I think he is a bloody GREAT director. But no one here ever talks about him. Someone here must have seen at least one of his films!
I havn't seen all of them, but have seen some.
I saw "Underground" first, and just loved it!
I have also seen "Time of the Gypsies" and "Super 8 Stories".
This is a director I really respect. I don't think he makes movies for the public. "Super 8 Stories" is a very narrow film.
Put he is really a director to keep your eyes on!!!
Oh.......by the way........ Magnolia rules!!!!!!!!!!
>35mm
Underground is his best, but his comedies "arizona dream" and "black cat, white cat" are also awesome.
Kusturica has new film "Life is a miracle"
please see the kick ass trailer at www.lavieestunmiracle.com
He played guitar in The Good Thief.
Quote from: rustinglassUnderground is his best, but his comedies "arizona dream" and "black cat, white cat" are also awesome.
i thought Underground was a comedy... :oops: ok, i didn't but it feels like one by the minute...
btw Underground is terrific!!!!!! i'd love to watch more Kusturica's movies
ohhhh and talking about Underground i don't know why but it made remind some Fellini's movies, i was the only one?
Quote from: mutinycoHe played guitar in The Good Thief.
he did. he had two or three lines and they all were funny.
and that trailer for Life is a Miracle is simply flabbergasting.
Quote from: Vile5
ohhhh and talking about Underground i don't know why but it made remind some Fellini's movies, i was the only one?
No, you're not the only one. Fellini was one of his masters, all of his films have a fellini-esque kind of ridiculous folie and chaos mainly associated with the music. Live music always with a crazy gipsie or mariachi band.
Underground is a comedy, all of his films are, but most of them (all but black cat white cat) have a very tragic element. I guess you could say it is a tragic comedy.
I actually met a serbian woman once and we were talking about the film and she told me: "It's not a parody, we really do behave like that!". This phrase got stuck in my head (because it was probably the only time I have ever inteligently discussed cinema out of my family and these boards), and everytime I watch the film, its like getting high, it's unbelievable just hoe perfect it is. I'll say it again: Underground is the best film ever.
Underground is definitely one of the best films i ever saw in my life, it's a pity that i could watch it just this week for first time...
And i'd had love to talk with that serbian woman too, sounds really interesting the fact that she admited that serbian people act like that, it's crazy but exciting at the same time, i guess that's the reason why Yugoslavia (or ex Yugoslavia) had several wars
You read French, right rusting??
Emir Kusturica : L'humour est son arme
ADEN | 11.05.04
Un âne, une chanteuse d'opéra, un lit qui vole et, au milieu de la guerre, la caravane Kusturica passe... Présenté au Festival de Cannes, La vie est un miracle sort simultanément en salles à Paris.
aden :
Les Serbes... les Bosniaques... Vous évoquiez déjà cette déchirure dans Underground. Qu'est-ce qui a changé depuis ce film réalisé il y a presque dix ans ?
Emir Kusturica : Pour moi, rien. D'un point de vue politique, j'ai toujours le même regard : ce qui m'intéresse, c'est l'humanité, pas les idéologies. On peut trouver cela naïf. Moi, c'est ce que je cherche en premier lieu dans tout ce que j'entreprends : l'humanité. Comme cinéaste, ce qui a changé, c'est que j'ai changé de genre. On pourrait dire qu'Underground est rabelaisien, un peu grotesque, avec quelques caractéristiques métaphysiques. La vie est un miracle est plus proche de moi ; c'est une ballade où j'essaie de creuser à la fois la dramaturgie, la poésie et la comédie. Un de mes amis, Peter Handke, a défini Underground comme un film qui rassemble Shakespeare et les Marx Brothers. Je le remercie infiniment... parce qu'ainsi il souligne ce qui me caractérise vraiment : ce que j'essaye de faire est une tâche impossible.
Ici, avec ce couple qui s'aime mais qui n'en a pas le droit, vous êtes plus du côté de Shakespeare ; on pense à Roméo et Juliette. Mais version comique.
Mes ancêtres étaient serbes, je suis né en Bosnie ; ce n'est pas parce qu'on nous oblige à penser en termes d'inimitié irréductible qu'il faut abandonner tout sens de l'humour et choisir un camp contre l'autre. L'humour, c'est une arme, essentielle. Si je dois me resituer aujourd'hui, c'est entre l'influence de Shakespeare et celle de Tchekhov.
Tchekhov, c'est la discrétion. Vos films sont des ouragans.
Peut-être, mais, comme lui, j'en reviens toujours à la famille. Je le fais intuitivement. Je m'aperçois, au bout de huit films, que c'est un thème essentiel. La famille, c'est un fondement. Un élément mythologique. Tous mes personnages, on sait d'où ils viennent. Quelle est leur famille. D'où Tchekhov. Pour lui, les familles sont intimement liées au paysage de l'endroit où elles vivent.
Dans votre film, c'est important ?
