Radmila Djurica

Our need to express and create is powerful. It provokes experimentation and inspires artistic cultural expressions such as visual art and film. On a daily basis we are bombarded with messages and advertising, and we are able to think critically and analyze them. So, it is with film in every country in the region of ex Yugoslavia on Balkan today that has its own characteristics, recognizable by its style and aesthetics. And each one appeals on a certain type of audience. FEST 2009 – The International Film Festival www.fest.rs this time, after years of silence presented Slovenian Cinematography, a small but pretty effective cinematography, which was kept away in a past couple of years, because of the unfriendly to film, political fraction in Slovenia. Slovenian production nowadays is a black hole that lacks with funds for film making. With the average of 5 films made per year, this cinematography still often takes awards on festivals all over the world. Considering the fact that Slovenia makes only 4 or 5 films per year, it is logically assumed that Slovenian Cinematography needs proper scriptwriters with experience, because Slovenian audience won’t accept a copy of a Western film patterns in Slovenian film.

So, this year, an interesting entry on FEST09 was made by Slovenian film directed Boris Palčić with the film “The Transition” (”Prehod)” www.prehod.com In a frenzied trance, the painter Vlado paints a portrait of an unknown woman. Until one day this woman actually comes to his exhibition. The result of this meeting was undoubtly fatal attraction. An affair resulted with turbulent events empowered by tangled web of suicide death, organized by a mysterious international organization ZOM. His investigation leads him to find out about a dangerous and daring manipulation scheme. The victims of ZOM are young male who are, with skilful mind game, lead to a suicide or murder. “This film is about manipulation of system. Everything is watched over and cameras are everywhere. People are more and more compromised by it. It’s a story about painter who gets into an international system that he knew nothing about. It appears it is a system that controls everything: the biggest banks, politicians, and his ignorance about it protect him from their manipulation. There’s also a love story involved, and the scriptwriter Franci Slak had the similar story in his life, when his girlfriend went into a power of Scientologists. Franci was bitter and that is why he wrote this script. The film was about to be directed by Franci Slak, also a big Slovenian film director, but he died last year. So film gets to be directed by Boris Palčić, a professor of University of Philosophy in Ljubljana. I worked hard on this script with Slak a year before,” said Jure Ivanušić, a star actor of this film.

This very interesting screenplay and expensive film production, made through the successful way of this film to receive a Best Slovenian Feature Film, Audience Award on Slovenian Film Festival. By genre, it’s a psychological thriller with commercial pattern. And even if it seems that the film of such is hardly ever made in such a small cinematography, it serves as a good inspiration to Western type of audience. Highly esthetically entertaining, “The Transition” owes to a powerful visual effect of the film, as well as a fantastic scenography, meant on beautiful panorama of Ljubljana and Trieste. A good shooting helped supernatural and mysterious aspect of the story. The most visible help came from a good acting done by young Slovenian actor Jure Ivanušić that plays a main character of painter Vlado. His character overwhelms on a very Shakespeare - alike style, leaving all other characters totally behind, in the dark, which gives an impression of Ivanušić theatre experience on playing Shakespeare. “This film didn’t have a premier in Slovenia but it received First Award of Audience on Slovenia Film Festival, which means that audience already accepted this film. In film we have English, Slovenian, Italian language and by its subject, it speaks on many languages so it can travel, because the subject of manipulation in public and media is global matter. This film might be interesting to a world wide audience and the film traveled on festivals in Trieste, Berlin. And it will be shown in Paris soon,” said Jure Ivanušić.

Slovenian actor Ivanušić studied Film Academy in Ljubljana and has studied a classic piano in Graz Austria. He mainly works in theatre, also with Rade Sherberdzija in Ulysses Theatre, where he plays in “King Lear”. In Slovenia he was looking for a part to play a character that would combine music and acting together. So he has made a play called “Mozart” where he gave life to Mozart himself. That play happened to become a biggest show in Slovenia.