Bosko Milin

For 15 years, FEST has traditionally been bringing to Belgrade the best of the film industry, but has now turned into a lagging chronicler of life under movie and other sanctions.

The mammoth theater of 3600 seats is too big for the selection of films which the leading people of the festival have got their hands on. Even the fact that the year which marked a century of the art of making movies (1995) was not overly rich in terms of the quality of the movies isn't too great an alibi for those who had created FEST '96. Seriously taking into account remarks that there shouldn't necessarily be twice as many Chinese movies than American ones, the selector Nenad Dukic has, this year, presented them in equal numbers.

The way it should be is that the FEST viewer appears relaxed and takes only the best according to his personal likes, at the same time serving as a chance to get acquainted with more ambitious achievements, yet the selection of movies is pretentious and incompatible with the potential of the movie theater space in which they are shown. Even the renown Venice festival has a late night program of movie theater hits not included in the competition (last year those were Waterworld, Costner and Reynolds, Apollo 13, Howard and Hanks, Strange Days, Catherine Bigelow, Braveheart, Mel Gibson, Jade, Friedkin...), while the presence of the movie stars served to draw the public for the main program which is made up of non-commercial movies. The situation is similar in Cannes where in 1995 viewers were incited by Kiss of Death, Barbett Schrader, Quick and Dead, Raimet and Sharon Stone, To Die For, van Sant and Nicole Kidman... FEST 1996 doesn't extend its hand to the public, but instead preaches on the superiority of Chinese movies which the latter must a priori believe. In keeping with this perspective on movies and the world, FEST opens with an amateur lament of Darrel James Roth, Cry, Beloved Country, which is a direct throw back to the times when FEST was opened by masterpieces like Battle For Moscow.

The titles on offer supply us with an entropy view of last year's movie season. Ceremony of Claude Chabrol is the undisputed peak of the festival. The biggest live film legend of the film revolution called "nouvelle vague", as a reminiscence of his best days has masterfully portrayed a simple tale of fascist petit bourgeois everyday France where in the cathartic finale, the main protagonists, abandoned by the milieu in which they live, murder a prominent city family, in its entirety, father, mother, daughter and son. This last Chabrol achievement has encountered severe reactions in its homeland, but all compliments were extended to the heroines played by Sandra Bonnand and Isabelle Supre, who were crowned in Venice ex aequo by the "Golden Lion" for the leading female role.

One of the rare exclusive moments of FEST is the long awaited omnibus Four Rooms, representative of the American independent movie featuring Anders, Rockwell, Rodriguez and Tarantino.

DINKO TUCAKOVIC

Nenad Dukic

No Prejudices

For a program of thirty-forty titles which are to arrive for FEST, the new Jarmush and Almodovar movies have failed to show enough quality

"I have strived to make sure that FEST consistently respects the criterions of quality regardless of the type of production, the country of origin, and the widest prejudices which the public has regarding the type of movie (whether it is a question of the American, English, French movie or from a so-called weird country like China, Iran or Taiwan)", says Nenad Dukic, FEST's art director at the beginning of our conversation. Dukic adds that less known film industries have in the last couple of years been producing better and higher quality movies than the ones which have emerged from the so-called main film industries.

- Shall all the movies which you had wanted to present to the public arrive for FEST?

- There are some three-four titles with which we would have truly attained a complete picture of the highest quality movies of the world production.

- Where are the largest American companies?

- The "majors" still refuse to communicate with this region, but this year we have a special program which relates to the American movie. The majority of those movies belongs to the mini "majors" or independent productions, but the American production wasn't all that important or of such quality in context of the whole world production, such as, for example, the British, French, Italian or Chinese film production.

- Do you believe that the FEST selection couldn't find room for the new Jarmush or Almodovar movies?

- It couldn't. Jarmush made an incredibly mediocre movie. If we had a program of eighty or a hundred movies, we would find room for Almodovar and Jarmush. For a program of thirty-forty movies which are to appear on FEST, these movies have failed to show the necessary quality. I know that the mere mention of Almodovar or Jarmush would draw a greater number of viewers than others, but the criterion for quality is most important for me; I didn't want to fall for names.

- Have you heard that, in that context, humorous allusions have already appeared ("the similarities of the state structures") on account of a large number of Chinese movies...

- The appearance of Chinese movies here has nothing to do with the regime in China and the regime in this country. Chinese movies have in the last eight to ten years been extremely present on the major film festivals, and in Cannes and Venice they received the highest awards. Besides the British one, at this moment theirs is the strongest film industry in the world. Each year they make at least five-six exceptional movies, which even American fails to achieve.

- Plastically, how would you describe this years FEST concept?

- The concept of FEST insists upon quality movies and stems from my conviction that in this city and country a more than average number of inquisitive people exist who want to and wish to view a different kind of movie. I trust the good taste of the local public as well as that young people wish to see a good movie which shall enhance their knowledge and not purely serve as a means of cheering up or entertainment for an hour or two.

Special program: American Movies

The Hollywood of Our Discontent

Have representatives of the American film industry been called to show us the dominant trend or their best achievements

If we are to believe the program of the 24th FEST, the big theater in Sava Center shall house in three of their special programs dealing with the American movies - no less than seven movies from the US. From that modest number three shall be shown in the viewing time called "Hollywood", and two each under the name of "Outside of Hollywood" and "Far From Hollywood".

As for the three for which the selector believed that festival-wise they were representative of the American film industry, one - Cry, Beloved Country - is a co-production with the South African republic relieved of sanctions; the second - Four Rooms, an omnibus of Anders, Rockwell, Rodriguez and Tarantino - which by its character could hardly be classified as being representative of the Hollywood movies, taking into account that they were made by former "independents", maintaining the attitude which would be more adequate for those two "non-Hollywood" programs.

CHANGES MADE ON THE ORIGINAL: Finally, we also have The Scarlet Letter directed and produced by Roland Joffet and written by Douglas Day Stewart, starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldham and Robert Duvall.

Therefore, the literary original has undergone such transformations which would be equal to only those in which we would see Ana Karenyina and Vronsky as they, embraced, set off for California, leaving the Emperor and Empress instructions for proper relations with the Eskimos on Kamchatka.

In such a manner, unavoidably, a question shall be raised as to whether representatives of the American movies were invited with the intention of showing it's dominant trend or as last year's best achievements. And no matter how much the latter case proves to be wrong, the former isn't - so much the worst for Hollywood and for us, who shall be deprived of seeing, on one hand, Strange Days, Catherine Baygelou or, on the other, of Olean of David Memmeth, two films as totally diverse and American as a movie can be.