Essentiel. Les paysages ont une influence directe, et c'est la première fois que j'arrive à exprimer de manière aussi précise mon amour de la nature. Ce que je veux montrer, et faire ressentir, c'est que la nature n'entend ni ne voit la guerre ; elle vit à l'intérieur des personnages tout autant qu'elle les entoure. Je pourrais définir cela comme un panthéisme personnel ; on pourrait trouver des références dans le genre Spinoza : l'idée, c'est d'atteindre la moelle de l'âme humaine. Mais entre le dire et pouvoir le faire avec une caméra...
Cela se traduit par la façon dont vous filmez une vallée, une forêt, un chemin rocailleux à travers les montagnes ?
Par exemple. Puisque mon film ne se passe pas dans un décor urbain, j'ai voulu montrer comment la nature réagissait à cette histoire d'amour. Harmoniser les personnages avec leur environnement, c'est ça mon grand pari.
Faire jouer les arbres ?
Dans la région où l'on a tourné, en Serbie occidentale, il y a un mariage exceptionnel d'essences d'arbres que normalement on ne trouve jamais ensemble, et - ce serait bien la preuve que Dieu existe - là, on les trouve tous réunis. L'existence d'une variété ne limite pas la prolifération des autres. C'est une des façons qu'a la nature d'illustrer ce que raconte le film.
Vous le saviez en tournant dans cet endroit ?
Non, je l'ai découvert sur place, pendant le tournage. C'est un biologiste de là-bas qui m'a expliqué que cela provenait d'une combinaison entre la qualité des sols et le fait que c'est une région au croisement de plusieurs autres. Comme il y a une très forte dénivellation, c'est toute la région qui voit ces espèces coexister. Ce que la nature a fait avec les arbres, les hommes, ici, n'y sont pas parvenus.
Pourtant vous faites un film très joyeux, et optimiste.
Cette leçon de la nature ne doit pas peser, mais je crois que cela transpire du film. Les gens créent des situations dans lesquelles ils se retrouvent. Moi, je ne connaissais pas scientifiquement les propriétés de cette région, mais cela devait avoir un sens que je me trouve là.
Vous êtes superstitieux ?
Justement, pas du tout ! Mais il y a des symboles dans la nature qui font écho à la nature humaine. Et, au final, j'appelle mon film La vie est un miracle... Il fallait presque oser tellement les gens oublient aujourd'hui à quel point la vie est, effectivement, un miracle. On s'attache de plus en plus à ce qui est fonctionnel et on croit de moins en moins aux miracles. Je parle du monde dit "développé", car le reste du monde y croit toujours.
Le miracle que révèle le film, c'est celui que produit, inexplicablement, l'amour.
C'est particulièrement saillant ; c'est ça l'essence et la substance de l'amour : il crée le miracle et fait qu'il advienne.
On peut ne pas croire au miracle et voir votre film comme une énergique fantaisie.
Ce serait dommage. En ignorant la naïveté, on se prive d'un accès immédiat à la vie. Aujourd'hui, les gens ont beaucoup de raisons de se dire très bien informés ; on tourne le bouton de la télé et on croit savoir ce qui s'est passé dans le monde, ce qu'est la politique... Mais, en faisant un effort, on peut se rendre compte qu'on nous ment, alors on devient cynique et on rejette cette naïveté de la vie qui inclut l'idéalisme, l'utopie, et tous ces mots pas très à la mode. Pour être politiquement correct, il faut suivre le flux majoritaire : et là, ce n'est pas la spontanéité qui prime. J'ai choisi de faire exactement le contraire.
Quand on fait un film, on perd un peu de ses illusions ?
Pas forcément. On peut faire du cinéma avec ses convictions, il faut y croire. Il faut simplement s'exclure soi-même du courant dominant. Aki Kaurismaki le fait. Ses films n'ont rien à voir avec l'époque hystérique que nous vivons. Son point de vue humaniste est incroyable. A côté d'un cinéma qui n'est que technique, addition de chiffres, il existe bien une place pour ceux qui croient que la vie est un miracle.
Vous filmez une partie de football délirante, il y a des animaux dans tous les coins, vous soulignez le burlesque des situations... Votre film est un grand jeu.
C'est un choix. Le cinéma est souvent utilisé comme un moyen de choquer, de stresser le public, de lui faire peur. Mais moi j'ai beaucoup aimé, dans le cinéma du passé, le burlesque, qui vous met dans un état plus protégé. Et ce que je cherche ce n'est pas seulement montrer la nature, les animaux, la fantaisie et la drôlerie des situations, c'est souligner les valeurs humaines. En fait, je pense que le seul reproche que l'on peut vraiment m'adresser, ce serait que mon film ne provoque aucune émotion.
C'est possible ?
