HERE'S THE DUST,
BUT WHERE'S THE HORSE?
...............................................................................................................................................................................
by Vladimir Lj. Angelov
There is a big difference between the music
that musicians would like to play
and the music the audience want to hear
(David Bowie)
Contributions to Milcho Manchevski's Biography
My first encounter with the Milcho Manchevski's work was in the 1981: it was
on the pages of Jukebox magazine, where he published some articles. But, let's
make this clear, Jukebox was a magazine that dealt with popular music and popular
mass culture. To illustrate the significance of this magazine, the first 50
issues of Jukebox were Goran Stefanovski's first choice as "readings/ books
to take to a desert island to read" at that time. That means that Goran
Stefanovski considered this publication to be one that dealt with literature.
In these articles, Manchevski describes America, the other side of the Big Pond,
in a manner that I'm still impressed with. These texts today play a central
role in my perception of the grandiose promised land - America. The detailed,
humorous, rebellious style of his revealed to me that he was a student of a
film department at some student campus in Champagne, Illinois. He was at CB-GB
club, where the famous Talking Heads and the Ramones had begun their careers.
Boris Damovski was with him. Boris took pictures with a camera. Click, click,
click. Milcho had a beard, Boris was younger. They had a friend named Tory.
Milcho liked to watch films, and he also liked to make them. He knew and loved
pop culture. John Travolta was his favorite actor. He liked to comment on pop
bands that are still totally unknown in Yugoslavia.
The rest of Manchevski's story - we all know everything. He came to Macedonia,
shot a few music videos, one short feature, he didn't make it with the script
for the film Musaka, some claim that he published something in the magazine
Ekran (I never bought that magazine, not even with the TV Guide for the Labor
Day holidays). But, he wasn't given a proper chance to work. What can you say?
In every misfortune, some fortune can be found. He ran to New York, where he
works, improving himself in film-making, for - more or less - ten years, shooting
music video videos and commercials, waiting for a chance to come back to Macedonia
and prove to everybody what he can do. What size of an ego do you need to act
like this? Rade Sherbedzija called him a lonewolf and a gunman. With his film
Before the Rain, he showed to Macedonians who is who here. He proved that to
all who didn't believe in him. I think that was his greatest reward. Greater
that the Venice Golden Lion he won. After that, he was writing stories, books,
he cancelled and pulled out of some films, he declared war on Hollywood, he
put on some photographic exhibitions. Boris wasn't taking photos of him any
more. I don't know why. Manchevski would come to Macedonia, and then he would
leave Macedonia. He shot a commercial. He established a film company called
Shadow Film. Shadow. Mystical. I grew up a little, and I can still see a great
man in him, an artist. And 20 years on, Travolta is still my favorite. I often
listen to Ghost Town by the Specials. Puberty is a dangerous period. Manchevski
shot a new feature film - Dust. The film opened at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.
A happy ending? I'm sure of it...
An Exercise in Style
Let's imagine some two different groups. The collision between two groups is
very often the basis of a drama. It's easiest if we confront these two groups
in that way, so we can implement the subject of the conflict. In Brilliantine,
the groups have similar affinities, and the subjects of the conflict are the
common teenage hostilities and "domination" over the (pink) girls.
Only we (or at least I) don't like that kind of a romantic film. Not because
of the great number of such kind of films, but because any comparison with Brilliantine
could be fatal. The optimal solution for these two conflicting groups is to
be a group of boys, that listens to folk music (a little Macedonian context)
and a group of alternative and modern boys. Ultra-turbo-super-folk melodies
with an Asian sound, in its essence, are the teachers' favorites. The conflict
of these two groups can be initiated in numerous ways. So, we need a genre now.
We can leave these two groups to fight on their own, as in Long Riders, and
we only have to motivate them. It's easiest if we introduce one side as "good"
the other as "bad" and vice versa. In that way, we can add spice to
the story with a love story, if we want to add some melodramatic charm. As in
East Side Story? And if we decide to do a crime thriller, then it's necessary,
besides the few inevitable victims, to have a "really lonely" police
inspector/detective, deductive and analytical thinker, who hates bureaucracy
and sometimes "likes to get a fix", and even maybe he can be one of
the main suspects, or talk to mass-murderers and cannibals. Lately, to make
the detective even lonelier and with even more of a grudge, we should tie them
to their beds. We like horror? We can take these two groups to some school institution
with showers, an obligatory bath and a few professors. Then we can choose among
the "body-snatchers" the killer with the mask, or the poisonous half-man-half-spider.
