I feel that I have to direct films

I will make a film based on my own scenario, hopefully in 2013, and I won't act in it because you cannot do well more things at the same time 

This conversation has two topics: the film THE PARADE and several interviews which were given at the premiere of this year's most popular Serbian film by its main actor. ''What can a poor little film do against PR agencies which have a direct link with the God and which believe in the self-proclaimed divine right to mark with a sign of a cross, like foresters, the trees which are to be cut because they do not bear any fruit, and to decide which trees are to be saved,'' Nikola Kojo said then. He rarely gives interviews to newspapers, so it was especially interesting to read the man who has played some of the best roles of sullen guys with hearts hard as asphalt talking without formal phraseology about some entirely basic topics. For example, about human equality.

Within the programme of the European Film Festival the book ''A Brief Overview of the Film History in Vojvodina'' by Dejan Kosanović, PhD, published jointly by Yugoslav Film Archives and Subotica Open University, will be presented today at 1 pm on the Grand Terrace.

The first document about the authors of documents

Zoltan Siflis’s book argues that in Subotica, since Lifka, there has been continuous fostering of film and that makes an even greater shame that there isn’t Municipal Film Archive in the town.

Your film presents a time that most people wish to forget but at the same time it deals with some iconic pictures of Romanian recent past. Is your decision to shoot the film in VHS technique homage to those times?
It was very hard to shoot film in VHS technique, because no one in the modern film companies doesn't even take it in consideration. We made quite a lot effort to adjust cameras to thirty-five-millimeter lenses and it was really hard to find technicians to deal with it the way that suits us. In the today's world of HD cameras and phones equipped with HD cameras, we searched for VHS that approximately has the same quality as the first phone camera. That was a really hard decision since all meetings with producers had that as an obstacle. We have chosen VHS because we were not interested for the story alone but for the nature of film of the 80s itself. I did not completely agree with the producer that film should be shot by film camera and that we should afterwards simulate VHS by some effects. I also wanted to awake spectators’ memory and to provoke vivid memories on past days, and 80s beside pop culture, for me are VHS. I wanted younger audience to have a good impression on how things were like during Ceausescu rule.

Success despite poor support

Certain companies didn’t want to support the film because they didn’t want their names to be connected to “some fags”.

I am honoured to be a member of the Festival team

Film is an expensive toy, it requires high standards. And that creates audience: when you have good cinemas, audience comes to these places intentionally

We forgot that a film can make the world a better place

A film is as good as the number of hearts it reaches, as much trace it leaves in people. Everything else is simplification.

After its success in cinemas in ex – Yugoslavian countries and an award at this years’ Berlinale, THE PARADE arrives to the European Film Festival Palić, and it will be shown in the Official Selection. We talked to Srđan Dragojević, screenwriter and director, apart from Parade, about his views concerning film art and its social role. 

Famous French actor, director and producer Jean-Marc Barr, noted for his distinctive artistic refinement in films by Lars von Trier but also John Boorman, James Ivory, Luc Besson, Michael Polish... speaks for the Festival Newsletter about “Aleksandar Lifka Award”, his links with Serbia, cosmopolitanism, Vanessa Redgrave, his directorial engagements, his first American film...