THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2003

Manchevski: The phrase "civil rights" has been hijacked by killers

Milcho Manchevski, film-maker and visual artist, was born in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1959. His movie Before the Rain won Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, thirty other international awards and a nomination for foreign-language Academy Award (Oscar). Milcho is in the process of finishing his second film Dust, which he shot in Macedonia and New York. It stars Joseph Fiennes, David Wenham and Adrian Lester. It talks of history and how it is shaped.

1. The recent clashes between security forces and Albanian guerillas in Macedonia have raised fears of a new Balkan war, which could drag in neighboring Bulgaria, Greece, Albania or Yugoslavia. Do you feel these fears are real and do you think there is an immediate danger of a civil war?

1. I don't expect a civil war, but only if a few conditions are swiftly met. There will be civil war if the government of Macedonia does not defend itself and its citizens in a way in which any country in the world would respond when gunmen start spreading murder and terror. The current government has been turning a blind eye on preparations for separatist activity in Macedonia, and it has to take a 180 degree turn now. Killers now abuse the phrase "civil rights." They train civilians how to talk to foreign TV crews, building on the concept of eternal victim; forced conscription by terrorists takes place in ethnic Albanian villages; the local media reports of forged mass graves prepared for propaganda purposes near Tetovo.

The international community has to take full responsibility for their previous and future actions. Both overt and tacit support for criminals has been the result of great power strategy in the region.

2. Some Albanian politicians in Macedonia say that the Skopje government must respond to legitimate demands, such as official recognition of the Albanian language and real representation at all levels of authority. What is your opinion on this issue?

2. Absolutely, goes without saying - the legitimate demands must be addressed, the way it is in any democratic country. Macedonia is a democratic country. Every citizen has to be equal under the law regardless of ethnic origins. However, killings by terrorists have nothing in common with recognition of language. The phrase "civil rights" has been hijacked by racists.

The situation on the ground is as follows: there are primary schools, high schools, colleges and (within a year) a university in Albanian. How many universities in the Scottish language there are in Britain or in the Basque language in Spain? There is a theater, several newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and programmes on national radio and TV in Albanian. What other shape can this recognition take? In addition, Albanian parties have been partners in coalition governments since independence, Albanian representatives sit in the Parliament, a number of mayors, six ministers and several ambassadors are Albanian (in addition to a Gipsy/Roma representative in Parliament, Serbian, Turkish, Bosnian and Vlach parties, newspapers, and programmes).

The Macedonian citizens of Albanian minority must start talking responsibilities in addition to talking rights. They should decide whether they are Albanians in Macedonia or Albanians from Macedonia.

The Albanian political parties in Macedonia must stop condoning crime. Sadly, no Albanian intellectual, non-government organization nor political party conclusively (and without reservations) condemned the murderous activities of uniformed men with snipers in the hills over Tetovo. Multi-ethnic Tetovo may become a victim of violent provocations by armed Albanian nationalists, like multi-ethnic Sarajevo.

Insisting on the differences rather then the similarities and achievements widens the gap. The flip side of Macedonian ethnic intolerance is Albanian ethnic intolerance. I have been refused service in a store because I did not speak Albanian. The terrorists in the Macedonian hills are inseparably linked to KLA and to murders of civilians in Kosovo. The phrase "civil rights" has been hijacked by killers, and its impact diminished.

3. NATO sent more troops to Kosovo's border with Macedonia but said that it would not seek an extended mandate for a military action outside Yugoslavia. Do you think that NATO should upgrade its involvement? How do you see the role of the international community in Macedonia and in the whole Balkan area?

3. NATO helped the Balkans get rid of Milosevic and stopped the terror over the Albanians in Kosovo. However, as a side effect, NATO's bombardment and support for nationalist militant groups is now helping escalate ethnic intolerance. Reverse racism is still racism, and its existence questions the position of the start of the circle.

K-FOR (NATO) says they don't support terrorist actions, but they turn a blind eye on terror over civilians in Kosovo and attacks on Macedonian territory. They rule Kosovo - militarily and administratively - and since Kosovo is used as a military base for operations against Macedonia, theirs is the full responsibility for actions originating in Kosovo.