Franchement ? Non. Mes films ne sont pas destinés à vous transformer en consommateurs. Je ne fais pas de champ contre champ sur une star qui joue les héros. Je vous propose une vision du monde, la mienne. Vous l'aimez, ou pas. Vous êtes vivant : vous allez forcément réagir.
Propos recueillis par Philippe Piazzo
La vie est un miracle d'Emir Kusturica. Présenté en compétition officielle au Festival de Cannes le 14 mai ; sortie en salles le même jour.
but of course!
I read yesterday on a Portuguese newspaper that Kusturica is a big fan of FC Porto's football team. That made me love him even more and well, he can take home that Palm D'or this year (again) :wink:
Quote from: ElPandaRoyalI read yesterday on a Portuguese newspaper that Kusturica is a big fan of FC Porto's football team. That made me love him even more and well, he can take home that Palm D'or this year (again) :wink:
If that happens, he'd be the first man to win it three times.
hey, that's a pretty cool article. good for him
Quote from: ElPandaRoyalI read yesterday on a Portuguese newspaper that Kusturica is a big fan of FC Porto's football team. That made me love him even more and well, he can take home that Palm D'or this year (again) :wink:
I doubt it will happen.... He should have kept his views on Kill Bill to himself... :( :( :(
but then again... Tarantino is a really nice guy. I hope there are no bad feelings between them.
What did he say about Kill Bill?
Quote from: SoNowThenWhat did he say about Kill Bill?
I don't know but I'm guessing it's the same thing that Iñarritu thinks about Tarantino: he doesn't understands violence, nor has he experienced it.
If I were QT, my comeback to Innaritu would be the same statement, only instead of "violence" I would substitute "spirituality".
Anyway, I hope what Emir said was either valid, or at the very least, funny.
Quote from: SoNowThen
Anyway, I hope what Emir said was either valid, or at the very least, funny.
on the kitano thread:
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal
Kusturica saying Kill Bill is a pile of shit.
Quote from: rustinglasson the kitano thread:
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal
Kusturica saying Kill Bill is a pile of shit.
I think he meant that hypothetically...
Quote from: SoNowThenQuote from: rustinglasson the kitano thread:
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal
Kusturica saying Kill Bill is a pile of shit.
I think he meant that hypothetically...
Maybe...but if he
didn't, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it, would you??????????????
Hehehe, er....
What I mean is that ElPanda posted that like a "what if", meaning would it bother Kusturica fans who liked Kill Bill.
Also, as SoNowThen I could do nothing about it. But once I ditched my glasses and put on my cape, as SuperSoNowThen, I could fly and up rotate the earth backwards, thus changing time back and giving myself a chance to alter the past.
Quote from: SoNowThen
I think he meant that hypothetically...
I never thought it like that. Panda must get back here and straighten this whole thing out!
What the hell... he probably hates kill bill anyway....
It was hypothetical...
:roll:
Quote from: SoNowThenIf I were QT, my comeback to Innaritu would be the same statement, only instead of "violence" I would substitute "spirituality".
u don't know what ur talking about.
Quote from: PubrickQuote from: SoNowThenIf I were QT, my comeback to Innaritu would be the same statement, only instead of "violence" I would substitute "spirituality".
u don't know what ur talking about.
Well, I have to say that both Tarantino and Iñárritu understand very well the subjects they deal with. They make great films and I hate it when directors diss other directors like that. Like, "let me badmouth Tarantino just for people to know I really don't give a turd about the hottest director in the world right now. I'm soooooo cool by doing that, aint I? Right? Yeeeeees........No? :( ". It's the PTA-Fincher or Smith-PTA all over again. Just make your great movies and shut up, people 8)
Anyway, sorry for going off-topic
now i don't know what ur talking about.
Quote from: Pubricknow i don't know what ur talking about.
I get that all the time. At least you can't kick me in the teeth like everybody does.
Kusturica DID win a prize at cannes: the prix de l'education nationale!!!!!!
I didn't even know such a prize existed. it's for "cinematographic and pedagogical interest as well as artistic qualities". This award makes the film a pedagogical reference of the year for cinema schools. A cd-rom will be made to help understanding it and analysing it for the pupils.
http://www.festival-cannes.fr/news_archive.php?langue=6001&page=9&actu=920
Life is a miracle poster:
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Great poster
just found this. very funny. some wild times he had while shooting the film Underground.
