All photos are copyright Rani Burnat, Bil'in. Available via Shai Carmeli-Pollak on kshai@o23.net
Monday, 20 August 2007
Photos from West Bank struggle over Israel's Security Wall
All photos are copyright Rani Burnat, Bil'in. Available via Shai Carmeli-Pollak on kshai@o23.net
The West Bank comes to Sarajevo
Sarajevo, Monday August 20 2007
Israeli political activist Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s immensely moving and explosively emotional feature length documentary “Bil’in My Love” rightly deserves the description the man responsible for inviting it to Sarajevo gave it as “the discovery of the festival”.
Howard Feinstein, the former film editor of the Village Voice, New York, who programmes Sarajevo’s fabulous Panorama sidebar, used that description when he introduced the 84 minute film at Sunday’s screening here in Sarajevo.
An uncompromising expose of the brutal and aggressive tactics the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops use against the largely peaceful protests of Palestinian villagers, Israeli and international human rights activists in their fight to prevent the construction of the 28 foot tall section of the controversial Israeli state security wall that slices the village of Bil’in in half, the film won a five minutes standing ovation when it ended at Sarajevo’s capacityu packed Meeting Point cinema, with many in the audience wiping tears of empathy from their eyes.
The director has brought three of the Palestinian villagers with him – including farmer ‘Wagee’ Abdelfatah Burnat and his adult son Rani, wheelchair bound since an Israeli sniper’s bullet clipped his spinal chord at a protest demonstration in Jerusalem some years ago.
As Wagee, whose heartbreak over the loss of family olive groves dating back centuries is a key focus of the film, remarked in a reference to the difficulty of obtaining visas, “for a Palestinian to get out of Palestine is almost impossible.”
“We are so happy to meet with you in Sarajevo today,” he said. “Believe me, it is much easer for me to come to Sarajevo than to go to Jerusalem which is only 30km from Bil’in,” he said.
With 11 deaths directly associated with the fight against the building of the wall – declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice in the Hague but continued regardless by the Israeli government – and the thousands of injured - the weekly Friday protests of one tiny West Bank village against the local IDF troops is but a microcosm of the wider tragedy playing out there.
Some 3,000 Palestinian and 1,000 Israelis had died since 2000 when the second Palestinian Infitada – uprising – began.
“The film shows just a glimpse of what is happening in our village,” Wagee said.
“It is one small, poor village but it is very, very rich with hope and believe and very strong and powerful with the will to struggle and fight hard against injustice and for good.”
Hundreds of villagers have been imprisoned or fined and many hit by rubber bullets or gassed with tear gas and percussion grenades fired at them by the IDF troops – mostly without any provocation, the film shows.
In one telling incident recorded by 39 year old activist-filmmaker Shai, a non-violent demonstration organized by the village committee disintegrates into violence when some Palestinian youths begin stoning the Israeli soldiers.
At first the demonstrators appeal for calm, believing the boys to be from another village. It turns out they are actually Israeli agent provocateurs sent there to deliberately foment trouble.
It is the intimacy of Shai’s filmmaking – where he is both participant and observer and has no pretension to objectivity in what is a thoroughly partisan film - that is incredible for a film made in the often dangerous situations in the midst of such a bitter and intractable conflict. Some might call in propaganda, but it does not flinch from showing that some Palestinian youngsters do – of course – stone Israel soldiers. One IDF soldier loses his eye in an incident, sparking fears in the village that they may face live ammunition in revenge. It is, however, quite clear that the aggression virtually always comes first from the IDF side and that their commander, an otherwise thoughtful man who actually lives not far from the village – on the other side of the wall – does sometimes reach for tear gas, rubber bullerts and percussion grenades when his frustration at the myriad creative protests he faces gets the better of him.
The villagers of Bil’in are determined to resist with dignity, come what may.
“The villagers are fighting for their rights and for the rights of the whole world for all people to live with dignity,” Wagee noted of a conflict that has already taken 60% of the village’s historic lands, ripping out the olive groves on which the farmers depend for their livelihoods and stealing huge swathes of land for the illegal expansion of a nearby new Israeli settlement that will be protected by the massive barrier.
