Emir Kusturica

Emir Kusturica (pronounce " koustouritsa" , ЕмирКустурица into Serb) is a Cinéaste prize winner of two Palmes of Gold to the Cannes festival, and a Serb Musicien (in the past Yugoslav).

Biography

Emir Kusturica was born the November 24th 1954 with Sarajevo, in socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia (current Bosnia-Herzégovine).

Prague

The young Emir impassioned himself already for the cinema: to gain its pocket money, it made odd jobs for the cinema of district of Sarajevo and could thus attend projections. A friend of its father also invited it on the plate of the official films which it made. But in the suburbs of Sarajevo, Emir plays football, leaves, and frequent of other children whom the Kusturica parents do not see of an good eye. Anxious, his/her parents, sizeable family, decide to send it to make its studies to cut it abroad these frequentations. As his/her aunt lived then with Prague, Emir there was sent and thus been able to return to the academy of the cinema of Prague, the FAMU. He shows a brilliance there raises and there carries out two court-measurings: Part of the Truth and Fall . Its professors see in him a promising talent, and later, in its interviews, it will return to homage of many times to its professor of setting in scene Czech Otakar Vavra. During these years in Prague, Emir Kusturica will absorb all the great classics of the cinema, which they are Russian, Czech, French, Italian, or American. These films will deeply mark its style throughout its career.

In 1978, Emir Kusturica carries out her short-measuring of end of studies Guernica , a painful and wrongfully naive film on the anti-semitism seen by a little boy. This film obtains the First Price of the student cinema of the International festival of film of Karlovy Vary.

Sarajevo

With this first trophy, it returns then to Sarajevo and obtains a contract there on television. Anticonformist artist, it realizes in 1979 means-measuring the young grooms arrive drawn from a scenario of Ivica Matić about the inceste. Strongly influenced by the style of Andrei Tarkovski, the film disturbs by the form and the bottom, both too daring. The film is interdict of diffusion. It preserves nevertheless its station on television and makes the following year its second film: Coffee Titanic , drawn from a news of the Yugoslav Nobel Prize of literature Ivo Andrić. With this film, it gains the first price of the Festival of Yugoslav television.

It its first feature-length film Te do you remember carry out then Beautiful Dolly? the same year, on the basis of scenario coécrit by itself and the large Bosnian poet Abdullah Sidran. The film is semi-autobiographical, and tells the difficulty for a group of children in the Sarajevo of the Années 1960 of being confronted with the Western dream under the communist dictatorship of Tito. It reveals already its talent of portraitist and satyrist in the painting of traditional Yugoslav manners. The world discovers the cinema of the Serbe young person thus thanks to obtaining Gold the Lion of the First Work to the Mostra of Venice and of the price of the critic of the Festival of international film of São Paulo.

Emir Kusturica works then on its second film Papa is in business trip , with the same scenario writer Abdullah Sidran with a view to carry out a trilogy on her birthplace. The third shutter will not be born, but this second film, which testifies to the pain of the families separated by the political arbitration from the mode from Tito, gains with the general surprise the Palme of Gold to the Cannes festival 1985. The reward propels on the level of largest this young realizer who does not have whereas 31 years. To empty the head, and to evacuate the pressure, Emir Kusturica then will integrate during one year the group of music of her friends of Zabranjeno Pušenje as a bass player. He attends the Yugoslav music scene then and binds friendship with more the great author/type-setter and guitarist of national rock'n'roll: Goran Bregović become a star main road in all ex-Yugoslavia with the group Bijelo Dugme (white Button).

The United States

The Gold Palm opens all the doors to him, and in particular those of the international producers. Columbia is interested in him and proposes to him a mirobolant contract. He hesitates between several scenarios, including one treating Boukhodors. It will be finally a fact various on the Gipsies which will hold all its attention, and to make it work with the journalist Gordan Mihic to work out the painful history (and partly authenticates) of Perhan in the Time of the Gipsies . Work betrays dealings with the magic Réalisme, juxtaposing an almost documentary description of the gipsy lifestyle to the culture, the folklore and the myths Tziganes, making emerge in the account of the elements irrational and supernatural, suitable for a superstitious thought and Mystique: gifts of Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, childbirth in levitation… At the conclusion of turning, Emir Kusturica is destined for New York by the Czech realizer (and former colleague of the FAMU): Miloš Forman, to replace it with the Columbia University. Once gone up, the film is presented to Cannes where it obtains Prix of the setting in scene in 1989. In the United States, one of the pupils of Kusturica, David Atkins then proposes a scenario to him which will become Arizona Dream . It stops teaching and is devoted then entirely to the manufacture of this film, on the American dream. The painful design of film was made even more difficult by the beginning of the conflict to Yugoslavia, to which it attends impotent thousands of kilometers of distance. Turning is stopped with many recoveries to let Emir Kusturica make outward journey and return and help his/her parents who essuient exactions of the Bosnian forces. After the plundering of the family home (and the flight of its first trophies), it makes move his parents with the Montenegro. The film Arizona Dream , interpreted inter alia by Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway, will be all the same completed, and will obtain the Ours of Money to the Festival of Berlin in 1993.

