is a tyranny of banality now ruling the world; Hollywood and Dan Brown are part of that. This is our European story and we should be allowed to tell it ourselves."

So will we ever see Plevnes' film? That depends on a secretive, semi-masonic group, more powerful than any inquisitor, who decide in darkened rooms what films we get to see - the Distributors of the Priory of Soho.

So if you never hear of the Secret Book again, you will know that they, like Opus Dei and the mad monk Silas, have done their work.

The Secret Book's website is www.tajnatakniga.com.mk

Sean Connery Plays the Reincarnation of Alexander the Great

This is a good movie about the Kalash people in Pakistan who are said to be descendents of the army of Alexander the Great. Macedonians and Greeks are fighting an internet war ( No support for a Greek Origin of the Kalash) as to whether they are the descendents of Greeks or ethnic Macedonians ... good fun!

The Man Who Would Be King
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Man Who Would Be King (1888) is a short story by Rudyard Kipling concerning two British ex-soldiers who set off from 19th century British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan (now part of Afghanistan). The story was inspired by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan.

The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (Volume Five of the Indian Railway Library, published by Wheelers of Allahabad in 1888). It also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection.

In 1975, it was adapted into a feature film by director John Huston, starring Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot, Michael Caine as Peachey Carnehan, and Christopher Plummer as Rudyard Kipling (giving a name to the story's anonymous narrator). The doomed Billy Fish is played by Saeed Jaffrey."

BBC Travel Show on Macedonia

I have seen this travel show before, it was on Bulgarian habit of going "na gosti". Its a good program and should help boost tourism to Macedonia from Britain.

Culture - Republic of Мacedonia: "
BBC Shoot Documentary on Treskavec Monastery

The Monastery of Treskavec
(MIA, 29.08.2006) - A crew of the BBC World TV Service has stayed at the Monastery of Treskavec near Prilep since two days ago where the BBC service is shooting a documentary about the monastery and The Ascension of the Holiest Mother Church.
The producer of the film is Michael Palin, and the film is a part of a project, Palin’s New Europe. According to the head of the monastery Vladika Kliment, Treskavec has become the focus of BBC interest for a few reasons: most probably because of the fact that the monastery is located in an incredibly vivid scenery at 1400 meters above the sea level and is one of the 100 most threatened monuments of culture in the world, two very good reasons.
"


Monastery Treskavec at List of 100 World's Most Endangered Monuments-
http://www.culture.in.mk/story.asp?id=14995&rub=38

Prilep – Archaeological Research in Monastery Treskavec -
http://www.culture.in.mk/story.asp?id=12411&rub=38

More on the 'The Great Water'

Trajkov's 'The Great Water' receives viewers prize in Dubrovnik - Prague Daily Monitor:

(PDM staff with CTK) 23 June - 'The Great Water' from Czech director Ivo Trajkov has won the viewers' prize at an international film festival in Dubrovnik, producer Vladimir Chrenovsky told CTK.

Chrenovsky said the distribution premier of the film was to take place in New York on 17 June. The film has also been sold to Australia and New Zealand.

A co-production of the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Germany and the US, 'The Great Water' appeared in Czech cinemas this spring.

The film based on the Macedonian novel of the same name written by Zivko Cingo and published in the early 1970s at the peak of the Communist regime in the former Yugoslavia.

It shed light on the Stalinist period in Yugoslavia and the cruelty of the Communist leadership towards the children of the 'enemies of the revolution' in labour camps established after World War II.

It is a powerful and emotionally moving story of friendship and betrayal between two boys which explores conflicts between religion, spirituality and political blindness.

Trajkov is also one of the authors of the script.

Chrenovsky says that he would never again participate in a similar project.

'In Macedonia, no written agreements exist, everything is agreed upon verbally and everything looks accordingly. There are no film crews there capable of ensuring any service for shooting. The film was therefore a flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants affair, he said.

Trajkov's first film, 'The Canary Connection' in 1993, passed unnoticed. Five years later, he made, in co-production with the World Circle Foundation, the film 'The Past', which won awards at many international film festivals."

New Macedonian Film "Mirage"

I hope this Macedonian fim actually makes it to North American.

indieWIRE Insider > Picture This! Acquires Toronto Film, "Mirage":

"Picture This! Entertainment announced today the company’s acquisition of North American rights to Svetozar Ristovski’s SXSW '05 U.S. premiere feature, 'Mirage' (Ilujiza), from Small Moves Ltd. The company plans a November 2005 theatrical release.