Dubbed an ‘apartheid barrier’ by opponents, director Shai – who grew up in a Zionist household, served in the Israeli army and worked in television before becoming politicized by a desire to understand why the Palestinians had risen up again in 2000 – says the film exposes the essential racism of a state that claims to be a democracy.
“The wall allows for new communities – mostly settlements of ultra orthodox right wingers – to spring up. I did not want to show these people in the film because that is not the true story. The story is that the government is sending these poor people to these new settlements – where apartments are cheap. Those living their do not have enough knowledge really about what is going on. They listen to what their Rabbis tell them and go there,” Shai remarked.
Asked how he was able to film so closely and intimately – often standing filming besides Israeli troops as they fired at Palestinians – Shai said that initially the troops assumed that as an Israeli he was on their side.
Later when they understood he was implacably opposed to the wall they continued to let him film because they thought what they “think what they are doing is OK” Shai said. “The attitude is ‘I am doing an important job, defending my country.”
That attitude to filmmakers and photographers has shifted now, Shai said and the IDF are a lot more sensitive about being filmed as they go about the brutal business of defending a barrier that is illegal under the Olso accords of the early 1990s and most international observers agree will make the job of creating Palestinian statehood and a lasting, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near impossible.
If you get a chance to see this film, don’t hesitate for a second: as Shai noted, it covers a conflict that many in Sarejevo can identify with from their own personal experience in the recent past.
Photographs from the struggle in Bil’in, taken by Rani Bornat – who was a ubiquitous presence on the front lines in his electric powered wheelchair – can be purchased on CD.
As Rani said – talking through Shai as the bullet that clipped his spine entered through his neck and affected his ability to speak clearly – “the other young people in the village told me I had already paid the price, but when I join the protests I feel young and proud and not just a disabled person but someone protecting his land.”
Basman Yasin, a member of the village committee that organizes the protests, noted that although the wall is now complete the fight goes on. A third international conference on the problem will take place at Bil’in in April 2008, he said.
For further information you can go to: www.Bilin-village.org and also to Israeil group Anarchists Against the Wall site www.awalls.org
Rani Burnat’s photographs of the protest can be obtained on cd-rom from Shai Carmeli-Pollak via email: kshai@o23.net
Two final little observations in today’s entry: Sarajevo is a joy of a festival, small enough to be intimate, big enough to be truly international.
Last night’s open air screening of Anton Corbjin’s beautiful shot black and white film “Control” – about the short, highly creative but ultimately tragic life of Ian Curtis, lead singer in iconoclastic late 1970s British band “Joy Division” – was simply superb.
Evocative and moving, Sam Riley who plays Curtis cut exactly the right note and had the perfect face for the role and the period. Alexandra Maria Lara, a rising young German-Romanian actress, who played his Belgian girlfriend (and is in real life his partner) was a striking screen presence. Samantha Morton who played Curtis’ much neglected wife Deborah was also spot on.
I never saw Joy Division play live – they were a Manchester band that played a few London gigs that were about to go on their first US tour in May 1980 when Curtis, suffering from epilepsy and marital despair uncompromisingly depicted in the movie, killed himself.
But that summer of 1980 has for me its own traumatic memories – my dear friend Debbie Young died in a car crash June 26 1980 at the age of 17 – and “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, released just a month before Curtis’ death – is part of the background track for my own life from that summer.
On a different tack, returning to my hotel yesterday afternoon I ran into feature competition jury president British actor Jeremy Irons as he arrived from the airport.
I’d last seen him some 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of writing about prison reform in the UK and was involved with the Prison Phoenix Trust, an Oxford-based organization that works with prisoners to encourage them to use their time inside to learn and practice yoga and meditation. One of its organizers, Sandy Chubb, had introduced me to Irons, one of the charity’s patrons, at a function held in St James Church, Piccadilly. My life and travels took my off to Russia soon after and I lost touch with the Prison Phoenix Trust, although I still read and refer to US writer Bo Lozoff’s excellent book on the theme, “We’re All Doing Time”, published by his US-based Prison Ashram Project and distributed free to prisoners by the British group.
There was not enough time for a lengthy conversation but Irons clearly recollected Sandy’s surname – which I could not – and is still involved in supporting the group’s work.
