Crossing Europe Das internationale Filmfestival in Linz war auch dieses Jahr ein Ort der Begegnung für Filmkünstler und Filmkünstlerinnen. Fünf Artists waren live zu Gast bei Radio Froh für die Sondersendung Kino für die Ohren im Kultur- und Bildungskanal. zu Besuch und erzählte über seinen Film Vintage Dances, ein Dokumentarfilm über die Renovierung eines kroatischen Kulturerbes und der Kampf, der damit folgte. Yeah. Hi. Hi, Martin. Nice to meet you. We're going to talk about your movie today that's screening on Crossing Europe today and on Saturday. And that is Vintage Dancers or Vintage Pleasure. It's a documentary feature which has been awarded in the London Indie Film Festival 2024 for Best Directing, Best Producer and Best Documentary Feature and also won the Grand Prix winner on the Rasner Film and Histories Festival on 2024. Congrats, first of all. Would you like to tell the audience a bit about your documentary and how it came about? documentary and how it came about yeah yeah i i mean i am basically a theater director and theater actor and intermediate artist you can call it because i work in many many different media but during during my theater and multimedia intermediate artist career, I started filming the project because I work a lot in urban settlements, in shared spaces, and I deal a lot with movie education for professionals, for children, for elderly, especially on the conceptual filmmaking and documentary filmmaking. And so, yeah, I did some works before, but mainly I worked on a web. I produced it for my web page and things like that. And yeah, 20 years ago, I just fell in love in one building. I wanted to do a festival dedicated to this building and to invite artists from all over the world. and urban projects, and community art projects, and kind of local activism. How to, let's say, change things in city areas and to use resources which are given. So I wanted to create some kind of festival for that. But then I get into the building because I was invited to the party. And then it started to be a life story in a way which lasted for 20 years yeah this the movies is covering quite the time span starting from 2003 if i might assume yeah and being released 20 years later uh that's quite it's quite a long story when in those 20 years did you decide you're gonna make a documentary like you're gonna document this fully in a movie i i started documenting the the events from the early beginning but uh the moment i really uh realized that i had already a documentary movie was in 2007 so four years later and it was then invited as kind of rough cut as some kind of pitching project at Zagreb docks in 2007 yeah and it And it was already got a lot of interest all over Europe because people like it, people like the way how it was already presented. Organizing and managing the restoration of that building, which documentary is about, was visibly exhausting for not only the inhabitants, but also you as a person, which can be seen in the documentary. To kind of counteract that, do you have suggestions or do you have like ways that helped you ease this stress, trying to bring a community together? You know, when I started doing the project, yeah, because it bring a community together you know when I started doing the project yeah because it was a community art project I if I knew that it will last so long I would probably kill myself you know or miss or throw it from the from the balcony of 10th floor of the building, you know, because, you know, I don't know. It's really, it was not my plan to, but I'm very stubborn, you know, and when I'm up to something, I want to finish it. That's so, that's, I think that's the only way you want, if you want to do something, you have to do it really properly. I worked a lot in in local areas in i lived in italy for almost 10 years and i worked a lot in bologna and in rome and alessandria and trieste and so i i oftenly uh tried to avoid uh kind of get to interfere if I'm not ready to give everything for that, you know? So I was ready to give everything. So I said, okay, okay, now I'm going to do it. So I thought we would finish in five to six years, but it took so much because we had a very unpleasant mayor at that time who was always trying to to he was connected with the building uh build building mafia the mafia who are who are into the building uh business you know and so they all always want to get percentage on everything which which is done so when so because this project it was obvious that they can't steal the money so easily they did it as you saw it in a movie uh at one point they tried at least but um but it was not um it was not easy you know so so so so i forced them i forced them all the time to to to because you know i I was creating both some kind of environment in a house because, of course, the people who live there, they just want to live there. They just want to live peacefully. They just wanted to live happily there. And maybe not to know each other because that's the beauty of the urban settlement. You can be anonymous. You can be whatever you want you can just meet maybe in a corridor or in elevator and say hello but you don't have to mingle with with the people you know but when the people when when when these kinds the kind of thing start to happen and and you have to mingle with the people you have to deal with them you know so uh you know they they they didn't know that the building has a value and because of this as a cultural value because it was made by by famous architect of modernist era of socialism he built about 150 buildings all over yugoslavia and abroad and he was quite famous already in 70s and 80s. And recently he was presented in MoMA towards the Utopia, I don't know how was the call, the exhibition at MoMA. So, you know, he was quite an important person. But, you know, he died in 86. People forgot him, you know, and people were just living there. But, you know, I found that the building has a value. I helped them to list the building as a cultural monument because it was not listed as a cultural monument. And I helped them to do something with this building. But I was not ready for sure that it will last so long. The community of co-inhabitants, throughout the movie, they seem to form a stronger and stronger bond. What role did you feel, did you have in that development? I mean, you know's it's kind of uh you can call it manipulation also ah or directing you know it was a huge 20 years theater show if you want to be ironic you know but you know um yeah you you have to to to find the Yeah, you have to find the kind of commune denominator, the commune interest, something which will help them all, which even the people who... Because what struck me when I arrived into the building was that it looked like a world with all this kind of misunderstanding, especially now. It's even, I mean, today, this movie looks more like a world we are living now than it was when I started. But I saw the building as kind of dynamics of the inhabitants, how they behave against each other or together in some, or creating groups, interest groups, of course, you know, it was, it was kind of, so I was, I was, I wanted first of all, to, to, to, to show them all. So they, to expose them