Based on an original screenplay by Ristovski and Grace Lea Troje, 'Mirage' tells the story of Marko, a young boy tortured by a tumultuous home life and bullies at school. A microcosm of the lawlessness and corruption extant in post-Balkan War Macedonia, MIRAGE provides one chance for Marko to escape when his teacher encourages him to enter a poetry competition in Paris. But when the teacher later dashes the boy’s hopes and dreams, Marko seeks guidance from another role model: a mercenary who tells him he must “either eat or be eaten.”"

The Great Water ... A Great Film

Just a few more reviews of the new Macedonian movie The Great Water.

New York Daily News - Entertainment - Movie Digest: "The Great Water
At the Quad (1:30). Not rated: Mature themes.

A dying man in contemporary Macedonia reflects on his childhood at a Communist-run orphanage in post-World War II Yugoslavia. The framing device is unnecessary; what happens inside the orphanage, where the sons and daughters of anti-Communists are forced to adopt the party's strict doctrines, is powerful enough.

The film follows the developing friendship between two boys who share a determination to resist the increasingly hostile system. The boys - one is actually played by a girl, but you'd never guess - are angels in hell, and director Ivo Trajkov is way too prone to melodrama.

'The Great Water' is ultimately about the indomitability of faith, and the Christian symbolism is laid on thick. But the story, adapted from a famous behind-the-Iron-Curtain novel, sheds light on a subject few people have known about.

Jack Mathews

Surviving Yugoslavia

A Macedonian orphan’s passage into old age as a political survivor

By STEVE ERICKSON

“The Great Water” is filled with a mystical air, accompanied by plenty of Christian symbolism. Communism attempted to take the place of organized religion, wiping out centuries of tradition overnight, and Lem’s orphanage is no exception. Owning a cross is cause for punishment. Perhaps because of this prohibition, the boys take refuge in faith; Isak even seems to have the supernatural powers of a Christ- like figure

Taos Picture Show
March 30-April 3, 2005

The festival's program lived up to its tagline, "a celebration of cinema from around the world," with half of the features coming from outside the United States. Two in particular stood out from the (admittedly small) crowd.The Great Water (2004, by Ivo Trajkov), Macedonia 's Academy Awards entry for Best Foreign Language Film, is a fictionalized look at an obscure piece of history that manages to remain this side of sentimentality despite its subject matter.

The film successfully conveys the confusion of a young boy who is captured and incarcerated in a postwar labor camp for orphans of "political undesirables" through a strong script (adapted by Trajkov from a novel), convincing child actors, stunning cinematography, subtle symbolism and an appropriately desolate and menacing set that serves as a moody and intimidating character of its own (as well as a surprising casting twist revealed by cinematographer Suki Medencevic during the Q&A following the screening).

The young protagonist, acclimating to his confines, spends his days being indoctrinated into the righteousness of communism while endeavoring to avoid being mistreated by the overzealous, masochistic staff. He becomes mesmerized by a mysterious new arrival who helps him explore the secrets behind the walls of the camp and whose serene presence has an unusual affect on the orphans and staff alike.

Macedonian Movie - The Great Water

I hope that this film will be release in North America in the near future. This is a link to a review in the Hollywood Reporter.



Yahoo! Groups : Macedonian_News_Service Messages : Message 6485 of 6486: "The Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia
Washington, D.C.

and

The Macedonian Center of New York

present the opening of the highly anticipated Macedonian film

THE GREAT WATER
http://www.greatwatermovie.com/

Macedonia's Official Submission for Best Foreign Film for the 2004 Academy Awards!

THE GREAT WATER is the fifth feature from the Macedonian born, award-winning director Ivo Trajkov. Based on the original novel, Golemata Voda by acclaimed author Zhivko Chingo, THE GREAT WATER is 'a story of emotional dislocation and childhood resilience, of friendship and betrayal, of the state versus the individual. Like many great works, it plays on both a metaphoric and literal level'. (Screen International).

The story follows the childhood of Lem Nikodinoski. Now a high-ranking political figure in the communist movernment, an elderly Lem is rushed to a hospital fighting for his life. As he nears death, his only memories are of his life when he was twelve."

All "Yugoslav" film

Funding for this film was recieved from all the former Yugoslav republics. Even Albanians in Kosovo cooperated in making this film.

Reuters.com: Yugoslavia revisited in unique film project

By Matthew Robinson

PESTANI, Macedonia (Reuters) - High on a Macedonian mountainside, a unique collaboration is under way among the countries that once made up Yugoslavia, to revisit the calm before the storm that tore them apart.