For more information see: http://www.philanthropycapital.org/Newsletter/Summer07/jeremy_irons.html and http://www.prisonphoenix.org.uk/why1.shtml and also http://www.humankindness.org/project.html
Israeli political activist Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s immensely moving and explosively emotional feature length documentary “Bil’in My Love” rightly deserves the description the man responsible for inviting it to Sarajevo gave it as “the discovery of the festival”.
Howard Feinstein, the former film editor of the Village Voice, New York, who programmes Sarajevo’s fabulous Panorama sidebar, used that description when he introduced the 84 minute film at Sunday’s screening here in Sarajevo.
An uncompromising expose of the brutal and aggressive tactics the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops use against the largely peaceful protests of Palestinian villagers, Israeli and international human rights activists in their fight to prevent the construction of the 28 foot tall section of the controversial Israeli state security wall that slices the village of Bil’in in half, the film won a five minutes standing ovation when it ended at Sarajevo’s capacityu packed Meeting Point cinema, with many in the audience wiping tears of empathy from their eyes.
The director has brought three of the Palestinian villagers with him – including farmer ‘Wagee’ Abdelfatah Burnat and his adult son Rani, wheelchair bound since an Israeli sniper’s bullet clipped his spinal chord at a protest demonstration in Jerusalem some years ago.
As Wagee, whose heartbreak over the loss of family olive groves dating back centuries is a key focus of the film, remarked in a reference to the difficulty of obtaining visas, “for a Palestinian to get out of Palestine is almost impossible.”
“We are so happy to meet with you in Sarajevo today,” he said. “Believe me, it is much easer for me to come to Sarajevo than to go to Jerusalem which is only 30km from Bil’in,” he said.
With 11 deaths directly associated with the fight against the building of the wall – declared illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice in the Hague but continued regardless by the Israeli government – and the thousands of injured - the weekly Friday protests of one tiny West Bank village against the local IDF troops is but a microcosm of the wider tragedy playing out there.
Some 3,000 Palestinian and 1,000 Israelis had died since 2000 when the second Palestinian Infitada – uprising – began.
“The film shows just a glimpse of what is happening in our village,” Wagee said.
“It is one small, poor village but it is very, very rich with hope and believe and very strong and powerful with the will to struggle and fight hard against injustice and for good.”
Hundreds of villagers have been imprisoned or fined and many hit by rubber bullets or gassed with tear gas and percussion grenades fired at them by the IDF troops – mostly without any provocation, the film shows.
In one telling incident recorded by 39 year old activist-filmmaker Shai, a non-violent demonstration organized by the village committee disintegrates into violence when some Palestinian youths begin stoning the Israeli soldiers.
At first the demonstrators appeal for calm, believing the boys to be from another village. It turns out they are actually Israeli agent provocateurs sent there to deliberately foment trouble.
It is the intimacy of Shai’s filmmaking – where he is both participant and observer and has no pretension to objectivity in what is a thoroughly partisan film - that is incredible for a film made in the often dangerous situations in the midst of such a bitter and intractable conflict. Some might call in propaganda, but it does not flinch from showing that some Palestinian youngsters do – of course – stone Israel soldiers. One IDF soldier loses his eye in an incident, sparking fears in the village that they may face live ammunition in revenge. It is, however, quite clear that the aggression virtually always comes first from the IDF side and that their commander, an otherwise thoughtful man who actually lives not far from the village – on the other side of the wall – does sometimes reach for tear gas, rubber bullerts and percussion grenades when his frustration at the myriad creative protests he faces gets the better of him.
The villagers of Bil’in are determined to resist with dignity, come what may.
“The villagers are fighting for their rights and for the rights of the whole world for all people to live with dignity,” Wagee noted of a conflict that has already taken 60% of the village’s historic lands, ripping out the olive groves on which the farmers depend for their livelihoods and stealing huge swathes of land for the illegal expansion of a nearby new Israeli settlement that will be protected by the massive barrier.
Dubbed an ‘apartheid barrier’ by opponents, director Shai – who grew up in a Zionist household, served in the Israeli army and worked in television before becoming politicized by a desire to understand why the Palestinians had risen up again in 2000 – says the film exposes the essential racism of a state that claims to be a democracy.
“The wall allows for new communities – mostly settlements of ultra orthodox right wingers – to spring up. I did not want to show these people in the film because that is not the true story. The story is that the government is sending these poor people to these new settlements – where apartments are cheap. Those living their do not have enough knowledge really about what is going on. They listen to what their Rabbis tell them and go there,” Shai remarked.