We can even introduce some inferior student, mocked and mistreated by everyone.
Do we want a tech-thriller? Nothing could be easier: a few guys, a professor
and some shadowy organised force (the Mafia, military intelligence, etc.). If
we want a film that can get an award at some film festival, then we don't need
any intervention; we need a completely dull two-hour film in which absolutely
nothing happens. Everything always depends only on what we, or - to be more
accurate - what producers want. Everyone works on that principle: East, West,
North and South. Confection. Yes, of course. One should only "catch"
the number, time and the price. So now, when we've finally found the modus operandi,
we can tell our story. That story won't be exactly the same one we intended
to tell at the very beginning, but, isn't life always full of compromises?
But then again, what if we really have the opportunity to be original? Then
- what? How do we open our soul and "lay on the table" the pathos
of what's burdening us and along the way remain original and, of course, be
intellectual to the required degree? What would be the modus operandi then?
Well, my modus operandi would be something that is very important to us, something
we always wanted to tell, and nobody has said it or seen it that way before.
Until now, we've linked the avant-garde and the retrograde worlds, at the same
time. Yes, the answer dwells within time frames. We can shift the time. Which
time is known to me, which time interest me, and at the same time is full with
rich iconography, and brings much exotic context, love, passion, struggles,
conflicts? I would inevitably and immediately choose the Macedonian pre-Ilinden1
period. The period of great Macedonian rebels such as Jordan Piperkata and many
others like him. How do we link them? As Bill and Ted walked through history
with their time machine? Too usual and seen already. There are more ways to
link different times. Besides time, I would mix some of the civilization achievements,
which we Macedonians, do open-heartedly share both with Eastern and Western
civilization. To the confrontation of pro-Euro-Atlantic and retrograde Asian
groups, I would add few exchange students; let's say, one from the occidental
Champagne, Illinois, USA, and the other one from oriental Ankara, Turkey, Middle
East. Skopje, Champagne and Ankara - all university cities.
A question: are these two or three stories inter-linkable, "overlapable"
and "breakable" enough, to be convenient for shaping a slightly more
modern film expression, and can we input within them any (even trivial) motivation,
so they could be defined in terms of genre (I adore genres - is that so bizarre)?
Of course, we can - very easily. Now, when we have solved that, there are the
great time leaps and the thematic collisions to solve. Surely, our etude - to
link the stories - seems even more difficult now, but it's not impossible. Of
course, it also has to be original with some semantic depth "attached"
to it and at the same time have an attitude, an intellectual one. And finally,
it has to be made in an original film language. Did I mention that the story
should be, also, spontaneous? Well, it's not quite impossible...
Film Practice - Dust
The story of Dust is placed within two time periods, in three different civilizations,
with a few different languages, with four - visually - completely opposite film
meanings. The Author of the film, with his attitude, author's expression and
meanings (generally), forms three stories and he links and interlaces them,
hiding and then revealing many things. There is a fair amount of dream within
the film, as well. It corresponds to the spaghetti westerns, even in the musical
motif that goes with the main characters, like in the westerns of Sergio Leone.
The end of the film must be compared with the ending of The Wild Bunch by Sam
Peckinpah. Quite complicated. Very complicated in terms of the concept of film
directing and highly ambitious as a high-budget production.
But, let's start with a synopsis of the film:
New York. A black man (Edge) is breaking & entering into some flat. A very
old woman - Angela, 100 years old, seizes him under the treat of large handgun
and she greets him with a reference to the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the
Devil: pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. And she starts to tell him
a story. And she keeps mentioning a great amount of money - somewhere around,
very close. The story she tells brings us back to the time of the Wild West,
west of Pecos (and in the town of Pecos, if you recall Roy Bean, the judge was
the "merciful and sweet-talking"). Two brothers, Luke and Elijah,
both very fast with the gun, fall in love with the same girl, a French prostitute
Lilith. The older one, Luke, we don't know why, runs to Europe. On the luxury
ship, we meet Freud (again we don't know why), and in Paris, we meet the films
made by Manaki Brothers. While watching these films, Luke understands that his
future is in Macedonia, a place where civilization hasn't reached yet - the
alternative Wild West. Heaven for gangsters and gunman. In Macedonia, he raids
with a bloodthirsty gang, bounty-hunting for the Macedonian rebel-emperor -
the Teacher, the protector of the oppressed Macedonian people, with a great
reward on his head, offered by the Ottoman official authorities. Then Angela
gets a heart attack. Edge gets her to the St. Luke (!) hospital. The story goes
on. Elijah, who came to Macedonia and joined the Turk bounty-hunters, finds
and shoots Luke. Luke is saved, and nursed by a pregnant Macedonian woman Neda.
