Either Goran Paskaljevic was fed up with the question or he was desperate to feel normal, like a filmmaker from a peaceful country. When asked whether he was a political filmmaker, Paskaljevic was firm and unequivocal, almost dismissive: “I am not a political filmmaker.”
But when he elaborated the point, the Serbian filmmaker’s defences began to crumble. At first he sought to argue that politics was part of Serbian life, as if trying to say that politics cropped up in his films just like the landscape. “When I make films, I choose little stories of ordinary people. Politics somehow is present, that’s all,” he said.
To throw more light he gave the example of his 2005 film ‘Midwinter Night’s Dream’, one of the most talked about movies at this year’s IFFK. “I was just trying to tell the story of an autistic girl and her mother,” he said. “In fact, I did not have a story when I saw the girl. I was so mesmerized that I followed her, trying to find whether I could draw out a film from her amazing life,” he added. Then, for no particular reason, he spoke about the condition in Serbia at the time he followed the autistic girl.
Serbia was passing through its most profound crisis in the post-Milosevic era. The first democratically elected prime minister of the country Zoran Dindic, who had waged a war against crime and corruption, was assassinated by the Serbian mafia. “I was wondering what was happening to my country. Then I knew my land was suffering from a sort of autism,” he said. Even though he did not intend to make the connection, it was established: The autistic girl was a metaphor for Serbia.
Realising that he had unwittingly revealed himself, Paskaljevic conceded with a smile. “I am trying to say I am not a political filmmaker, but I am.” He was also the only Serbian filmmaker to criticise Serbia for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims. “As a filmmaker it was my duty to criticize my own people. Yes, we had committed the atrocity,” he said. Paskaljevic had by then abandoned the mask of normality that he so craved to keep on.
He also likes to think of his work in a particular way. “Take for instance an Aki Kaurismaki film. Just four frames into the film you’ll realize it is Aki’s film. But that would not be the case with my films. I have tried various genres, used both simple and complex narratives,” Paskaljevic said. But, when he once boasted about this chameleonic nature of his films, a famous film critic corrected him. The critic told Paskaljevic that his films were easily recognizable as his. “I was upset but I managed to ask how and he said ‘your films are soaked in humanism’,” Paskaljevic said and added: “That made me very proud.”
But there is one thing about his work he is not proud of: his Hollywood connection. He once did a film for MGM, ‘Twilight Time’, in 1981.
The first script he submitted was frowned upon. So he bought a screenplay guide from a Hollywood shop and rewrote the script according to the techniques outlined in the book. This reworked script was accepted enthusiastically.
“They made me sign each and every page of the script,” he said. It took a while for him to know it was a trap.
Paskaljevic wants his scripts to be flexible. “I change it during the shoot, as new experiences and suggestions come up,” he said. But in Hollywood, he was kind of gagged.
“I was not allowed to change my script even once. Whenever I wanted a change, they would say that I had signed on that particular page and that I had no right to make any revisions,” he said.
In spite of the bitter experience, Paskaljevic returned to Hollywood a decade later. “This time it was an independent producer who gave me enough freedom,” he said. But the indie producer ran out of money and 20th Century Fox stepped in.
“The first thing they asked me was how I could cast such an ugly girl as heroine of the film,” he said. Paskaljevic walked out of the film. The girl the Fox chaps referred to as “ugly” was none other than Cameron Diaz.