Asked how he was able to film so closely and intimately – often standing filming besides Israeli troops as they fired at Palestinians – Shai said that initially the troops assumed that as an Israeli he was on their side.
Later when they understood he was implacably opposed to the wall they continued to let him film because they thought what they “think what they are doing is OK” Shai said. “The attitude is ‘I am doing an important job, defending my country.”
That attitude to filmmakers and photographers has shifted now, Shai said and the IDF are a lot more sensitive about being filmed as they go about the brutal business of defending a barrier that is illegal under the Olso accords of the early 1990s and most international observers agree will make the job of creating Palestinian statehood and a lasting, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near impossible.
If you get a chance to see this film, don’t hesitate for a second: as Shai noted, it covers a conflict that many in Sarejevo can identify with from their own personal experience in the recent past.
Photographs from the struggle in Bil’in, taken by Rani Bornat – who was a ubiquitous presence on the front lines in his electric powered wheelchair – can be purchased on CD.
As Rani said – talking through Shai as the bullet that clipped his spine entered through his neck and affected his ability to speak clearly – “the other young people in the village told me I had already paid the price, but when I join the protests I feel young and proud and not just a disabled person but someone protecting his land.”
Basman Yasin, a member of the village committee that organizes the protests, noted that although the wall is now complete the fight goes on. A third international conference on the problem will take place at Bil’in in April 2008, he said.
For further information you can go to: www.Bilin-village.org and also to Israeil group Anarchists Against the Wall site www.awalls.org
Rani Burnat’s photographs of the protest can be obtained on cd-rom from Shai Carmeli-Pollak via email: kshai@o23.net
Two final little observations in today’s entry: Sarajevo is a joy of a festival, small enough to be intimate, big enough to be truly international.
Last night’s open air screening of Anton Corbjin’s beautiful shot black and white film “Control” – about the short, highly creative but ultimately tragic life of Ian Curtis, lead singer in iconoclastic late 1970s British band “Joy Division” – was simply superb.
Evocative and moving, Sam Riley who plays Curtis cut exactly the right note and had the perfect face for the role and the period. Alexandra Maria Lara, a rising young German-Romanian actress, who played his Belgian girlfriend (and is in real life his partner) was a striking screen presence. Samantha Morton who played Curtis’ much neglected wife Deborah was also spot on.
I never saw Joy Division play live – they were a Manchester band that played a few London gigs that were about to go on their first US tour in May 1980 when Curtis, suffering from epilepsy and marital despair uncompromisingly depicted in the movie, killed himself.
But that summer of 1980 has for me its own traumatic memories – my dear friend Debbie Young died in a car crash June 26 1980 at the age of 17 – and “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, released just a month before Curtis’ death – is part of the background track for my own life from that summer.
On a different tack, returning to my hotel yesterday afternoon I ran into feature competition jury president British actor Jeremy Irons as he arrived from the airport.
I’d last seen him some 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of writing about prison reform in the UK and was involved with the Prison Phoenix Trust, an Oxford-based organization that works with prisoners to encourage them to use their time inside to learn and practice yoga and meditation. One of its organizers, Sandy Chubb, had introduced me to Irons, one of the charity’s patrons, at a function held in St James Church, Piccadilly. My life and travels took my off to Russia soon after and I lost touch with the Prison Phoenix Trust, although I still read and refer to US writer Bo Lozoff’s excellent book on the theme, “We’re All Doing Time”, published by his US-based Prison Ashram Project and distributed free to prisoners by the British group.
There was not enough time for a lengthy conversation but Irons clearly recollected Sandy’s surname – which I could not – and is still involved in supporting the group’s work.
For more information see: http://www.philanthropycapital.org/Newsletter/Summer07/jeremy_irons.html and http://www.prisonphoenix.org.uk/why1.shtml and also http://www.humankindness.org/project.html
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Sarajevo Film Festival Opens with a Bang
Sarajevo Film Festival Opens with a Bang
Sarajevo, Saturday August 18 2007
Flying into Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina last night from Moscow via Vienna I expected to experience a little déjà vu. I was last here two years ago, for the 11th Sarajevo Film Festival and arrived on another inky dark Balkans summer night on a turboprop from Belgrade.