Understandable, she has no one else, but the Teacher's wife. Through a few hallucinations,
we can comprehend that Luke had an affair with Lilith. That's why his little
brother is so angry, the audience can guess. Edge must get the money, because
of some crooked policemen who are after the money he owes to somebody (we don't
know who). Angela still tells her story. The Ottoman army gets the Teacher and
chops his head off. The Teacher's village is burnt down. Luke gets the offer
to revenge the Teacher, and in exchange he gets a bag full with gold coins.
He refuses to do that, but he takes the money (?). He meets Elijah again. Luke,
then, understands that Lilith committed suicide. Edge finds the money - Luke's
gold coins from Macedonia. Angela dies, not finishing the story. Edge is rich
now, and he has his revenge on the dirty cops. After that, he takes Angela's
ashes to Macedonia by plane. In the plane, he re-tells the story to the girl
sitting next to him. In the end of his version of the story, Luke gets back
to the village, and in ten minutes of shooting he kills all the Turks and the
Greek Orthodox priest. He also kills Corto Maltese. Neda is also dead, but she
gave birth before dying. It's Angela, whose ashes he carries in a modest pot
in his lap. At the end of the battle, Luke has been killed. Elijah takes the
baby, and he flips a coin to decide what to do with it. The coin says he takes
the baby to America.
So, here we have three stories:
1. the story of Angela and Edge and Edge and the crooked cops (time, the present:
location, New York and the flight from New York to Europe);
2. the story of the brothers Luke and Elijah and the French prostitute (time,
the past; location, the Wild West and an even wilder Macedonia);
3. the story of the Teacher, Luke and Neda (time, the past; location, Macedonia).
The times shift around a lot, presented (mostly) in the form of flashbacks.
Sometimes, the time makes double leaps backwards. Macedonia and the Wild West
on the one hand and the urban New York, on another. The task is: to link these
two stories, in any interesting way, with the necessary suspense; to distinguish
the times and locations, even visually; to find music applicable to all three
stories, two epochs and three civilizations; to pay lip service to the idolatory
of the film industry; to be original and create a narration never seen before;
to present Macedonia and the Macedonians as good characters; to provoke emotions
of fear, sorrow, and empathy as the audience responds; to be inter-textual with
literary influences; to act intellectually; to be said that we loved rock 'n'
roll but now it's dead; to be moderate in humour; to respect history and historical
facts; to say that in the Balkans the conflict between the East and West goes
on and on. As I said, ambitious.
That is already seen in the film history, but often films consist of more than
three stories. Sometimes, these stories aren't even linked in any way - what
we call omnibus films. Mostly, those are films made by the principle that there
is a different director for each story in the omnibus film. Sometimes, there
is one film director, who gathers a few stories with the different main characters
in each story that, hopefully, somewhere at the end of the film, merge with
other stories, such as in Manchevski's first film Before the Rain. Sometimes,
the stories are conditioned by time leaps. Often, the stories are semantically
linked by some objects/subjects, as a taxi, a gun or some character, for instance.
There are cases when one can't determine the way the stories are linked. That
method is the most delicate. But we already knew that.
Times often mix. For this purpose, screen-writers even invented time machines.
Time can be altered even with the case when the narration follows some object/subject
over a long time period. Or, you can shift times with hibernating and awakening
your hero. The lead character in Forestt Gump is another kind of film time-shifter.
A 100-year-old narrator is one of the optimal variants. It was seen in Little
Big Man. In that film, the narrator reveals his memories to a journalist. This
approach has the advantage of the sentimental kind of films from the very beginning.
We all feel for elderly people. And if we build the character as the old lady
in Dust - a character with a rebellious attitude who quotes the Rolling Stones,
is familiar with famous people, keeps the photos of Jagger and Josip Broz Tito,
can handle guns, smokes cigarettes through an oxygen mask of the respiration
machine, and finally with a sophisticated sense of humor - then, the producers
have a 100 percent success guaranteed.
In Dust, the time linkage was made more in a filmic way, which means a more
forced but not spontaneous in same way. Do you watch cartoons? Of course. What
abut those at Warner Bros, such as Daffy Duck and Bug Bunny? When "Warner"
wants to recycle the cartoons they've already shown in order to gain extra profit,
then Bugs Bunny would be captured by the father of the spoiled brat Abadabba.