Karaula, or "Border Post," is the first film co-financed and co-produced by all the former republics of the socialist federation since war broke out in Croatia in 1991 and was followed so fiercely by the Bosnian conflict a year later.

"This is a story which is more or less our collective memory," Croatian director Rajko Grlic says of the film, about life in a dysfunctional Yugoslav army border unit in 1987.

"We're playing with that memory and trying to find out why and how war came so easily to this part of the world," he told Reuters one week into filming above the vast Lake Ohrid that spans the Macedonian-Albanian border.

Theo Angelopoulos, Film Director.

This film director lives in Florina. I do not know much about him except that he directed Ulysses' Gaze starring Harvey Keitel which was a joke but taken seriously at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cultural Roundup (SETimes.com)

Russian Minister visits Macedonia

I approve of Macedonia expanding ties with Russia.

Learn from Bill Clinton ... TRIANGULATE!

I believe that both major Macedonia political parties are on the wrong course. They both want to join Nato and the EU without any backup strategy when Greece uses its veto. You cannot expect a fair hearing from EU/NATO since it has ignored the human rights abuses of Macedonians in Greece since Greece joined the EU in the early 70's. Greece's minority rights values are by definition EU/Nato values.

My position is to continue with the Nato /EU course but at the same time, open all doors to Russia under the assumption that Macedonia will be locked out of Nato/EU. This is not a very attractive option since Russia has fallen so low that even the Ukraine is running away from it. Obviously, the US/EU/Nato is subverting Russia. It is also obvious that it is doing it with minimal effort yet Russian influence is collapsing like a deck of cards. Even though Russia is trying to position itself as a defender of Serbs in Kosovo, Serbia is trying to join the Nato and the EU ... YIKES.

RUSSIA SAVE YOURSELF

Having said that ... more contact with Russia,


Invite the Russian Orthodox Archbishop to Ohrid,
Invite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Skopje,
Hold a Russian film festival,
Hold a Russian book Fair.
Produce a film about Macedonian Students in Russian circa 1900,


RADIO FREE EUROPE/ RADIO LIBERTY: "RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER DEMANDS QUICK DEMARCATION OF MACEDONIAN BORDER WITH KOSOVA

Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Skopje on 8 December that the demarcation of Macedonia's border with Kosova must start as soon as possible, 'Utrinski vesnik' reported. The demarcation must be finalized before any talks on the future status of Kosova begin, Lavrov argued, adding that Russia regards Macedonia as a factor for stability in the Balkans (see 'RFE/RL Newsline,' 10 September and 1 and 7 December 2004 and 'RFE/RL Balkan Report,' 10 and 17 September 2004). Russia will therefore ask the UN Security Council, authorities in Belgrade, UNMIK, and the elected authorities in Prishtina to speed up the border demarcation. Lavrov added that Russia will ask the Security Council to pass a resolution on demarcation. Lavrov's Macedonian counterpart Ilinka Mitreva called relations with Russia 'excellent,' adding that they are a 'priority' for Macedonia. She said Skopje hopes to improve the cooperation with Moscow in economic as well as in 'military-technological' matters. UB"

Someone at Slate knows the difference between Macedonians and Greeks

It looks like someone at Slate (David Edelstein) knows the difference between Macedonians and Greeks. (Although he does beat a partial retreat at the end of the review in response to various letters. Good reading!)

I probably will wait to see the movie when it comes out on DVD. The reviews seem to be trashing the movie.

I think our friend David has got the right attitude towards Alexander. I am at a loss as to why Macedonians should venerate this thug.

Oliver's Army - In Alexander, Stone makes a mess of Mesopotamia. By David�Edelstein

"Apart from a tendency to view Macedonians and Greeks as one people, the film is more or less historically accurate—aided and abetted by the Oxford scholar Robin Lane Fox, who has no doubt disgraced himself among his colleagues by penning a "making of" book."

"Stone attempts to tell the story of another mass murderer/existential hero, Alexander the Great (played by Colin Farrell), the young Macedonian king who, in 323 B.C., swept through Greece and then the Persian Empire—what is now Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Iraq—and then, more foolishly, into India: a dozen years of conquests that at the very least touched the lives of more people on the planet than any military leader before him (even if only to end them). "


Mabe Slate can take this opportunity to correct this problem on their website from 1997!

Slate Mistake 1997 - Macedonian problem

"Macedonia, 'The Great Water,' Ivo Trajikov;

49 Countries in Hunt for Foreign Oscar: "Macedonia, 'The Great Water,' Ivo Trajikov;"

This Macedonian film has been submitted for the Oscar for "foreign language film". I have never heard of it. Please send some links for more information.