My overriding impressions then, in 2005, as we drove into the city was of the war-torn buildings still in evidence everywhere. During the festival I stayed at the Holiday Inn – the hotel where the international press had lived during the siege of Sarajevo in the first half of the 1990s. Ten years after the Daytona Peace Accords brought Sarajevo piece, the area around the Holiday Inn was still dominated by shrapnel and shell scarred homes and offices. A nearby ten or fifteen story office block was a window-less concrete shell peppered on the side that faced towards the old Serb positions across the river with massive star-shaped shell holes.
Last night as the taxi drove me down along the same street – the old suicide alley where during the siege drivers raced at high speed aware that they were within sight and ranger of the besieging Serb gunners – I searched for the scarred tower block in vain: it is now a sleek tinted-glass covered corporate building of the sort one can find in any European capital.
Sarajevo has become a building site. In the old town of area of Bascarsilja – which last night was buzzing with masses of young and fashionable Sarajevans enjoying the special late opening of cafes and restaurants put on to celebrate the opening of this year’s 13th film festival – shops and bars have appeared where two years ago there were only dusty and damaged pock-marked facades.
The crumbling concrete and dirt alleys of the crowded and narrow streets of this charming part of the city are being replaced with gleaming slabs of limestone paving and scaffolding is everywhere.
It’s a clear sign that the city is moving beyond its post-war hiatus.
Even last night’s opening party – held inside the impressive ruins of the old Sarajevo town hall, which was left an empty shell after being targeted by Serb forces in 1992 – an act decried at the time as a war crime against a building that also housed the literary treasures of the Bosnian national library – was a surreal experience.
The building is under reconstruction and its interior is only partially restored – guests entered from the riverside street through an opening in the steel construction site barrier before ascending stone stairs to the airy hexagonal interior. Inside lights lit up the first floor balcony that skirts the six-sided interior, crowded temporary bars dispensed beer, wine and spirits and a Bosnian folk singer performed on a small carpeted stage set up in the centre of the ground floor.
The place was packed. To go to the upper floor one had to struggle up a temporary wooden plank staircase past grubby bare brick walls still peppered with graffiti and stained black and green from the conflagration of 15 years ago.
Some of the old Islamic-style stone arches had been restored and the balustrades on the balcony were mostly now gleaming white limestone. Looking up to the rooftop atrium a maze of decorative iron girders are already in place. Two years ago when I walked past the building I could only imagination how it looked inside; there were no signs then of imminent reconstruction.
On the open first floor terrace overlooking the river guests crowded to look out over the nighttime city as uniformed guards warned them not to go too close to the stone parapet, taped off with red and white security tape indicating it was not considered safe.
At midnight a firework display to mark the opening of the film festival sent blasts and echoed resounding from across the other side of the river.
It was all rather surreal: 15 years ago other kinds of explosives were raining down upon the city from positions across the same river. The crowds watched and the camera crews filmed as music from another, much deeper in the past time, started up: a Viennese waltz of the sort that the old Austro-Hungarian functionaries of the pre-First World War era might have listened to in this very same building back when Sarajevo was a far flung provincial capital of that now long dead empire. German “oompah” music was next prompting different associations from another time and another war when Sarajevo was occupied by Hitler’s hordes.
If the idea was to prompt thoughts of war and peace it seemed to work, at least for this guest.
The city seems to be reclaiming its identity and re-staking its claim as a tourist destination: my father-in-law Vyacheslav still proudly recalls his visit when Sarajevo hosted the winter Olympics back in 1984. Roadside placards reminding guests and visitors that Sarajevo is an ‘Olympic’ city has sprouted anew.
And Sarajevo long had a claim to fame as the city where ‘the first shot of the First World War was fired’ when on June 28 1914 Serb nationalist Gavril Princip assassinated Austro-Hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand sparking the rapid succession of events that lead up to the outbreak of world war by early August. (Ironically Princip – chosen for the mission because he had tuberculosis and was not expected to live long – actually outlived many of the poor souls the Great War eventually consumed. Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, he died from tuberculosis in April 1918.)
