From his hometown of Sarajevo to Belgrade, Paris or even Kustendorf (founded over the production of his film “Life is a miracle”), there are many cities with which the director Emir Kusturica has a close relationship. There is however the frequent tendency to neglect that the Fellini of the Balkans learnt his trade at the Famu, Filmová a televizní fakulta (Faculty of cinema and television), where Kusturica studied from 1973 to 1977.
Despite his colourful, eccentric, musical and unmistakedly Balkan cinema, the professional training of the Serbian director during his stay in Prague was fundamental.
Having become a director famous worldwide, his relationship with the city was never interrupted. It was here for example where he returned to film parts of his most highly awarded masterpiece: Underground.
He also returned recently to receive, amongst many hours, the keys of the city, which the local council decided to grant him.
From Tito’s Yugoslavia to the Czecoslovakia of normalization.
Born and raised in Sarajevo, and having developed a deep passion for the big screen from his youth, a nineteen year old Kusturica decided to enrol at Prague’s FAMU, an excellent filmmaking school and the best one in Eastern Europe.
He had the fortune of being able to rely on an old aunt who lived in the city as support when he came. What played an important role in his decision to come however was the attraction of a film scene which was muc more dveloped and mature compared to what Yugoslavia was able to offer. Prague was at the time, the home of masters such as Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Miloš Forman, Jan Němec, the slovaks Juraj Herz Jaromil Jireš and all of the others representing the Nová Vlna,
the legendary “czechoslovakian new wave”.
In this city the wild cinematic imagination of Kusturica was able to flourish in an artistic and political climate which was still influenced by the revolutionary fervor of 1968, and by the disillusion of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which followed. In Prague he mixed with intellectual dissenters, but also found future crew members who would accompany him for most of his career, such as the slovenian Vilko Filac the director of photography in all of his films up to Underground.
Kusturica having come from a serbian family which converted to Islam during the turkish occupation of his family, already had very clearly defined political DNA when he arrived in Prague, and his ethnic origins provided him with inspiration to make films. At the time, he was one of many representatives of yugoslavian intelligentsia of the 1970s, who concealed dissent for the Titoist regime behind their art. In the czechoslovakia of the time, he found himself among people very similar to him politically. Furthermore, he was in a country with a lot in common with his own, particularly regarding the tendency of artists to resist the difficulties and not surrender to the restrictions of the regime.
Prague 1978-his breakthrough success.
The short film Guernica (based on a novel by Antonije Isakovic), which was his thesis, earned him the top prize at the Karlovy Vary international festival. Looking back at it today, it seems to have a lot in common with the almost grotesque surrealism of directors of the new wave such as Juraj Herz and Jaromil Jireš. The film tells the story of a Jewish boy who confronts his fear of antisemitism. The father takes him to the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he discovers the famous Picasso painting. “They only want to examine us because we have big noses,” the father says reassuringly. When his family are taken away, the child remains at home alone, and whilst browsing the family photos he cuts out all the noses. He then sticks them all together and names his work Guernica.
Among his works, it is the one in which the infuence of his period in Prague is most noticeable in his art. In spite of this, in the following years, Kusturica managed to develop and perfect the unmistakable style which made him famous.
Besides Jiri Menzel, the most important figure for the professional development, has been the director Otakar Vàvra, who reached his hundredth birthday this year, and has even been called “the father of Czech cinema”. Last July in Prague, Kusturica decided to meet his old Famu teacher and he presented him with a career achievement award. “Professor Vàvra,” he stated, “represents everything that happened at the beginning of my career. If I learnt exactly how to make a film, I owe it to him”.
Kusturica may also thank Vavra for having introduced him to Miloš Forman. Thanks to the relationship with the director of “Amadeus” he had the chance to give direction courses at the film department of Columbia University. Then with the contribution of american capital, it was possible for him to film “Time of the Gypsies”, in 1989, managing even to direct Arizona Dream with Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway, which was his first and probably last american film.
The serbian composer Goran Bregovic, who composed the soundtracks of “Time of the Gypsies”, (1989) and Arizona Dream (1993) and “Underground” (Palme d’or) in Cannes in 1995), stated “Kusturica comes from the Prague film school in which it was thought that music was only necessary in bad films as if were orthopedic support. Later, also his vision of music changed. He too has a background as a punk rocker in Sarajevo, and has always loved a certain type of music which has a strong impact.
The Keys to the city, a live goose and a great applause
By now many years have passed since Kusturica, a young university student, spent his evenings having fun drinking and chatting at manes. He stayed in a student house in Prague 2, at Hlávkova kolej, and probably never imagined that this city would one day welcome him in such a triumphant manner. This is however, exactly what happened last July, when the major of the city Bohuslav Svoboda, presented him with the keys of the city. It was shortly after some friends and admirers gifted him with a live goose in a basket, paying homage to a scene from the famous, unforgettable “Black Cat, White Cat”.
Kusturica repaid them for the gesture in his way, performing in the “Summer night Dream festival”, alongside his band The No Smoking Orchestra, on a stage floating on the Moldava. Prague, on a colourful, night lit up with fireworks, and countless rounds of enthusiastic applause demonstrated that they have not forgotten him.
By Lawrence Formisano