Some extracts of the production diary of Pierre Spengler and Charlotte Fraisse
november 5, 1993. Filming begins in Prague. The gypsy musicians still did not pass the border between Yugoslavia and Hungary. The passports are OK, but as they are gypsy, the customs officers ask 1000 deutsch marks for everyone. Whatever the Eastern European country, problems are always the same. Their absence would seriously compromise filming.
november 14, 1993. We insist, thanks to the experience of Time of the gypsies, that the gypsy actors are paid only at the end of film, otherwise they would take the money and disappear.
november 17, 1993. Filming is very slow, the working scheme is never respected, and Emir, who rises later and later, changes continuously the script and manages to work only late in the evening while improvising. We still think he should create at his own rhythm and according to his inspiration.
november 19, 1993. The tenses between Miki and Lazar (Marko and Blacky) are the highest. Emir, to simulate them did everything so that these tenses get increasingly strong. As a result : they practically hate each other. But insofar as we film scenes where they are supposed to be the best friends of the world, Emir is very dissatisfied with the results and tired of the unpleasant jokes they mutually play.
november 20, 1993. Almost the whole set and accessories was found in local markets. The filming conditions in the basement were rather unpleasant. Now there are even vermin, filth and bacterium. Lazar hurted himself with an accessory suffers from an infection.
november 23, 1993. A crew member died. All the team is very sad, in particular Emir who declares that makes the second dead on the set. The rumour of curse grows bigger.
november 24, 1993. Emir had promised to make cuts in the scenario. We realize on the contrary that he unceasingly adds new pages.
november 30, 1993. Some gypsies leave for disease. Always the curse !
december 12, 1993. The script girl informs us that in the two last days was shot "only one line of the original script".
december 14, 1993. Emir is very depressed. The situation in Bosnia obsesses him.
december 16, 1993. At the end of very long discussions, the gypsy orchestra grows from 5 to 9 members. They accept the same total pay.
december 20, 1993. The director assistant, in the best Stalinian tradition, proposes that all the participants come to make their self-criticism at the end of the day. We refuse, horrified.
january 12, 1994. The situation is very serious. Emir announced that he gave up the film. He said to his friends he knows the cinema is finished for him. He can't bear any more the pressure but doesn't manage to work differently. He never knows how the scenario will evolve because he doesn't stop transforming it day after day. He says to a friend : "Anyway, I know how to reconvert myself. I will buy a small sardine factory I've been told in Montenegro.". Later, at 3 o'clock in the morning, Emir drinks 2 very powerful beers and 3 sleeping pills. Daniela Romano (of the production line team) is in his apartment, charged to empeach him to escape when he wakes up, in the case he would still be in the same state of mind.
january 17, 1994. The wedding scene. Very big problem : the night before, Lazar was being so much insulted by his director that he got memorably drunk. The following day, he is unable to play.
january 25, 1994. Eleventh week of filming. Emir evokes the possibility of changing the main actors. We are getting mad.
january 26, 1994. Each time Emir goes drinking a coffee (or goes to the toilets), we are afraid he goes away definitively.
february 10, 1994. More and more problems, especially as the actors were engaged for 4 weeks and that they work for more than thirteen.
february 18, 1994. Miki and Lazar refuse to take the same car, do not speak any more, and will discuss separately with Emir. The rush projection of the wedding lasts seven hours.
february 25, 1994. The working plan indicated 6 days for filming the wedding scene. It is now the twenty-fifth and the scene is still not finished. Lazar has a conjunctivitis. The doctor asked for fifteen days rest (what is strictly impossible).
march 31, 1994. Shooting of the Slavonian village in the Czech countryside. Miki must leave to play in another film, and Emir proposes him to come back again in two or three months.
april 6, 1994. The laboratory announces that the most complicated scene of the Slavonian village is striped.
september 1, 1994. Filming starts in Belgrade. All the team is reassured : the two main actors are always the same.
september 6, 1994. Production meeting with Emir concerning the Festival of Cannes. We ask him whether the film will be ready if filming stops in december. He answers yes. Everyone chooses to believe him, but do we have the choice?
september 12, 1994. Night scene on the Danube. One discovers, right in the middle of the scene a red pack of cigarettes floatting on the river. Emir pulls his gun and shoots six bullets on the pack which sinks.
september 21, 1994. Filming the zoo scene. The lions, pumas and other tigers being released in nature for the needs of the scene, there are five snipers armed with paralysing cartridges rifles.
october 4, 1994. Filming the brawl in the bar. 2 minute 40 seconds sequence shot. Marko knocks the actor who plays a dealer with a snooker stick. The sequence shot is very complex and apparently they don't know the existence of the stuntmen in Belgrade. After 19 takes, the back of the unhappy actor is of an indescribable pain.
october 9 1994. Emir, Lazar and Miki had an honest explanation. It seems they solved their problems. During filming, Lazar, in rage, knocked an actor with a snooker ball, the poor actor has an enormous bump.
november 20, 1994. To make the cows climb up on the island, Emir shoots in the air. The cows look at it without moving.
november 21, 1994. The island must detach. There are three cameras and two men inside the island which was conceived by Kreka, the decorator head, with a very complex system to maintain a water level constant. The orchestra starts to play, but a cable refuses to be detached and water gets inside the structure. The island is likely to sink, it will take 24 hours to repeair it.
december 16, 1994. At 8 o'clock pm, the arrivals door of the airport of Sofia (Bulgaria) opens for Charlie the chimpanzee, accompanied by its two trainers, soldiers and customs officers. Charlie has a personal caravan. He will however spend the night in the hotel.
december 19, 1994. Charlie refuses to play after 7 o'clock pm.
december 20, 1994. The hotel director had not been aware of the presence of Charlie. He meets in the hall a Bulgarian service provider accompanied by a dog. The director, furious, shouts that animals are prohibited in the hotel. At this moment, the door of the elevator opens and Charlie, the key of his room in his hand, leaves the elevator, gives his key to the reception, and leaves the hotel. The director has almost an heart-attack.
january 31, 1995. Filming is finished.