Two years ago I was disappointed to find that the museum commemorating this event was closed. Last night as I walked back from the opening party I was delighted to find it now open and functioning: there on the very corner where Princip squeezed his trigger the museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918 is lit up with street side photographic and video displays. It’s on the top of my list of ‘must do’ visits this weekend.
Sarajevo is truly moving forward, but not so fast that is forgets its past. As film festival head Mirsad Purivatra reminded guests last night, the closing of the 13th Sarajevo Film Festival takes place on Saturday August 25 – exactly 15 years to the day since the building’s historic library was blitzed by the Serb gunners from their positions high up in the hills across the river.
In my next posting I shall attempt to draw together some reflections from films playing at the festival that further help elucidate the spirit and character of today’s Sarajevo and the Balkans.
NOTE: All material copyright 2007 Nick Holdsworth.
If any readers out there want to license this material (or offer me writing or journalistic commissions) please email me at: holdsworth.nick@gmail.com)
Sarajevo, Saturday August 18 2007
Flying into Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina last night from Moscow via Vienna I expected to experience a little déjà vu. I was last here two years ago, for the 11th Sarajevo Film Festival and arrived on another inky dark Balkans summer night on a turboprop from Belgrade.
My overriding impressions then, in 2005, as we drove into the city was of the war-torn buildings still in evidence everywhere. During the festival I stayed at the Holiday Inn – the hotel where the international press had lived during the siege of Sarajevo in the first half of the 1990s. Ten years after the Daytona Peace Accords brought Sarajevo piece, the area around the Holiday Inn was still dominated by shrapnel and shell scarred homes and offices. A nearby ten or fifteen story office block was a window-less concrete shell peppered on the side that faced towards the old Serb positions across the river with massive star-shaped shell holes.
Last night as the taxi drove me down along the same street – the old suicide alley where during the siege drivers raced at high speed aware that they were within sight and ranger of the besieging Serb gunners – I searched for the scarred tower block in vain: it is now a sleek tinted-glass covered corporate building of the sort one can find in any European capital.
Sarajevo has become a building site. In the old town of area of Bascarsilja – which last night was buzzing with masses of young and fashionable Sarajevans enjoying the special late opening of cafes and restaurants put on to celebrate the opening of this year’s 13th film festival – shops and bars have appeared where two years ago there were only dusty and damaged pock-marked facades.
The crumbling concrete and dirt alleys of the crowded and narrow streets of this charming part of the city are being replaced with gleaming slabs of limestone paving and scaffolding is everywhere.
It’s a clear sign that the city is moving beyond its post-war hiatus.
Even last night’s opening party – held inside the impressive ruins of the old Sarajevo town hall, which was left an empty shell after being targeted by Serb forces in 1992 – an act decried at the time as a war crime against a building that also housed the literary treasures of the Bosnian national library – was a surreal experience.
The building is under reconstruction and its interior is only partially restored – guests entered from the riverside street through an opening in the steel construction site barrier before ascending stone stairs to the airy hexagonal interior. Inside lights lit up the first floor balcony that skirts the six-sided interior, crowded temporary bars dispensed beer, wine and spirits and a Bosnian folk singer performed on a small carpeted stage set up in the centre of the ground floor.
The place was packed. To go to the upper floor one had to struggle up a temporary wooden plank staircase past grubby bare brick walls still peppered with graffiti and stained black and green from the conflagration of 15 years ago.
Some of the old Islamic-style stone arches had been restored and the balustrades on the balcony were mostly now gleaming white limestone. Looking up to the rooftop atrium a maze of decorative iron girders are already in place. Two years ago when I walked past the building I could only imagination how it looked inside; there were no signs then of imminent reconstruction.
On the open first floor terrace overlooking the river guests crowded to look out over the nighttime city as uniformed guards warned them not to go too close to the stone parapet, taped off with red and white security tape indicating it was not considered safe.
At midnight a firework display to mark the opening of the film festival sent blasts and echoed resounding from across the other side of the river.
It was all rather surreal: 15 years ago other kinds of explosives were raining down upon the city from positions across the same river. The crowds watched and the camera crews filmed as music from another, much deeper in the past time, started up: a Viennese waltz of the sort that the old Austro-Hungarian functionaries of the pre-First World War era might have listened to in this very same building back when Sarajevo was a far flung provincial capital of that now long dead empire. German “oompah” music was next prompting different associations from another time and another war when Sarajevo was occupied by Hitler’s hordes.
