Humor as protection against harmful environment

Film Proto-Slavic was shown on Saturday, October 18, in the MTS hall, and after the show, together with Maksimović and Predin, Dejan Cukić, Nikola Čuturilo, Petar Janjatović, Zdenko Kolar, Dragan Kremer, Petar Peca Popović spoke about the film.

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Far from the light stage of big cities, in Leskovac, has been organizing for the 19th year writer Saša Stojanović literary festival Think Tank Town. In the country of a destroyed public scene and trampled culture, it is no exaggeration to say that it is a miracle. And wonder of wonders are the guests who, without hesitation, respond to Stojanović's invitation: Zoran Predin three times, as well as Boris Dežulović (jumped from nearby Pisk near Omiš) who opened the first edition of the festival with Predrag Lucić, and Dario Grgić, Teofil Pančić, Dubravka Stojanović, Ivan Čolović stayed in Leskovac... the list of guests from Yugoslavia (and beyond) becomes more and more impressive every year. In his nineteenth manifestation Think Tank Town he also hosted Slovenian film director Slobodan Maksimović with a film Old Slavonic (Proto-Slavic), according to the title of one of the most famous songs of Zoran Predin and "Lačnoj Franz", which was a kind of Serbian pre-premiere of this film, which arrives in Belgrade on Saturday, October 18 (see antrfile).

The work biography of Slobodan Maksimović is impressive, as well as the number of awards for everything he has done so far. Let's say, short feature films 1/2 i Agape they were shown at more than thirty international festivals in competitive selection and won 14 international awards. Thanks for Sunderland. is Maksimović's first feature-length film, which, again, won great awards. The short film in one shot fared even better The Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. Family movie hit grave (2022) was seen in cinemas by about 120.000 viewers, and the mini-series Examples of Inspector Vrenko already in its third season, it is the most watched series on RTV Slovenia in this millennium. August 2024, feature-length documentary film Old Slavonic premiered at the film festival in Sarajevo (awards are included).

To the question "where did the idea for a film about Predin come from?", he answers simply: "There aren't many people in the world who in their 45-year career have published 45 albums, written three novels, composed music for film and theater, acted and not only haven't stopped, but are still creating, questioning themselves and society, criticizing the systems... In addition to all of this, Zoran is the father of five children. There is, of course, my personal fascination with Zoran Predin's lyrics and music." In the film, almost everyone who meant, or who means something in rock and pop music in the area of ​​Yugoslavia, speaks in the film, music critics, writers, artists who are connected to Predin in one way or another.

"WEATHER" According to the people who talk about Predin in the film, we know that the filming lasted for years...

SLOBODAN MAKSIMOVIĆ: We shot the film for five years, and the editing process lasted about seven months. My main interlocutor on that trip was, of course, Zoran. Before the shooting, I had several long conversations with him to try to understand his life path and make a story out of it. He helped me a lot in choosing an interlocutor. We are talking about people from different professions, from culture to sports to science. Those people, from all parts of Yugoslavia, are Predin's contemporaries well versed in the development of his career, and they also knew him privately. His mother was also a great help, who diligently collected all clippings from Yugoslav newspapers and arranged them in albums by decades. Unfortunately, many dear people from the film are slowly leaving us, even during the filming we were left without Balašević, and not long after that without the Slovenian satirist and intellectual Saša Hribar, Igor Misdaris from the group "Šukar", Matija Dedić and Gabi Novak, but that's why we have this document that will save them all from oblivion, because they deserve it.

The film chronologically follows Predin's life, What is it, if you allow, an extremely brave decision. Did you know right away that you were going to make a film following a chronological sequence?, or the idea matured over time?

Of course, it would be easier to include only one period of Predin's career, say "Lačni Franz" or even just one album, but from the beginning we wanted to show his entire career because the period of "Lačni Franz" is only a third, or even a quarter of his rich creativity. From the very beginning, the script was set chronologically, which does not mean that I didn't try to turn things on their head at the very beginning, but soon the editor and I went back to the chronological narration because it was the most logical way to tell the story.

At one point you resort to an animated solution, in the depiction of one extremely rude, explicit and hilarious play by Arsen Dedić...