Belgrade

Extremely shocked by the events in Bosnia and by the way in which they are presented by the media, Kusturica notes its impotence to act since the the United States but decides to return on its native soil and to show with the rest of the world its own vision of the conflict which tears its country. The film, Underground , approaches the difficult topic of the Guerre in ex-Yugoslavia. Mixing the Joke Buffoon, Rabelais ienne and Carnavalesque with a design purely tragic and despaired of the history, it is undoubtedly the most painful film but also more the most inventive visionary and of the career of the director, nourished by a poetic force of a rare intensity and a great power, without equal in its work so far. It will be carried out partly in the studios of Prague for the sequences being held in the interiors and partly with Belgrade, in full war, for the scenes in outside. The film will be worth with its realizer one second Cannes-native Palme of Gold in 1995, in spite of the strong controversy that it essuie in France. Alain Finkielkraut will write to the shortly after the advertisement of the prize list a violent one article in Le Monde , entitled imposture Kusturica , whereas he had not even seen film. Emir Kusturica answers, the October 26th 1995 by an article entitled My imposture .

This polemic pushes Kusturica to be stated to want to stop the cinema, but it will ravisera and turn black Chat, white cat in 1998, a film with the antipodes of the precedent, calmer but not less picturesque, full with colors, music and humor. It makes it possible to the scenario writer to be gratifié of a Money Lion to the Mostra of Venice in 1998 for its setting in scene. As always, to decompress, it will return to the music and will connect a world tour with its group of music, renamed the No Smoking Orchestrated. Of this round, it will carry out documentary the Super 8 Stories in 2001.

Küstendorf

After many fallen through projects, Emir Kusturica decides to return once again on the war and approaches it through a history of which it was informed for a long time: a transposition of Romeo & Juliette in the Balkans. This film will give the life is a miracle (2004). For turning, it is in the mountain of Mokra Gora that its team will stop, and it will build there for the occasion a railway and a traditional village out of wooden. This village, baptized Küstendorf and of which he car-proclaimed mayor, is set up in fortified town of the Altermondialisme, the ecological tourism, and the teaching of the cinema as he then explains it in many interviews. The village is opened with the public since September 2004. A seminar of cinema for young students took place during the summer 2005 there. The village gained in October 2005 the European Prix of architecture Philippe Rotthier for the rebuilding of a city.

It is always in the surroundings of Küstendorf that, after having spent one year to be worked on documentary on the player of Football Diego Maradona, that Emir Kusturica started in 2006 the turning of her new film the wish . The first having put more time than envisaged, its exit is envisaged in 2008, whereas second is announced with the Cannes festival 2007.

Emir Kusturica put in scene a punk opera the time of the Gipsies , of which the first representation was given on June 26th, 2007 to the Opéra Bastille in Paris. The opera is based on its film of 1989 the Time of the Gipsies, the booklet was written by Nenad Jankovic and the music was composed by the No Smoking Orchestrated. Work, very different from the usual programming of the Opéra Bastille (songs amplified with the microphone, geese on scene, decorations rocambolesques, etc) gained a sharp success on behalf of criticisms as much as public, which lengthily applauded the representation.

Some characteristic keys

Music

The music is omnipresent in films of Kusturica. After a collaboration with Zoran Simjanović for its first films, these are especially the three films that it makes with Goran Bregović which will mark the spirits: the Time of the Gipsies (1990), Arizona Dream (1993) and Underground (1995). He also works with the Serb trumpet player Boban Marković and his brass band of 11 musicians, nowadays regarded as one of the best brass bands of Central Europe. Since 1998, it is its own group the No Smoking Orchestrated which ensures the music of its films. He there plays of the guitar and composes part of the pieces.

Gipsies

The Gipsies are the central theme of two of films of Kusturica: the Time of the Gipsies and black Chat, white cat , even if players of gypsy music appear in almost all its other films. Emir Kusturica does not have family roots gipsies, but he attended them since his more tender childhood, and for him these people symbolize the concept even of freedom.

Homages

Its impressive knowledge of traditional of the cinema, Emir Kusturica distills it by small keys in its films in the form of direct or indirect homages plans, with largest films. As follows:

Homages to Federico Fellini: Emir Kusturica is often called the Fellini of Balkans . In the Time of the Gipsies , in particular, one sees many homages to Amarcord (the scenes of meal of family, the marriages, the large banquets in nature, the enlightened narrator which is addressed to the camera with the opening of film, film sequences in the film where the Federico young person tries a tempting approach of his neighbor during film, the accordion, as well as a scene of hypnosis of turkey). One pareillement finds many other homages to other films of Fellini, throughout the catalog of films of Kusturica.
Homages to Francis Ford Coppola: Godfather 2 in particular, but several films of Coppola in general are visual references for Emir Kusturica. Andrew Norton even carried out a complete analysis of the two films showing how the Time of the Gipsies was a remake of the Parrain 1 and 2.
Hommages to Martin Scorsese: Raging Bull in particular in Arizona Dream at the time of the scene or Vincent Gallo recites a passage of film in full cinema. The film will make several times reference to the characters of the Italian-American cinema such as Robert de Niro, Al Pacino or Joe Pesci.
Homages to Andrei Tarkovski: Emir Kusturica used in many of her films the same symbolic system of the water, poured on the head like symbol of purification. One also finds the gifts of telekinesis, the levitation, verticality, the circular dollies, as well as the pagan festival on the edges of the river of the Time of the Gipsies which is a homage to that of Andreï Roublev .
Homages to Jean Renoir: the scene of the hunting of the film the Rules of the game , was " honorée" by Emir Kusturica in the life is a miracle .
Homages to the Hollywood cinema of the years 1940: with many homages paid to Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Sirk, Orson Welles, Michael Curtiz, etc
Homage to Jean Vigo: the scene of Underground where the characters swim under water is a homage to Atalante
Hommage to Charlie Chaplin in the the Time of the Gipsies where Merdzan is devoted to an imitation of Charlot.
Homage Douglas Sirk in the scene of theater in Underground .

The policy

Emir Kusturica is often very committed in the remarks which it makes during interviews (even if, according to the country or the date where the interview is carried out, the remarks can vary enormously). This political commitment is reflected in its films, which often present the various sides of a conflict under an original lighting. Thus, in Papa is in business trip , the main character, although punished too severely for an imaginary political crime, is in fact a rather negligent father. Thus, black Cat, white cat , apparently apolitical film, was turned on banks of the Danube a few months before they are rammed by NATO in 1999. Thus, in the life is a miracle , the bosno-Serb conflict is shown since the point of view of Serb of Bosnia, driven out its grounds by the Bosnian .

Symbols

A certain number of topics and symbols return in its films like leitmotiv : vision of the world by the children, the American dream, the magic Realism, the animals, the marriages, the suicide, the take-off, the kitsch, etc

The family

The importance of the family is often in the middle of the intrigue of films of Kusturica (through stories of passage at the adulthood, separations, treasons or marriages). In her personal life also, the family plays a great part since his wife Maja Kusturica assists it in the production of her films, and his/her son Stribor Kusturica plays of the battery in his group the No Smoking Orchestrated, and occasionally makes the actor in his films.

Catalog of films

Courts and means-measurings

1971 : part of the truth
1972: Fall
1977: Guernica (First price of the festival of student film of Karlovy-Vary)
1996: Seven days in the life of a bird (docu-fiction for the emission Special correspondent of France 2)
2005: Blue Gypsy (segment of the film All the Invisible Children - film commissioned by UNICEF)

Telefilms

1979 : the bride arrive
1980: Coffee Titanic (First Price of the Festival of film of Yugoslav television with Portoroz)

Feature films

1981 : Te do you remember Beautiful Dolly?
1985 : Papa is in business trip
1988: the Time of the Gipsies
1993: Arizona Dream
1995: Underground
1998: black Cat, white cat
2001: Super 8 Stories
2004: the life is a miracle
2007: Promise to me
2008 (?) : Maradona

Actor

1972 : Valter brani Sarajevo of Hajrudin Krvavać
1978: the bride arrive of Emir Kusturica: an insurance agent
1982: 13 jul ( July 13rd ) of Radomir Saranović: Italian officer
1989: the Time of the Gipsies of Emir Kusturica: customer of the bar with Milan (turned scene, but cut to the final assembly)
1993: Arizona Dream of Emir Kusturica: customer of the bar with New York
1995: Underground of Emir Kusturica: merchant of weapons
2000: the Widow of Saint-Pierre of Patrice Leconte: Neel Auguste
2001: Super 8 Stories of Emir Kusturica: itself
2003: Jagoda U supermarketu ( Of the strawberries to the supermarket ) of Dušan Milić: the general
2003: the man of Riviera of Neil Jordan: Vladimir
2006: Viaggio segreto of Roberto Ando
2006: Last turn with Monza 2 of Luigi Perelli: itself
(film not left): Hermano of Giovanni Robbiano: Chomsky

Rewards

Lion of gold of the First Work to the Mostra of Venice 1981 for Te do you remember Beautiful Dolly?
Palme of gold unanimously to the Cannes festival 1985 for Papa is in business trip
Prix of the setting in scene to the Cannes festival 1989 for the Time of the Gipsies
Ours of money to the Festival of Berlin 1993 for Arizona Dream
Palme of gold to the Cannes festival 1995 for Underground
Lion of money to the Mostra of Venice 1998 for black Chat, white cat
César of best film of the European Union in 2005 for the life is a miracle

Others

President of the jury to the Cannes festival 2005
created its own village, Küstendorf
Séjourne regularly with Douains close to Vernon

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