Mostar transformed

Someone made a You-tube video with pictures of Mostar from before the war... Required watching for anyone who lives in Mostar now. I knew the city had changed a lot, but I really hadn't imagined what it looked like before... It was less depressing actually for me to see the war photos, because at least the city looks better now than it does then. (For those of you who haven't been to Mostar, compare with the photos of today's Mostar that I posted in November when I first arrived.)

The words at the end say, "Why? Don't let it happen again!"

The giver

On Monday, the Mostar DOSTA! movement organized a humanitarian action for the city council members of Mostar. Because they have refused to pass the city budget, they also are without salaries for the last 3 months (as are all city employees, including fire fighters and teachers in the school for special needs). The motto of the action was: "what's important is not what you give, but that it's from the heart!"

Activists stood in three locations in the city and collected messages and gifts from citizens. Below are some of the messages people wrote. All the messages were presented to the city council members at the assembly meeting on Tuesday. (Gifts included: a broken watch, a textbook on "What is a market economy?", and 5 pfennigs for "kave/kahve/kafe" [the Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian versions of the word coffee])






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Dear Sirs:
I take this opportunity to send you a tea bag of UVIN-H tea, that you wouldn't need to interrupt the assembly three times in one hour to take bathroom breaks. In order that this wouldn't happen again, I recommend to you UVIN-H tea which can help your urinary tract and enable you to "hold it" during the course of the assembly. Everything for your health.
--Your (dis)obedient bum


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This is a land of hatred! We need to cleanse BH of all the Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs and similar hypocritical "actors" and move in normal people with healthy minds who want good things for this country, not the eternal "who is who and what is what"! Above all we are human beings and we need to stop this nonsense and roll up our sleeves to help other people. Above all, we are human beings. As Shakespeare said, "What's in a name? a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Love, not hated! Because it's ENOUGH!

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My name is J**** D**** and I want to show you the 200 KM receipt for my child's monthly medicine. (receipt enclosed)

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To our dear members of City Council. I want to support you in this time of recession because I am aware that the recession hits hardest those who have the most. I, like most people, have nothing, so this hellish recession doesn't affect me. When you have nothing, you can't have less! I want to thank you for the excellent anti-recession measure which you secured for us against this threat which from the West. You put your back into it and took all concern for our finances on yourselves. I hope that you will prevail over this recession, continuing to drive good cars, eat in good restaurants, sleep in expensive hotels, take your mistresses to the sea, and keep all the secrets which a good city councilor must keep to himself. All the best to you, and whatever else to the people. The people don't know any better, and it's best for you this way. Excuse my bad handwriting and writing mistakes, but I am not highly educated, I can't do any better.. maybe someday, if I end up in Vienna, like your children.

Dosta! stikes again...

The press statement for this latest action (my translation):

Dosta! Mostar: I dreamed last night that you weren't there...

Pokret Dosta! Mostar once again warns the city council members that they are responsible for this months-long crisis in the government, that they have come to their position by the will of the voters, who can remove them from these positions in the same manner!

The city council members and candidates for mayor are comfortably "playing politics" from their armchairs, smug and content, while our children sit hungry in unheated schools and citizens for months now have not received their salaries because of their mistreatment.

Members of City Council, we are fed up with your nationalist demogogery, which you use to cover up your own irresponsibility! This city needs concrete plans and a program for economic, social and cultural progress, and not calculations based on nationalism. We are fed up with your false democracy, whose sole goal is your own material security, while Mostarians have lived for years surrounded by ruins in an aggressive, divided society.

True democracy requires accountability and transparency before the public in the work of elected representatives and institutions, and not inter-party bickering and underhanded games.

Therefore, we are demanding:

That you stop these "endless mayoral games" which are destroying this city and immediately start the procedures for adopting the city budget for 2009!

That the proposed candidates for mayor state concrete programs and outlines which they aim to carry out in the next four years and that they take responsibility for realizing these plans!

That you implement a public discussion about the current situation in the city, a discussion in which to stand before the citizens of Mostar and take responsibility for your (non) accomplishments to date.

That local and national media bring to their programs those who are responsible for this situation and confront them with the direct questions and commentary of citizens who are harmed by these scandalous "politics"!

The DOSTA! Movement invites citizens of Mostar to join in demanding that Mostar finally become a normally functioning city! If the City Council is not presently able to fulfill these demands, we invite citizens to change the current government!

The DOSTA! Movement - Mostar

I'M FED UP, WHAT ABOUT YOU? MENI DODIJALO, A VAMA?


Abrasmedia photos and press statement in local language

The Powers that Be

A group of activists in Mostar, from the group DOSTA! (meaning: Enough!) late last night put up posters all over town to protest the inefficiency of the city government, which for the last 5 months has stalled on appointing a new mayor and thus has not adopted a city budget. The two sides (Croat and Bosniak) refuse to do what is right for the good of the city, because their first priority is protecting their own financial and political interests. I love it when people protest peacefully! when they decide that it is their responsibility as citizens who love their country to press for change.