So, in the castle in the middle of the desert, Bugsy would have to read stories
to Abadabba. It's a very good incentive. Between every two stories (short cartoons)
Abadabba and Bugsy chase and outsmart each other. The Bugsy's stories are, the
most often, paraphrased and ironic versions of already well-known stories. This
kind of story construction corresponds with the story/stories in Dust, where
the roles of Bugsy and Abadabba are swapped. So, if we merge Daffy Duck and
Bugs Bunny cartoons and a film such as Little Big Man, we get Dust. But, it
also doesn't matter. Why? Because it is a genre-defined film, and we can always
take the postmodern as an excuse.
So we come to the question of the suspense (see Truffaut's Hitchcock). Manchevski
is the film man, from top to bottom. Erudite. His scenario has to hide something,
something that audience wouldn't know until the film's finale. That's also the
rule of spaghetti westerns, and it isn't invented and implemented in the film
by chance. That rule is there in order to keep the audience interested until
the very finish of the film, and to put the accent and semantic point at the
end of the film. In Dust, (Lucky) Luke runs to Macedonia. It's very vaguely
supposed that the conflict is about love and adultery, and the audience patiently
waits in wonder... what ever for is the reason for the brothers' quarrel? When
the film reveals that it was because of adultery and the girl's suicide, the
film is already in its second half, with one long bloody battle (with a duration
of 30 minutes), a shorter battle and a few dreams/visions/hallucinations and
agonies also shown, etc. But it seems that to the audience (already) nothing
matters any more. And what can we say about Edge? He's under pressure to find
money, because with every day he loses one part of his body, until he finds
the money he owes. The money is the narrative reason of the film in this urban
part of the film. Maybe, this is the most successful part of the film. Here,
almost everything is a function. A little drama. The granny Angela is an interesting
character, a TV archetype, but still convincing. The crooked cops are a well-thought-up
plot; they could be the Mafia, but Manchevski knows that's a sterile cliché
and he chooses a different and better solution. The young black Edge is in contrast
with the old white Angela, and that also functions on the level of the inevitable
comic relief, especially the part when she introduces him as her nephew. Still,
the part in the hospital (as with Angela's character overall), to me (subjectively)
was too TV-like, not just in the plotting but in the directing procedure and
the camera and editing style. And I can say that the suspense is lost with the
oversized (in number) fragments of the story.
The most problematic part of the story is the part set in Macedonia. The place
that should keep all of the answers of the film story/stories. The questions
are: What is the meaning of the photos in the Angela's room? Why did Luke run
away (besides his character and his way of life)? Does Angela have any money
or not? How will the story about the brothers end in Macedonia? Instead of that,
the film, i.e. the director, presents to us three confusedly realized battles
(the few original ideas aren't enough considering the wasted gunpowder - the
same can be said about the wasted film minutes). And if we consider the story
of the peaceful Macedonian village and the pregnant Macedonian young woman Neda
(the Teacher's wife) who treats and cures (Lucky) Luke in between, then the
confusion is even larger. Is she in love with Luke or not? One can't tell. Is
here a different (hidden fourth) story or not? Luke goes to fight, his brother
and shoots him, Neda cures him, the Teacher is caught and killed. The gold enters
the game, Luke tries to save the bride, but he fails. After that, some dreams,
agonies; the film director in one (or two?) phantasmagorical sequences announces
Luke's death. This part (most probably) should function as a film-drama sequence:
a chase where everybody chases everyone. The airplanes appear as an omen of
the new era. When this new age appears there is no place for the cowboys. In
some other films, the new era comes with the automobiles. Cable Hog died in
a traffic accident.
In these three stories, the script enters some new unknown values (in the mathematical
sense). The Austrian Freud appears during Luke's journey (from America to Europe),
on the luxury ship. Corto Maltese sits together with an Ottoman officer. In
addition, here is the Macedonian Milton Manaki, the first cinematographer of
the Balkans. All that without any visible need, at least not to me, as a simple
viewer, of course.
Manchevski makes the distinction between his stories - but not by their mechanical
division as ordinary sequences. He also varies them with his own directorial
style, means and procedures. So, in the part that happens in New York, the megalopolis'
chaos and the human trash are shown, as well as modern life, with a dynamic
and rapid style of film flow, with short sequences and hand-held camerawork.