There is a jihad being waged under NATO's wing. The Taliban-style fighters are helped by NATO's desire to stay out of the fry. Not to mention arming and training the KLA in the past. In addition, if NATO wants stability in the region (rather than only a clean and sexy exit), they must participate in enforcing law and order while they run the place. This includes fighting illegally armed men and the narco-cartels operating out of Kosovo and Western Macedonia. The narco-cartels' activities (which flourished since NATO arrived in the Balkans) and the fight for real-estate are a bigger threat to the region than the mythic "centuries-old hatreds." Milcho Manchevski©2003

Al-Ahram Weekly, 5-11 June 2003
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/641/cu5.htm

Zharko Kujundzhiski

I interviewed Manchevski on November 27th 2001, in the “Bastion” cafe. We all know that this man isn’t only a filmmaker, although his global fame he gain through the film “Before the Rain”. His second film “Dust” got many various responds. In Skopje he was called “Macedonian Gernika”, and the Italian romancer Alexander Barico claimed: “I like ‘Dust’ because it’s an open artwork, it has everything and it’s completely in opposite of everything, it combines the linguistic patterns with the archetypes… Critics aren’t ready for such films and books: it is as you go in the mountains wearing a swimsuit, and you wonder why you’re cold. As the people have seen the train locomotive for the first time and they asked: And where are the horses?” The Italian film magazine “Chak”, in other hand, says that “the new millenium in the film art starts with ‘Dust’”. In Asia, after the success in Tokyo, this film is compared with the popularity of the Marcel Proust…

* As for the beginning: How pleased are you with the reception of “Dust” out of Macedonia? Do you think that the focus on some particular historical and cultural determinants decreases the possibilities for those who aren’t familiar with the historical framework of this film?
MM: I think that every film should function on several levels and in this case I this problem is one of those levels: How it fits into the culture and history that this film speaks of. But, the film shouldn’t function only on that single level. People should understand it even without knowing anything about the particular culture its story is built on. It is so with every good film. For example, to understand and like “Citizen Kane” one must have some knowledge of America at the first half of 20th Century. It’s my motto - always when I’m not working, I try to see the people first. In this film it’s the matter of people, heir destinies, sufferings, relations, strivings… It’s essential to achieve this when you make a film. Everything else will only fulfil the picture. When you make a film about the history and culture of a place, you never get a classic feature film. That’s either documentary or television - CNN. Otherwise, I’m not the one who should comment the reactions of the audience or the critics. As an author I can’t see it objectively and without personal limitations. From those few places I’ve been present at the screenings, the reactions are quite good. In every opposite to the palette of some critics in Venice. Now, after I see how is this film accepted from the critics and the audience in Tokyo, Tai-Pei, Toronto, even in Solun (Thessaloniki), I conclude that what happened in Venice was an attempt for assassination upon “Dust”. The true merit will be how this film will be accepted by the audience throughout the world further. It’s always the only merit.


* In few occasions, in foreign and domestic magazines you appear as an author of columns with political connotation. Do you think that’s the reason that some ultra-right and nationalistic critics reacted like that on the film in Venice, or you think that they were frustrated by the fact that Milcho Manchevski, some director from some land Macedonia, came from the Wild East and made such a audacious film as “Dust”?..
MM: …And attempts to lecture them in esthetics, instead of begging for help among those numerous international non-governmental organizations. I think the reasons are both you mentioned. I was refusing to believe, and long after Venice I couldn’t believe that one has something to do with the other, but… it seems that I have still much to learn about things. I was naive enough to think that people will occupate themselves with the esthetics of the film. Now I see that those reactions weren’t that coincidental. Such claims I base not only upon the reactions, but upon the researches that were conducted by other people, like Iris Kronauer, who was also a guest in Skopje, and she writes a book on the reactions upon “Dust”. Iris found a text in Germany, a review, where he critic claims that two days before they see the film, they were consulting in what way to review it. Other reviews say that the film is just an illustration of my journalistic text where I attack and accuse NATO for its mistakes. NATO, de facto, isn’t guilty for that what happens here, but it’s partly a consequence of its faults. By this hypothetical situation that is claimed by some people, “Dust” is made in a period of one month. I’m sorry that I realized that a whole segment of the culture - the critics, for which I thought that is pure esthetic matter, actually manipulates with politics. I saw that for the European film critics the politics is equivalent to the Hollywood gossip. It isn’t important who sleeps with whom (as in Hollywood), but who has this or that political opinion.

