At the press conference held on Monday, 3 November 2014 for Serbian filmmaker Zelimir Zilnik, TIFF Director Dimitri Eipides welcomed Mr Zilnik to the Festival and noted: "It’ s a great pleasure and pride to have Zelimir Zilnik as our guest, a leading European filmmaker, with a considerable oeuvre, which is active and efficient and reflects the political situation in the Balkans during the last thirty years." The Serbian filmmaker said that "it’s a pleasant surprise to be invited to such a vibrant festival that screens great films to a large audience and fills theaters even when the sun is shining outside, something that does not happen often at other European festivals”.
Replying to a question by Dimitris Kerkinos, head of the Balkan Survey, about “the difference between fiction and documentary”, the filmmaker said: "I started my career like many filmmakers shooting short films and documentaries. That was not bad at all for a 20-year-old who tests not only his skills but also his own heart and soul”. Mr. Zilnik explained that "When you try to capture people’s stories and dramas, you expose them, and so they often try to hide pieces of their own history”.
Talking about his first feature film, Early Works, the filmmaker said that "in 1968, I felt that it was the right time to shoot the film, while all these dramatic events were taking place in former Yugoslavia. Student protests marked the future and the fate of the country, producing an intense climate of criticism by the young people who questioned the ruling class and system. Shortly after, Soviet troops occupied a part of Czechoslovakia, a country that wanted to pursue a new model of an independent socialist form. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia was facing war and occupation”. The filmmaker himself, as he said, was found in the trenches, along with other students and young people who tried to prevent the onslaught of tanks in the northern border with Hungary. "There, in front of me, I saw the idea for Early Works, almost twenty years before the Berlin Wall collapse".
Regarding his influences at the time, Zilnik explained that "Godard, who was a leading figure in Europe, said that a good fiction movie should look like a documentary and vice versa. It was a theory that the French director himself did not follow strictly, as his movies about politics were distanced from reality".
However, his biggest influence as Mr Zilnik remembers was Aleksandr Medvedkin, the great Russian filmmaker and contemporary of Eisenstein, who was the first one to become censored in his country while Trotsky and Lenin were still alive. "I remember the film Happiness, which narrates the story of a teacher arriving in a remote soviet village. While the teacher is willing to bring new ideas and trends in the 20s, eventually she ends up being brutally attacked by the townspeople. The film was banned and presented only in pirate screenings'. Another important filmmaker according to Zilnik, was Jonas Mekas, who tackled the subject of cinematic freedom, in a manner similar to Cassavetes’.
Referring to contemporary Serbian independent cinema, Mr Zilkin said that when he started his career film was the most prestigious media and art form, but today technology has changed the landscape.
When asked about the current political situation in Serbia, Mr Zilnik replied: "today there is no capitalism, no communism, no post-socialism. Even if closer relations are to be established, a political confusion will continue to exist. Furthermore, regarding the arts, culture is devalued and everything is oriented towards entertainment. Yugoslavia is watching TV, admittedly with good shows which nevertheless work against cinema".
Speaking about young Serbian directors, Mr. Zilnik said that "of course there are new talents," but he also explained that "geniuses are not growing at the pace of microchips and gigabytes”. Regarding his plans, he said that "every year I try to do something new. A month ago I returned from Africa where I discovered with horror that the current system of forest, fertile soil and mine exploitation is much worse than the one taking place during colonization".
In his closing remarks, Zelimir Zilnik admitted that he does not know much about the current political situation in Greece, but he is sure that "since the Greeks survived for 3000 years, they will survive today too”.
