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.

I’ve searched the net and checked out Amazon, but I haven’t seen any sign that such CD existed. A friend from Sarajevo promised to look around, but I doubt there was a soundtrack CD made for this movie.

Do you have any ideas? Thanks.

At my colleague’s farewell party last night, I met a friend of her who was Macedonian. With little knowledge about Macedonia, I asked her if they spoke the same language as Serbia, then I said “Kako si!” That was it for our initial conversation.

While fiddling with my cell pone and thinking about possible topics to talk to her about, I remember Tose and the famous Macedonian 7-beat rhythm. I turned around and asked: “Hey do know this singer called Tose. He’s very young, and I heard that he was famous in Macedonia.” The girl nodded her head, “He died yesterday.”

“Wow, what!” I thought this girl has just  played a trick on me.
“He had a car accident in Croatia.” She continued.
“Are you serious?” I was in total disbelief and still believed that this was some sort of a sick joke. “Oh my god! I saw only one of his music video, which he sang “Magic” with Esma, but I had an impression that he was a nice guy, not one of those superfluous stars these day.”
“Yes. He did a lot of charity concert. He was very nice. He is the only thing we have.”  The girl said. “There was a national mourning yesterday. Everybody was really sad. they would  name a town square after him. You didn’t know about his death? I thought you ask because you knew.”

It was strange that I felt a bit sadness by the news of Tose Proesky’s death. He was a complete stranger from a culture I don’t know anything about; I only listen to one of his songs. Perhaps I thought that Tose and his music are ones of few things that speak the common language in an overwhelmingly nationalistic and divided of the former Yugoslavia.

In this short clip, Richard Gere promotes his newest movie “The Hunting Party” in which he plays a journalist returning to Bosnia after the war to search for one of the two most wanted war criminal. This movie is released in September 2007.

Richard also mentions Radovan Karadzic’s poems being published and distributed in Serbia and Ratko Mladic’s often visitation to his daughter’s grave despite being hunted internationally. (David Letterman, being David Letterman, gives a very good response.)

[Thanks a blog reader for this video link.]