There are, also, some strange camera angles that doesn't seem to fit perfectly
into the whole. When the camera pays attention to old Angela's photos from the
beginning of the 20th century, the camera is tranquil, steady, stabile, and
perceptive. The passages with the photos and the souvenirs are too emphasized
to be a part of the same film procedure. Often, the photos are depicted as photography-frames
for a short while. And at the risk of repeating myself, the film technique where
the photos are the significant part of the film narration is too much "based
on a true story"-style and very TV-like for this "odyssey" year
of 2001. The scenes that take place in the hospital are, also, too TV-like:
the nurse forbids smoking, the room-mate is "dead cold", the nurses
are over agile, the doctors apply defibrillators, the scenery is also stereotypical,
with tubes and bags for transfusions or infusions and many needles, tubes, and
pipes. The camera is hysterical in its movement with lots of close-ups. It's
so medically sterile. Like in some TV-soap in some city hospital.
The part that presents the Wild West is in black and white, with no special
scenery involved, anyway. The scenes are almost empty. The memories are somebody
else's, so we can say that here, the film director's idea is in function here.
But, the memories are a very delicate phenomena in the film. In this part, the
newspapers, photos and the first-hand telling of Elijah aren't the only influence
on the recollections of the Wild West. Many other influences can't be escaped,
such as the films of Ford, Lang, Huston, etc. Not even Angela. She's American,
too. In this part, she's the narrator, so there isn't much in the way of dialogue
here. Empty again. A little iconography, a few revolvers, cowboy hats, saddled
horses, a small whore-house, not really enough for us to go back to the epoch
of the Wild West. There aren't Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp, nor Billy the Kid,
nor their shadows. The replica "Good day, sheriff!" is far from enough
to create the context. The third story, the one in Macedonia, is different from
the other two, above all, with its visual and colour attributes. The picturesque
ethnic clothes and ornaments and other iconography, like the all-Balkan military
and "war-path" uniforms are accented (the Komitaji freedom-fighters'
and the Albanian or Greek bandits' "war-clothing", as well as the
Ottoman military uniforms) in opposition to the American cowboy-desperado-spaghetti-surrealistic
costumes. All that is contrasted to the tame and tender physiognomies of the
Macedonian girls, women, elders and children; contrasted to the most beautiful
Macedonian mountain village; to the picturesque and overwhelming Macedonian
countryside, enriched with the crystal-clear mountain and beautiful ancient
bridges. But blood is ever present: in the colors of the Macedonian ethnic clothing
and in the colors of the famous and beautiful Macedonian blankets - the yambollias.
Only death is equal for all of them. Death is everywhere. The conflicting groups
are the Ottoman military troops, the Komitaji war units and the Albanian/Greek
bandits. If one succeeds to comprehend that. Luke is with everybody and against
everybody. They slaughter, hang, and kill each other, even among themselves
- and they do enjoy it. That is, also, in opposite of the tame and beautiful
countryside present in the film, as another contrapuntal device. There is almost
no talking. What's more to it, that little dialogue that exists isn't really
necessary at all. Cries, battle calls, and pained yells. And the languages a
little Turkish, a little German, a little English and French - and even less
Macedonian. The brothers ride horses (Luke's horse is beautiful), and their
appearance is illustrated with the harmonica, true to the spaghetti western
archetype. The story I defined as a chase story moves through a few locations
and to the village. Too few dynamics, too few scenes, too much dubbing, too
many close-ups, too brutal, too much blood, and gunpowder.
Why does the director work with three stories? Why not two? Why aren't the stories
about the brothers and the Teacher one and the same story, or why they aren't
in continuity? Why is the action so fragmented? Most probably, the director
thought that if he merges these stories, the film would be too narrative, and
without an underlying concept or motif. A film that would be difficult to push
to its end. The first story has a plot, the second hasn't. So, as a plot, the
adultery and Luke's running away to Europe is used. It isn't the happiest choice
of plots, and the director-screenwriter of the film tries to hide it to the
end of the film while the audience waits in confusion for it. Even the beautifully
thought trick of Luke's death when he promotes himself as a "zombie",
is relatively vague and undeveloped, most probably to avoid comparisons with
the films such as The Sixth Sense. Here is the motif - the gold, which transfers
into the second story. The audience should suppose from Angela's money that
Luke earned it by catching the Teacher, but the opposite turns out to be the
case. Luke takes the money to avenge him and to save his wife and child. Well
meant, but in all those battles, killings, dreams, and fantasies, the motif
got lost. That way, the only piece of surprise is lost, the piece that would
stimulate the audience to go on and watch the film with interest until its end.
What is to be said about the presence in the film of the above-mentioned Freud,
Maltese, and Manaki? We can link Manaki to the photos in Angela's apartment,
and the photographer and the photos are well-used and functional in the film.
