Style exercise:
#2 Let’s presume some two different groups. The collision between two groups is very often drama concept. It’s easiest if we confront these two groups in that way, so we can implement the subject of the conflict. In BRILLIANTINE, the groups are with similar affinities, and the subjects of the conflict are the common teenage hostilities and the “domination” over the (pink) girls. Only we (or only me) don’t like that kind of a romantic film. Not because of the great number of such kind of films, but because every comparison with BRILLIANTINE could be fatal.
The optimal solution for those two confronted groups is to be: a group of boys, that listens to folk music (little Macedonian context), and as for contrapunct – a group of alternative and modern boys. Ultra-turbo-super-folk melodies with an Asian sound, in its essence, are the teachers’ favorite. The conflict of these two groups can be initiated in numerous ways. So, we need a genre now. We can leave these two groups to fight on their own, like in LONG RIDERS, and we only have to motivate them. It’s easiest if we introduce the one as “good”, the other as “bad” and vice versa. In that way, we can “salt” the story with a love story, if we want to add some melodrama charm. Like in the EAST SIDE STORY? And if we decide to do a crime thriller, than it’s necessary, besides the few inevitable victims, to have a “really lonely” police inspector/detective, deductive and analytical thinker, who hates the bureaucracy and sometimes “likes to get a fix”, and even maybe he can be one of the main suspects, or to talk with mass-murderers and cannibals… Lately, to make the detective even lonelier and with even more grudge, one should tie them to their beds. We like horror? We can take these two groups in some school institution with showers, obligatory bath and a few professors. Then we can choose among the “body-snatchers”, the killer with the mask, or the poisonous half-man-half-spider. We can even introduce some inferior student, mocked and mistreated by everyone. Do we want a tech-thriller? Nothing easier that that: few guys, a professor and some shadowed organized force (Mafia, Military Intelligence, etc.). If we want a film that can get an Award at some Film Festival, then we don’t need any intervention, we need a completely dull two film hours, where absolutely nothing happens. Everything always depends only on what we, or – to be more accurate – what producers want. Everyone works on that principle: East, West, North and South. Confection. Yes, of course. One should only “catch” the number, time and the price. So now, when we’ve finally found the modus, we can tell our story. That story won’t be exactly the same one we intended to tell at the very beginning, but, isn’t life always full of compromises?
#3 But then again, what if we really have the opportunity to be original? Then – what? How to open our soul and “lay on the floor” the pathos of what’s burdening us, and along the way – to remain original and, of course, to be intellectual with the necessary level. What would be the modus then? Well, my modus would be something that is very important to us, something we always wanted to tell, and nobody has said it or saw it that way before. Until now, we’ve linked the avant-garde and the retrograde worlds, at the same time. Yes, the answer dwells within the time frames. We can shift the time. Which time is known to me, which time interest me, and at the same time is full with rich iconography, and brings much exotic context, love, passion, struggles, conflicts… I would inevitably and immediately choose the Macedonian pre-Ilinden3F period. The period of the great Macedonian rebels as Jordan Piperkata and the many like him. How to link them? As Ted and Bill walked through the history with their time machine? Too usual and seen already. There are more ways to link different times. Besides the time, I would mix some of the civilization achievements, which we Macedonians, do open-heartedly share both with Eastern and Western civilization. I that way, to the confronted pro-Euro-Atlantic and the retrograde Asian groups, I would add few exchange students, let’s say, one from the occidental Champagne, Illinois, USA, and the other one from oriental Ankara, Turkey, Middle East. Skopje, Champagne and Ankara – university cities.
A question: are those two-three stories linkable, interlacive, and “breakable” enough, to be convenient for shaping a little more modern film expression, and can we input within them any (even trivial) motivation, so they could be defined in genre sense (I adore genres – is that so bizarre)? Of course we can. Very easily. Now, when we solved that, there are the great time leaps and the thematic collisions to solve. Surely, our etude – to link the stories – seems even more difficult now, but not impossible. Of course, it also has to be original and with some semantic depth “attached” to it; and – to have an attitude: the intellectual one. And finally, to be made with an original film language… Did I mention that the story should be, also, spontaneous?
Well, it’s not quite impossible… Hardly…
#b
3. Ilinden – the Orthodox Saint Elijah Holiday, the day of Macedonian Uprising for freedom against the Ottoman Empire (on 2nd of August 1903)