If the idea was to prompt thoughts of war and peace it seemed to work, at least for this guest.
The city seems to be reclaiming its identity and re-staking its claim as a tourist destination: my father-in-law Vyacheslav still proudly recalls his visit when Sarajevo hosted the winter Olympics back in 1984. Roadside placards reminding guests and visitors that Sarajevo is an ‘Olympic’ city has sprouted anew.
And Sarajevo long had a claim to fame as the city where ‘the first shot of the First World War was fired’ when on June 28 1914 Serb nationalist Gavril Princip assassinated Austro-Hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand sparking the rapid succession of events that lead up to the outbreak of world war by early August. (Ironically Princip – chosen for the mission because he had tuberculosis and was not expected to live long – actually outlived many of the poor souls the Great War eventually consumed. Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, he died from tuberculosis in April 1918.)
Two years ago I was disappointed to find that the museum commemorating this event was closed. Last night as I walked back from the opening party I was delighted to find it now open and functioning: there on the very corner where Princip squeezed his trigger the museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918 is lit up with street side photographic and video displays. It’s on the top of my list of ‘must do’ visits this weekend.
Sarajevo is truly moving forward, but not so fast that is forgets its past. As film festival head Mirsad Purivatra reminded guests last night, the closing of the 13th Sarajevo Film Festival takes place on Saturday August 25 – exactly 15 years to the day since the building’s historic library was blitzed by the Serb gunners from their positions high up in the hills across the river.
In my next posting I shall attempt to draw together some reflections from films playing at the festival that further help elucidate the spirit and character of today’s Sarajevo and the Balkans.
NOTE: All material copyright 2007 Nick Holdsworth.
If any readers out there want to license this material (or offer me writing or journalistic commissions) please email me at: holdsworth.nick@gmail.com)
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
First Missive
Tuesday August 14 2007
Welcome to Russofile007. This will be an occasional record of thoughts, opinions, responses to experiences and- perhaps - comments on newsworthy topics emanating from events mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe (where I spend much of my time), and my own personal interests and opinions.
As someone who writes for a living I may be disinclined to post frequent or regular comments or items but I shall aspire to post on such subjects as news and current affairs, social and political matters, film and education, Russian and Eastern European affairs and other passing interests as they flit across my attention span and enthusiasm radar.
This is an experiment and no doubt shall evolve and change as we go along.
For those interested in reading earlier professional writing I can suggest checking out my book about Russia during Yeltsin's years: "Moscow The Beautiful and the Damned - Life in Russia in Transition" (publisher: Andre Deutsch, London 2000 & second edition 2003) or Googling stories I have written over the years in papers that include the Sunday Telegraph, the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Hollywood Reporter and many others.
I'll be in Sarajevo this coming weekend for the first few days of the Sarajevo Film Festival and shall try to find time to post a blog or two from there.
Cheers for now - Nick Holdsworth blogger of 'Russofile007'
Welcome to Russofile007. This will be an occasional record of thoughts, opinions, responses to experiences and- perhaps - comments on newsworthy topics emanating from events mostly in Russia and Eastern Europe (where I spend much of my time), and my own personal interests and opinions.
As someone who writes for a living I may be disinclined to post frequent or regular comments or items but I shall aspire to post on such subjects as news and current affairs, social and political matters, film and education, Russian and Eastern European affairs and other passing interests as they flit across my attention span and enthusiasm radar.
This is an experiment and no doubt shall evolve and change as we go along.
For those interested in reading earlier professional writing I can suggest checking out my book about Russia during Yeltsin's years: "Moscow The Beautiful and the Damned - Life in Russia in Transition" (publisher: Andre Deutsch, London 2000 & second edition 2003) or Googling stories I have written over the years in papers that include the Sunday Telegraph, the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Hollywood Reporter and many others.
For those interested the following link will take yo to the Amazon uk listing for my book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moscow-Beautiful-Damned-Russia-Transition/dp/0233996796/ref=sr_1_2/202-3015045-6848601?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187120122&sr=8-2
I'll be in Sarajevo this coming weekend for the first few days of the Sarajevo Film Festival and shall try to find time to post a blog or two from there.
Cheers for now - Nick Holdsworth blogger of 'Russofile007'
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