From the very beginning I knew where that episode had to come and in what way I had to present it. I looked at it like a new part in a musical composition, or like a new volume in a book. Something that will rock the audience halfway through the movie. The story is great, and for those who haven't seen the movie, it's about Arsen's invention "Perpetuum mobile", which he actually drew on Zoran Predin's refrigerator. I will stop at this point.

Your movie, among other things, destroys some of the more persistent prejudices, let's say the prejudice about reserved Slovenians.

In the film, Boris Dežulović presents the theory that Zoran Predin was replaced in the maternity hospital and that the real Zoran Predin lives in Živinice near Tuzla and wanders around with his ski jumps looking for a new identity. Why this is so is best for viewers to judge for themselves after watching the film.

You have been in Slovenia for a long time., but you can easily move around the Yugoslav territory (and time). That makes you a competent observer and interpreter of post-Yugoslav events (ne)opportunity.

I was born in Sarajevo, I lived for a short period in Skopje, and now I have been living in Ljubljana for 25 years. Based on that, it could be said that I am competent, but I leave competence to those more competent than me. I notice that we are definitely still united by the invisible ring of culture and cuisine. Whenever I went to a film festival outside the borders of the former homeland, all the creators from this area would stick to each other like magnets. That is an undeniable fact. Another thing I notice is that the current politics wash over us in waves from north to south. What Slovenian politics was dealing with some ten years ago suddenly appears in Croatia, and then it reaches Serbia and so on. So my competence is more observational. What I think I can do is translate some of my well-intentioned thoughts into cinematic language.

The two hours of your movie go by at an astonishing speed. You don't need to know anything about Zoran Predin to watch the film with your mouth open and your eyes wide.

It's really hard for me to see through the minds of the audience, because if I knew that, then every one of my films would win an Oscar. I look at art as something that will cause people to feel any kind of emotion, anger, laughter, crying. Art must touch the human soul. With Praslovan it worked for us. Many people approached me after the film with a smile, while wiping away tears. I think they are touched by the fact that the film covers an era of exceptional creators, who are an indispensable part of our common history. But this is not the case only with Zoran's generation, in Sarajevo, after the premiere, a friend who saw the film with her sixteen-year-old daughter approached me and said that her daughter thanked her endlessly for bringing her to see our film. A few days after that, she wrote to me that her daughter, born in Sarajka, was learning the Slavic language in order to better understand Zoran Predin's poetry. That's great for me. Most people tell us after the screening: "We thought we knew everything about Zoran." When it comes to the editing of such films, this is of course the key thing. Together with editor Yuri Moškon, we practically built the story on the fly. I had a script written, but a script for a documentary is not the same as a script for a feature film. There is a lot of unpredictability, from the interlocutor to the archival material. Fortunately, we had plenty of time to compose the story in peace. The rhythm imposed itself, all I had to do was listen to it and follow it by feeling.

The first version lasted three and a half hours. What dilemmas did you face in editing?, by what criteria did you choose the motifs and what will you do, finally, from these unpublished hours and a half?

I believe that in the three and a half hours of the film, there would be too much information that would simply overwhelm the viewers. I'm honestly not a fan of movies longer than two hours myself, unless they're made by Kubrick. Hitchcock wonderfully said "The length of the film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder". Of course, there were a lot of dilemmas in the assembly, but I set some rules for myself:

1. Archival and other visual material is the basis for telling the film's story, in order to avoid the film becoming a collection of talking heads. 2. Dry statistical data, which are otherwise important for understanding Zoran Predin, will be presented through a play in which a tourist guide on a walk through Maribor and through the museum of Zoran Predin's wax figures communicates the data to tourists. 3. I will not play a single song in its entirety in the film. The songs will serve as a gateway for opening new topics.

When you limit yourself in some way, then the editing process becomes easier. Yes, the first version lasted three and a half hours, we dream of a three-part series, but for that we need funds, because we need to recolor the material and tonally process it. We have everything ready so we'll see what happens.

Proto-Slavic is extremely funny. Like Predin himself, after all. It's witty., though, feature and your most awarded film The Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. Can you imagine a movie without humor?

No, I can't imagine anything without humor, not even a movie. Humor is an integral part of life, and if the film is somehow a projection of our lives, then it must be there as well. Even in genre horror films and difficult life dramas, there is and must be. To me, life without humor is unimaginable, it is probably a shield that protects me from the harmful effects of the environment.