So, it can be said that it doesn't matter if there was Manaki or somebody else.
Who was the one that filmed the Turkish and the Komitaji troops (that Luke saw
in Paris)? Is there any story behind it? How does Freud fit in here? With Luke's
dreams? So the Oedipus complex of the brothers, who found - in the French whore
- their mother? We can link these moments, but the film should do it, as well.
Or maybe, Angela is Freud's disciple or follower, so even in her pre-mortal
agony she can't escape his theory? Or, finally, everything is only some auto-referential
art. The non-Macedonian audience is surely wondering who slaughters who, and
who is who and who is what, etc. What's Corto Maltese doing here? Everybody
recognizes him. Does every film that has ambitions for artistic authenticity
and has violent/bloody story have to end by paraphrasing The Wild Bunch? And
if Marx described the human guts as wide open, does someone have to show them?
Are film and literature able to present the same things with the same valorization?
The professor Zhika Pavlovic was against such approach, and he also was - both
- writer and filmmaker (and painter, sculptor, etc.). And what about Jagger
and Josip Broz Tito?
I can agree that the film music is good, but the acting performances of the
foreigners (David Wenham, Joseph Fiennes) were (below) average. Didn't Manchevski
have any alternatives? "The man who likes to kill so very much" had
to be some Robert Redford-like-blonde man, a handsome guy with typical Hollywood
charm, one who mastered the half-smile to perfection. The others looked more
as if they were posing. That was their only job, anyway.
This is a "heavy" material to make a film from. Too many traps hide
within it. It contains too many temptations to enter the numerous stereotypes.
It's too hard to find the balance between the source material (book, film, legend...)
and the new, original film material. It needs too much mimicry to maintain the
wanted originality. Too much attention is given to the details, and the important
things are carelessly left aside. It's too dangerous to play with a little bit
of everything. Too complicated to be good.
And, almost at the end of this review of mine, let me go back to the beginning
- to the issue one cannot escape: That's Manchevski's first feature film - Before
the Rain. I would just like to mention that this film also had three stories,
also very fragmented, but still in continuity. They were placed (more or less)
in the same time co-ordinates, and linked with the characters. Much more functional
and a lot simpler. One very smart man wrote, somewhere, that Nikita Mikhalkov's
Burnt by the Sun is the film that marked the end of the 20th century, and Before
the Rain marked the beginning of the 21st century. I agree with every syllable
of that. There are bright, smart and clever people, at least as much as that
anonymous one that I've mentioned above, the one who claims that Dust is a film
that will mark if not a new chapter then at least a new page in world film history.
Hmmm?
I agree that we all have the right to our own opinion. Of course, it's not an
imperative for any film to be acknowledged by everyone. It's a cultural revolution.
And we have every right to say what we think. I even have a little more right
to say it, because I have few editors above me, and I work in a medium that
hasn't been too influential lately. Well, not enough, anyway. Finally, every
one with his own arguments and with his own certainty in how much one can influence
and change oneself, or the others. Manchevski, however, has said that he's content
with the film and that is the most important thing - for him. I agree. I also
think that's the most important thing - for myself. So, I hope that Manchevski
in the coming decade will be content more often, both with his and the audience's
pleasure. Manchevski is Manchevski - both when he enchants and when he makes
us anxious. One can't be indifferent either to him or his films. And - Liang
(the film director with whom Manchevski shared the Golden Lion in Venice (one
of the three best Taiwan film authors) is content - five or six times already.
And the critics are content too, and his audience is also content, the same
audience he excites with every film he makes. So... Is Manchevski in search for
a new audience?
I'm anxious and impatient to see this film's DVD edition. Bearing in mind that
the producer is a Westerner, Dust would probably be the first Macedonian (even
partially Macedonian) film to be promoted by this new image carrier, and I hope
that it will happen very soon. I'm waiting, not to see the film, of course,
I've seen it on the big screen, but more because of the extra features common
for the DVD editions that the director and the producer of the film will offer.
It's always a pleasure to listen to Manchevski and to watch how he works on
film. I think... actually, I'm certain that he has so much to tell. And this claim
of mine has nothing to do with my optimistic character.
Translated by Petar Volnarovski
Prashina imame, kade e konjot? In: Kinopis, no. 23-24, 2001, pp. 30-39.
NOTE
1 Ilinden: the Orthodox day of Saint Elijah, the day of the Macedonian Uprising for freedom against the Ottoman Empire (on 2 August 1903)