Zharko Kujundzhiski

* Neda speaks of Miss Stone as Miss Rock. That metonymical replacement of the sign-significators is very often in oral folklore tradition, used by the futurists also, and it recalls the children’s game of ‘broken telephone’. Did you really encounter that name in your research for this film?
MM: No, I didn’t. The name of Miss Rock is used as for the associations as you did mention, because I didn’t want to mention real people and events, although I had to do that here and there. But generally speaking, I avoid speaking of the things I haven’t actually seen. I don’t think I have a moral right to do that.

* We already mentioned the term ‘audacious’ - in the positive sense of the word. Especially interesting impression gives the narrator’s position in the film. Mikhail Bahtin would say that you do dethrone the narrator’s position. In the oral transfer of certain story, in the old times, its position is the position of the non-mistakable authority. The distance among the recipient and the narrator isn’t that large, but the limit is clear. Exactly in that segment in your film - the scene of the negotiation about the number of the Turkish soldiers is the perfect example of the audacious and impudent listener, who, although he listens the story for the first time, he intervenes in it. It speaks of one other thing: the relativity of every data we get from the past through some medium. Can that intervention, not by the real witness, but by the author, which transfers the information, can become hat big that what we get today as an absolute fact of truth, actually can be a pure fiction? Isn’t that a reason to question the view on the history study-books as a fiction, as novels and such? Are such forgeries real in this global village of ours?
MM: It’s more than obvious and probably it was always like that. Today it’s more a question of an intentional manipulation from the political, psychological or of plain and simple selfish reasons. I want to introduce you in to the reality and history as I see it myself. Fake informations are made independently of that how reachable are they, anyway. The accessibility to the facts only does the lie more obvious - but only for those who really search for the truth. The next question is how much one truth can be objective, because we can approach very objectively to the history material, but we can see it and comprehend it differently, and so we can transfer it differently. And if we still stand on the belief that the objective truth exists, the fact is that it’s, most often, manipulated by the narrator and his intentions… So, the main goal, the main intention of this film is to say exactly this, but in an euphoric, pleasant, impudent way. Don’t trust me, and by inertia, don’t believe the films and the film narrators in general. Enjoy them freely, but with the safe distance. So, don’t trust to the “Assassins From Salonika”, or the films with John Wayne, nor CNN. Look for your own truth. Whenever you can, you go at the sight to be sure of the information, or consult whatever more information sources that you can. And if I go back to the previous question, the third reason they “hate” “Dust” is maybe exactly that: “Dust” breaks the very structure by which they work for the last 30 or 50 years.

* Once you mentioned that “Dust” is a cubist film. In some parts you can sense he influence from the so-called Russian Formalism, who itself is an air of the cube-futurism. Eisenstain is under great influence of that formalism. For “Dust” is the word that is over-blooded film. Viktor Shklovski, one of the most significant theoreticians of the formalism, said: “in the at, the blood isn’t bloody… It’s a material of the artistic construction”.
MM: I agree. Absolutely. Hitchkok said that more plainly when Ingrid Bergman cried during filming some scary scene. He approached to her and said: “Hey, this is only a film!” (he laughs).

* About the two scenes with the hero from the comics - Corto Maltese. I’ll mention the formalists again, Danil Harms this time, and his famous story of the redhead man. As an author, he first introduces a character and he quite openly says that is redheaded: “a redheaded man”. Right after that, he denies all of those attributes and simply chases his main character out of the narration, placing himself in the situation to find himself without a hero. This, certainly, is an auto-referent procedure in art. Did Maltese have this reason to show up, in order to build a play upon the function and position of the film characters in the narrative film structure?
MM: You know, that aren’t some rational decisions of mine, but more like intuitive ones. I first make a structure with completely fictional. Afterwards, I do my research and I see what can be done based on the similarities with the optionally real/historic personalities. Even then, I anecdotally imprint the real characters. They have the role as J.F.K. in some of the Robert Rauschenberg’s paintings does. He’s there, but the painting isn’t there because of him. That’s he case with Freud in “Dust”. Next step was: if in that time & space, a fictional character, like my Luke, walked around, as well as those real characters at that same time & space - Freud or Picasso, why shouldn’t be there another, also fictional character as Corto, although he’s made up by another author. I only don’t mention his name. He’s recognized only by those who know Corto. In that period, Maltese travels at the places were the “heat is on”, so it’s most probable that, although fictional, at that time he went to Macedonia (he laughs).