Quote from: rustinglassnovember 5, 1993. Filming begins in Prague.
november 14, 1993. We insist, thanks to the experience of Time of the gypsies, that the gypsy actors are paid only at the end of film, otherwise they would take the money and disappear.
january 31, 1995. Filming is finished.
:lol: Amazing
Mideast Director Accuses Writer of Slander
Sarajevo-born film director Emir Kusturica has accused a Montenegrin writer of slander in a private lawsuit filed with a court in the Balkan republic's capital, Podgorica.
Kusturica's lawyer, Marika Novakovic, said the filmmaker contends Andrej Nikolaidis slandered him in a May commentary for the Montenegrin weekly Monitor. In the article, Nikolaidis claimed that Kusturica supported former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's policies in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
The article called Kusturica a "media star of Milosevic's war machinery." Nikolaidis also allegedly accused Kusturica of "siding with the war's executioners, instead of the victims," the lawyer said.
Kusturica left Bosnia before the outbreak of the 1992-95 ethnic war and took up self-imposed exile in neighboring Serbia, the dominant republic in then-Yugoslavia.
"These untruths damage the reputation and honor of my client," Novakovic told the court Monday.
Novakovic wouldn't say what damages Kusturica was seeking.
He later told The Associated Press that Nikolaidis "insinuates Kusturica supported the villains who perpetrated crimes against the Muslims in Bosnia."
Nikolaidis dismissed the accusation, saying it was "no libel matter but a difference of intellectual opinion," and that he had reacted to an article published in France citing Kusturica's pro-Milosevic stand.
"Kusturica has openly publicly engaged on the side of the villains in Bosnia's war," Nikolaidis told the AP, citing as proof photographs of Kusturica with Milosevic's associates and Belgrade's funding for his Cannes award-winning film, "Underground."
"He is now washing his hands of his past work," he said.
The court will hear the case next month, when a verdict is expected. Kusturica has filed a separate lawsuit against Monitor magazine for "psychological pain."
"Underground," Kusturica's movie on the war in the former Yugoslavia, won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Palm, in 1995.
Life Is A Miracle is great. One of Kusturica's best. Some trully hilarious moments and one of the best lines ever involving a penguin.
Yes, I saw it last week, it's a wonderful wonderful film. The script, the acting, the music, the photography, they're fantastic. and it has one of the best sequences ever envolving a phone sex line, a rocket launcher and "the end", by the doors.
Sarajevo-Born Director Wins Lawsuit
Sarajevo-born film director Emir Kusturica has won a slander lawsuit against a Montenegrin writer who accused him of supporting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Andrej Nikolaidis, columnist for Montenegrin weekly Monitor, will pay $6,490 to Kusturica for calling the famed director a "media star of Milosevic's war machinery" in a May commentary.
A court in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, ruled that Nikolaidis had slandered Kusturica and damaged his reputation, the writer confirmed Saturday.
Nikolaidis said he would appeal the ruling.
Nikolaidis told The Associated Press that "it wasn't my writing that damaged Emir Kusturica's reputation the director did it himself by the way he behaved during the Bosnian war."
Kusturica left his native Bosnia before the outbreak of the 1992-95 ethnic war and took up self-imposed exile in neighboring Serbia, the dominant republic in then-Yugoslavia.
Kusturica enjoyed support from Milosevic's government, which agreed to finance his work.
"Underground," Kusturica's movie on the war in the former Yugoslavia, won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or in 1995.
from kustu.com
Emir Kusturica will be the president of the 58th festival de Cannes, which will take place from may 11 to may 22 ! After having received 2 Palmes d'or for When father was away on business and Underground, as well as the prix de la mise en scène for Time of the gypsies and last year the prix de l'éducation nationale for Life is a miracle, Emir Kusturica is used to the Croisette : two years ago, he was president of the jury of the shorts films. He just declares : "I want to thank the Festival de Cannes which, twice, has given to my films the golden palm (...). Now, it's my turn to defend the valeurs of the Festival : my mission as the president of the jury is to place the aesthetic and the artistic at the heart of the event.". Emir Kusturica will succeed to Quentin Tarantino at the prestigious title of Président du jury, once the world tour with the No Smoking Orchestra is finished. Emir also loves to say "I was born several times, and one! of my births took place in Cannes"...
