Bosnia Blog

Update: Some facts are corrected. Thx to La Banda’s pianist Misko!

At the end of the 1980s La Banda were one of the best known bands on Sarajevo’s alternative rock scene. The musicians were just about to complete their debut album when their plans were dramatically changed by war. This personal documentary by the journalist and director Sergej Kreso, La Banda’s bass guitarist, records a reunion of members of the group after more than 15 years. The old friends return to Sarajevo from five different countries in order to complete two last songs and therefore finish the album they began before the war. However, Graffiti Street is not just a documentary about a meeting of musicians after a separation caused by war. Kreso, who has come back to Sarajevo from his new home in the Netherlands, attempts to find out how much the war affected the city and its burgeoning music scene. The spellbinding final concert of the reformed La Banda in a small Sarajevo club allows the happy years before the war to be remembered for one night at least.

This film is neither exciting nor interesting. I chose it over more famous films simply for its connection to Sarajevo. Native speakers might enjoy a few hilarious moments, but for foreigners it was a “Lost in Translation.”

I have left Sarajevo long ago but I seem to have brought away with me its sense of ethnical division, for example figuring out Bosnian names to discover their identities. A neutral, objective observer would have cared less whether the people in the movie are Serbs, Croats or Muslims; he would have directed his attention to the music-making and the reunion of the band. But me no! I had to “This guy is a Croat because he rather does nothing in Split than in Doboj.” “This must be a Serb band because the backup singer’s name is Ceca.” “This probably is a Croat band because the Croats have the best taste among the three ethnic groups, so this jazzy, blue underground music has to be from them.” “Oh no, this band is popular in Sarajevo, a city populated by Muslims and Serbs, so they have to Serbs.” My friend’s sister words once again rings truth: “Before the war, people didn’t pay attention to the name. Tanja or Ermina, it did not matter.”

One of my favorite scene was a band member commented about expecting a bus from hell from the direction of Poland as he was nervously prepared for the band’s first public performance in Sarajevo after a 15-year hiatus. I didn’t understand the connection right away and kept turning to my boyfriend “Do you understand why he brought up Poland?” Then finally it dawned on me. At a Turkish coffee shop in Sarajevo, a friend of mine Me. and I were discussing craps, among which was the up-and-down of the former Yugoslavia. “You know we were very rich. Our Tito Communism was different. We could travel freely. The other Eastern Europeans for example the Poles, whenever they traveled here, they carried with them bags of food on the buses. They used to be way poorer.”

Could this be the explanation for “the bus from hell?”

Trailer

Production Company
Boris T. Mati? ; PROPELER FILM - Sc–Savska 25 - Zagreb, 10000 Croatia; tel: +385 14 829 477; fax: +385 14 593 691; btm@propelerfilm.com; WWW.PROPELERFILM.COM

Resource

• Website of La Banda member, the pianist from Sweden. He started a website to connect people who had any connection with the band, and eventually everybody did.
• Film director, drummer, Sergej Kreso’s site.
• Graffiti Street’s official website

Jeden Svet Documentary Film Festival in Prague.

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