all, you know, to make them visible. And, and you, you do these things with kind of law of attractions. Yeah. So you you you put one thing somewhere and they come to see what it is you know and then you expose them there you you expose them and and you ask them so why you don't work together or why you work together or things like So it was really, my main role was mediating, yeah? Because I started learning mediation when the war started in Yugoslavia in 1991. And I was taught by German, Austrian, American american san salvador from chile mediators who were who were very often you know working in the local areas between the confronted interest interest groups and and so they i did a lot of workshops like to, the people who had really contrast, which they don't want to listen to each other, how to make them listen, how to make them at least starting understanding that maybe there are some common points, you know. that should not only be used in construction, but also in larger politics and communities throughout. Because communication is something that your documentary shows really well. The communicating basis of all the inhabitants was basically none. They got documentaries as phrases like, now you can't um you cannot deal with these people they won't listen one most harrowing phrase which you alluded to was uh that they that they tried to form clans like the 10th uh the 10th floor uh people and the and the and the fifth floor people yeah to support to support their differing interests but it's a question of perspective it's a question where do you live in a city because the center of our world is our bed so we measure the world according to our bed or toilet if you want so how far is something from my toilet or my kitchen or my bed you know and so i if i have to go uh to the neighbor and and and ask for sugar i will probably go in my pajama yeah i will not dress maybe i will maybe be half nude you know or i will go in some kind of sportwear to the shop down there you know but if i'm going to the radio like now i will dress nicely with this tuxedo i'm wearing now of course i'm not wearing tuxedo but i'm joking but you know when you are coming from from far from your house you you and you want people to believe in something you want to tell then you change so yeah it's a question of perspective also you know because when you go to the local bar in your neighborhood they already know what you you are going to order yeah so it's it's a question of perspective if you are looking if you are looking for the ground floor the building of 20 or 30 or 50 floors you don't care who is living up there you don't care because you will probably not never go there you know maybe they will invite you maybe they will never invite you so you for you the building doesn't have 100 floors or 10 floors it has just one floor yeah i see see the architects try to remedy this by building communal locations, which also the architect of this building tried to do the communal terrace, for example. Why do you think that failed in bringing tenants together? But you know, already, first of all you know the idea of solidarity he somehow was uh failed failed you know in in in the idea which as a society of just which socialism and as a far far future communism far-future communism wanted to do finished in what we can see. That there is not much solidarity left. That even when the pandemic came, we saw it in Europe. The countries were not helping each other. Or they were helping because of interest. And it's very good for business, of course. The kind of chaos very good for business of course the uh kind of chaos is good for business you know because if you have to do something uh uh to take care of yourself then i then your need is chaotic so i can present you many different things so that's that's how it works you know that's how it works the the the idea of modernist architecture was to create solidarity, to create the flats which are more equal, even maybe not in the square meters, but they have the same commodity, the same kind of value, value in the sense of the view, the quality of living. But it failed. The idea, of course, it's a lot of community which are working all over the world on that again. But it's not a common idea. Well, I think you presented an alternative with this documentary, which is a mediation through art and common interests, which I find very inspiring. I have a last question for you, which is a bit of a long one, but it does interest me. which is a bit of a long one, but it does interest me. It's because the format of the story you're trying to tell. You're a multimedia artist. We've already talked. You're in theater. You're working for radio. You're doing all these kinds of different mediums to communicate your ideas. How did the documentary feature like what benefits or what restrictions did that medium or this format give you when trying to tell the story of this building you know when you are watching this movie uh because it's it's almost like a fiction you know we we we had five versions of this movie You know, we had five versions of this movie because we were editing this movie for five years. Martin Semenchich, who is co-author of the movie, and me. And so we also were thinking that it's in one moment that it needs some kind of context why I'm doing this, that it's not the only project. Because I started renovating buildings when I was 25. You know, I started with one factory in Zagreb, but because of the war, it was never done. You know, I already got money. I already got permits, things like that. And probably now, now, after almost 30 years, it will be done by somebody else. Of course. Then I did it. The second trial was in Alessandria in Italy, then in Bologna we did a restoration of Le Corbusier's pavilion Esprinuo, you know, because we were working five years on that, and then finally the architects and restorators, they did it. So we wanted to make a context. But it didn't fit it into the story. So we had to leave the story as it is. The story of the building. The story of me within the building. The story of inhabitants. And of course, a lot of things we had to shorten. Because sometimes you have the beautiful scene of two hours and you know that you have only two or three minutes time to show it because that's so it's it's restrictions it's restrictions we were thinking at one moment to maybe make a serial maybe six episodes of half an hour so to make it three hours you know and then probably it will it will it will have a much more also political context and artistic context and also uh because we did a lot we did exhibitions about inhabitants we gave them kind of quality that for instance in the same time i don't know uh reagan did something in united states the the boy was born on the third floor you know so to to be the big history into small history to to make to join to to create some kind of world map that this building because that's important for them you know that's important that they got a child or somebody died or somebody got job lost job they got money to to restore the flat or to repair something, you know. So we wanted to give them a value of being there and being some kind of part of the world in the same time.