More on this from the BBC:
Bosnian director gets Cannes role
Emir Kusturica, the Bosnian director who won Cannes film festival's prestigious top prize twice, will chair the event's jury this year.
Kusturica, 50, won the Palme d'Or with 1985's When Father Was Away on Business and Underground in 1995.
He will now head the panel that will pick this year's Palme d'Or winner.
Last year, the jury was headed by US director Quentin Tarantino and Michael Moore's controversial documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 won the top award.
'Aesthetics and art'
It beat Kusturica's Life Is a Miracle, which was also in the running. At last year's festival, Kusturica said he was waging a battle to save cinema from the money-obsessed influence of Hollywood.
On being named chairman, he said: "Now it is my turn to defend the festival's values.
"I have given myself the mission, as president of the jury, to put aesthetics and art at the heart of the show."
The Cannes film festival, one of the movie world's most glamorous and influential events, takes place from 11-22 May.
Kusturica will make a film about Maradona!
a happy day for football fans around the world!
Yes sir!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
more info (from kustu.com):
Stored a long time in the drawer, Maradona documentary project is now more than ever in Emir's mind. Indeed, after the tour in South America, whenb the rest of the band gets back to Europe, Emir shall stay in Argentina in order to shoot the first pictures at Diego Maradona's daughter's birthday. We know Emir Kusturica's passion for football (since when father was away on business until the memorable scene of Life is a miracle), it's in fact Diego Maradona himself who has chosen Emir Kusturica to take care of his image, and to restore the harmony within his family. Some sequences should then be shot in Napoli (Italy), Barcelona (Spain) and in Cuba, for a shooting length of 5 months (nevertheless the No Smoking Orchestra tour, and the Cannes festival jury presidence). This film isn't included in the StudioCanal contract, we can guess it will be produced by Rasta internationnal, Maja and Emir Kusturica's production company.
"Life is a Miracle" won the César award for the best film of the european union, tied with ken loach's "just a kiss".
'I will not cut my film'
He has won two Palmes d'Or and is threatening to pull his latest film from British cinemas. Emir Kusturica invites Fiachra Gibbons to the village he has built near Belgrade to explain all
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Emir Kusturica has just finished writing his letter to the censor. "I will not cut my film because, because, because ... because of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz." "What do you think?" he asks me. I tell him that as an argument it has a certain economy and elegance, but it might not be the most practical of approaches. "I don't care," he says. "That shithead is driving me nuts. He is messing with my sleep."
The British censor has asked him to remove a scene from his new film, Life Is a Miracle - a typically full-blooded romance set against the backdrop of the Bosnian war - in which a cat pounces on a dead pigeon. Kusturica had thought it a reasonable metaphor for how idealists and innocents are easy prey for calculating big beasts in times of conflict.
The offending shot lasts of all of two seconds and is about as disturbing as an episode of the Teletubbies. But the British censor said no and Kusturica, one of the greatest film directors in the world, is so flummoxed and upset that he is considering pulling the film from the UK altogether.
I beg him not to. "You don't realise what an emotive issue pigeons are in England," I say, with all the plausibility I can muster. "I am not cutting my film for this jerk," he insists. "Was he brought up by pigeons or something? I love Ken Loach and your football and your working class, but I do not believe the great English culture is going to be undermined by one eastern European cat.
"I just don't get it. The pigeon was already dead, we found it in the road. And no other censor has objected. What is the problem with you English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work."
The workings of the undeniably brilliant mind of Emir Kusturica, the only director other than Francis Ford Coppola to have won the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, can be equally unfathomable. Stories of Kusturica are legend. Of his gonzo love for guns, how he likes to fire off a few hundred rounds before breakfast to get the juices going, of the controlled anarchy of his sets, awash with goats, geese, Gypsy bands and explosives, and how he works his crews to the point of lunacy. On Life Is a Miracle, a sprawling Zhivago of a love story, he shot for 12 full nights in the small city of Cacek and didn't use a second of the footage.
Kusturica is a walking morass of contradictions: a Sarajevan "Muslim" whom many Bosnians accuse of abandoning his city at its hour of greatest need to side with the Serbs. And yet Kusturica was a fearless critic of Milosevic. He challenged one of his most blood-drenched henchmen to a public duel in Belgrade and squared up to a still more grisly Serb supremacist in the street.
Like his great films - Underground, Time of the Gypsies, When Father Was Away on Business and Black Cat, White Cat - he is passionate, unpredictable and hilarious: you can see why he drives himself and the people around him to madness, and why they always forgive him for it. He has an irresistible mix of bravery, warmth and vulnerability. Kusturica does not have fans as much as followers, who turn out in their thousands all over the world to his concerts when this bear of a man takes his Balkan "punk" band, the No Smoking Orchestra, on the road. But nothing could have prepared even them for what Kusturica has done now.