O Say can you sing?

Thirteen years after the end of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, lyrics for the new national anthem have finally been agreed upon. (Up until this point, an instrumental version of the anthem was always played instead.) The committee for selection of the text considered 329 other possibilities but the 30,000 KM prize for the winning authors was given for the lyrics below.



Ti si svjetlost duše
Vječne vatre plam
Majko naša zemljo Bosno
Tebi pripadam

Divno plavo nebo
Hercegovine
U srcu su tvoje rijeke
Tvoje planine

Ponosna i slavna
Krajina predaka
Živjećeš u srcu našem
Dov'jeka

Pokoljenja tvoja
Kazuju jedno:
Mi idemo u budućnost
Zajedno!


My approximate translation:
You are the brightness of the soul,
An eternal flame of fire,
Mother, our land Bosnia,
I belong to you.

The beautiful blue sky
of Herzegovina,
In (our) heart are your rivers
and your mountains.

Proud and glorious
the borders of our ancestors.
You will live in our heart
forever.

Your generations
say as one,
We go into the future
Together!


These lyrics don't really make sense in English... I'm told it doesn't make sense in Bosnian either! There is much complaining about the artistic quality (or lack thereof) of these 30,000 KM lyrics.



Here's a link if you want to hear the hymn being sung:
http://www.dnevniavaz.ba/multimedija/video-galerije/himna-bosne-i-hercegovine

Patria Mia

I recently watched a fascinating documentary, Patria Mia, produced by the same production house I mentioned in my previous post, pro.ba. The filmmaker follows the story of several Chinese immigrants-- a shopowner, an accupuncturist and most closely follows the life of a girl who sings turbo folk, a kind of very cheesy Serbian/Balkan music with inane lyrics about "love" and same-sounding, bland tunes-- actually, very reminiscient of much of mainland Chinese pop music in in those ways! The filmmaker uses the experience of these immigrants as a contrast with her experience, and the experience of many others in the Balkans, as refugees in other parts of Europe, and of course it was striking to me as a foreigner living here. The immigrants asserted that language learning was the most difficult aspect of their integration into Bosnian society and even the girl singer, who spoke Serbian very well, had to practice to properly pronounce the lyrics she was singing, especially the Rs. That was a bit sad to me as well, because I could see that for Balkan viewers some of the humor of the film is related to the mispronunciation of Bosnian words by these immigrants and the strange sound of their language. As a senior in college I spent a week in Athens studying the immigrant experience of Chinese people there and watching the film found many of the same issues...

A Night at the Movies

Last night was the Mostar premiere of a new Bosnian film called The Nightguards (Cuvari Noci). The director and actors even came to Abrasevic to speak about the film and answer questions. The production company behind the film is pro.ba, a Sarajevo-based production house for documentaries and more artsy films. We showed another film by pro.ba in November, Snow (Snijeg). I was struck by how similar the two films felt-- slow paced, nuanced, character driven with an ensemble cast, reminiscent of Altman films, although a bit more spare (perhaps due more to lack of resources than conscious choice.) An obvious difference between the two is that Nightguards features an all male cast (the only female actress is present only as a voice over the phone) whereas Snow's cast is almost entirely female and the director is a woman as well. Snow is more emotional and dramatic whereas Nightguards is more ironic and humorous, but these moods are conveyed through very similar cinematography with long shots and natural lighting.

These films present a drastic contrast to most of the other Bosnian post-war-not-set-in-war films I have seen (Gori Vatra, Grbavica, Tesko je Biti Fin, etc), with their black humor, farcical elements and violence. They remind me more of Fifth Generation films from China (admittedly, this is likely due to the fact that 5th Gen are the only films I have studied and know about-- I briefly considered throwing in a reference as well to Italian neo-realism but I don't know anything about it!), which are similarly slow paced, with little dialogue and beautiful spare cinematography. They are similar to in that 5th Generation filmmakers were the first ones to make films in China after the trauma of the Cultural Revolution and Bosnian filmmakers today are still dealing with the trauma of the war, a difference being that Chinese filmmakers faced serious issues of government censorship, whereas it seems to me (although maybe this isn't accurate) that Bosnian auteurs have more freedom of expression, although they still mostly funded by the government. These Chinese filmmakers in the end grew to become more commercial (um, plot driven) while still preserving the artistic element (in my opinion), but new filmmakers like Zhang Jiake emerged and created more gritty, urban portraits... Where will Bosnian film go from here? I can't wait to see.
PS: for those who read my post about Bosnian dentists... when the main character in the film is sick, he begins to drink, you guessed it, tea. :)