I turn up in Belgrade as the thermometer sinks south of -20 degrees. "Come to my village," he demands. "I have something to show you." Three thousand feet up on Tara mountain the next morning, the full effect of his latest piece of "inspired lunacy" sits under 2ft of snow. Kusturica has sunk himself deep into debt, spending more than £1m to build a pastoral paradise, his own version of Plato's republic, in one of Europe's last great peasant redoubts.
"This is my Utopia," he declares. "I lost my city [Sarajevo] during the war, now this is my home. I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, 10 in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports. Cities are humiliating places to live, particularly in this part of the world. Everything I earn now goes into this."
What started as a couple of salvaged traditional wooden houses 18 months ago, on a bluff above the spectacularly beautiful Mokra Gora valley in western Serbia, has mushroomed into a modern take on the great monastery-universities of the middle ages. The village is equipped with a library, Serbia's most advanced cinema and, most incongruously of all, an underground basketball arena - a tribute to the three world championships won by the former Yugoslavia. For Kustendorf, as he calls the place, is also a hymn to Serbian cultural achievement and traditional living - a kind of cultural Alamo, as a country that has been cut off from the world by war and sanctions opens itself up to the gentle mercies of globalisation.
"I am making a stand here. I want to do something constructive. In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie." Given that the prophets of the free market in Serbia often tend to be the same gangsters, war profiteers, smugglers and chancers that Kusturica lampoons in his films, you can see his logic.
Kusturica is even planning a film as a part of his crusade against consumerism, where the daughter of a prostitute flees the city with a country boy. "They say that I am a conservative, but I am not. I want there to be an alternative, to have other options rather than just this one authoritarian, corporate model. To me there has been a tectonic change in the world and corporate control has become the new bolshevism. I know it is crazy, but I want to create a place where people can come in an organised way to think differently, to think their own thoughts."
His model for this Balkan Fitzcarraldo is Chilander, the great Serbian monastery on the Greek holy mountain of Athos, which kept Slavonic scholarship alive in the dark ages, though it is not clear that even he knows what he will end up with. Just like his films, there's a great deal of extemporising. He has laid out and built 25 houses already, using his own idiosyncratic rules of classical proportion involving a set of ropes and a great deal of guesswork, "like the ancient Greeks did".
Yet this seat of learning will soon also have its own ski slope, and he is contemplating building another more secluded house for himself now that hundreds of his fans have begun to descend on the place at weekends. "The original monastery house in which I planned to spend the rest of my life is not working out. People come and you have to offer hospitality. Sometimes it's a bit like being in a glass cage." Even on the day I was there, he was stopped four times in the snow by visitors wanting to talk and have their photos taken with him.
Yet there is no doubting the sincerity of Kusturica's vision. He describes the Damascene moment when he decided to build the village like a celestial visitation. "One day when I was shooting I noticed a shaft of light hit the hillside. 'There I will build a village,' I thought." But the most jaw-dropping thing of all, given that Kusturica is descended from several generations of Bosnian Muslims, is that the centerpiece of the place is an orthodox church dedicated to the 13th-century scholar Sava, the patron saint of Serbia. What would his late father, Murat, have thought of that? "My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."
The war, and his despairing attempt to cling to the debris of the old Yugoslavia, still casts a long shadow on his work. He insists he didn't choose sides, and it was his refusal to do so that made him a pariah in Sarajevo, a city that he clearly loves but which he probably cannot return to. Mokra Gora is about as close as you can be in Serbia to Sarajevo without crossing the border. Even his house looks out over the mountains to Bosnia. It is hard not to see him as a man inching his way home. The war mostly passed this place by. Shepherds in sheep-pelt coats still make their own cheese, flowery rakia and smoked sausage.
The Muslim villages over the hills in the Drina valley were not so lucky. Many who refused to abandon their homes in 1992 were massacred. Plenty of Serbs died too, of course. Life Is a Miracle begins in the weeks before this idyll disintegrated and ends during the war when a Serb falls in love with a female Muslim hostage who is about to be exchanged for his own captured soldier son. It is based on a true story of torn loyalties, and Kusturica says it really hit home. The main character could almost be a cipher for him. Like thousands of others in the former Yugoslavia, Kusturica refused to believe that war was coming. "I couldn't accept what was happening. I have dealt with it now. It no longer haunts me," he insists, but you wonder. Much still rankles more than a decade on. He recounts the story of how an American journalist grilled him at Cannes when he made Underground, about why he hadn't made a film attacking Milosevic. " 'Have you ever heard of metaphor?' I asked him."
He is now making a documentary about Diego Maradona, someone with whom he feels more than a little cosmic affinity. "I am very impulsive too - I know how it can drive you into the zone of madness." We talk about that goal, the "hand of God", and the church that sprang up in Buenos Aires to honour the footballer, the cult of Santa Maradona. "Most people only remember Maradona for the bad parts now," he says. "But he was a genius, someone who lifted us and himself up to the level of the gods. When he said after he scored that goal that it was the hand of God, to me it really was. There are always motherfuckers queuing up to pull you down to earth. But we must fly occasionally, we all have to feel that joy or we are nothing."
jesus christ are all his interviews that good?!
Quote from: Pubrickjesus christ are all his interviews that good?!
pretty much.
"they think western shit is pie." - that cracks me up
Pictures of Mokra Gora
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The two geniuses:
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I have something in my eye......
So, after however long of being consistently reminded by rustinglass's avatar, I finally watched Underground.
Great, great move.
That is all.
<- It works!!!!!!!!!!
Fidelite backs newest film from Kusturica
PARIS -- Two-time Palme d'Or-winning director Emir Kusturica is co-producing his next movie, the Serbian-set love story "Promise Me This," with hot French production house Fidelite Prods., the producer said Monday. Billed as a return to a more intimate style for Kusturica, "Promise Me This" tells the story of a rustic old man whose last wish is for his son to go to the city and bring back a wife. "He discovers the city and at the same time lives a love story," said Olivier Delbosc, who runs Fidelite alongside Marc Missonnier. Budgeted at about €7 million ($8.7 million), the film will shoot early next year outside Belgrade, using a domestic cast.
i watched Life Is A Miracle because i was depressed. i haven't seen Underground in a while but it's just as joyous and cathartic.
Quote from: samsong on November 22, 2006, 02:24:16 AM
it's just as joyous and cathartic.
that's how i feel about Black Cat White Cat.
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Kusturica sets Pancho Villa movie
Director working on project with Gordan Mihic
Source: Variety
BERLIN -- Serbian helmer Emir Kusturica is preparing to make a biopic about Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.
The iconoclastic filmmaker, whose last project was a free-wheeling docu about the epic rise and fall of Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona, is currently working on the screenplay for "Seven Friends of Pancho Villa and the Woman With Six Fingers."
Kusturica confirmed to Variety that he is working with regular contributor Gordan Mihic, who also wrote the screenplays for the director's "Black Cat, White Cat" and "Time of the Gypsies."
Speaking by phone from his Kustendorf mountainside retreat in Serbia, Kusturica said he had been fascinated by Pancho Villa since his student days when Mexican films about revolutionary figures had "captured his attention."
Pancho Villa is a legendary figure in Mexico for the role he played in his country's revolution in the early 20th century.
The chance to make the project -- based on the novel "The Friends of Pancho Villa" by James Carlos Blake -- comes at a time when Kusturica feels he "finally understands the lives of revolutionaries and the tension between their ideals and what they accomplished."
French shingle Fidelite will produce; shooting in Mexico, Spain and some interiors in Serbia are due to begin by the end of the year or early 2010.
There are details on budget at this stage although it would be "kept as low as possible" according to Kusturica.
No decision has been made yet on who will play the part of Villa but Javier Bardem is being sought out by the director.
"I hope we are going to have a chance to talk with him soon but his involvement in not confirmed yet," said Kusturica.
Villa has previously been portrayed many times on screen by thesps such as Antonio Banderas, Telly Savalas and even Villa himself in the 1914 pic "The Life of General Villa," which was produced by D.W. Griffith and also starred Raoul Walsh as the young leader.
Johnny Depp eyes Pancho Villa role
Salma Hayek in talks to star in Kusturica pic
Source: Variety
ROME -- Serbian helmer Emir Kusturica is in advanced negotiations for Johnny Depp to star as Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa in his upcoming biopic titled "Seven Friends of Pancho Villa and the Woman With Six Fingers."
Kusturica, recently a guest of Italy's Turin Film Festival, said the script, written with regular collaborator Gordan Mihic ("Time of the Gypsies," "Black Cat, White Cat"), is completed, although lensing is not set to start until 2011, due to Depp's prior commitments.
Salma Hayek is also in advanced talks to co-star in the pic.
The Spanish-language biopic is to be shot partly in Mexico, where Villa -- an early 20th-century bandit who became a guerilla fighter and a hero to the poor -- is an iconic historical figure. Depp will act in Spanish, Kusturica said.
Depp and Kusturica collaborated previously on "Arizona Dream" in 1993.
The script is based on the biographical novel "The Friends of Pancho Villa," in which author James Carlos Blake recounts how Villa and his compadres had a great time fighting and robbing the rich, but also dancing, partying and making love.
The biopic is being set up by French shingle Fidelite, which also produced Kusturica's "Maradona" docu.
Villa has previously been portrayed many times on screen by thesps such as Antonio Banderas, Telly Savalas and even Villa himself in the 1914 pic "The Life of General Villa," which was produced by D.W. Griffith.
Prior to "Pancho Villa," Kusturica is planning to shoot a black comedy titled "Cool Water," set amid the MidEast conflict, about a Palestinian stripper working in Germany who returns to her homeland to bury her dead father. "Cool Water" is being produced by German indie Brave New Work.