there is a big difference between the music that musicians would like to play
and the music the audience want to hear… (David Bowie)
Contributions to Milčo Mančevski’s biography:
#1 My first encounter with the Milčo Mančevski’s work was in the 1981: it was on the pages of the Jukebox magazine, where he published some texts. But, let’s make this clear: Jukebox was a magazine that treated the popular music and the popular mass-culture. And as for illustration for the significance of this magazine, I can contribute the fact that the first 50 issues of Jukebox were the first Goran Stefanovski’s choice as for “readings/books to take to a desert island to read”, at that time. That means that Goran Stefanovski gave to this magazine a treatment of literature. In those, above-mentioned texts, Milčo Mančevski (further in this text – MM) describes America, the other side of the Big Pond, in a manner that I’m still impressed with: those texts, today, are of the most importance for my vision of the grandiose promised land – America. The detailed, funny, rebel style of his – discovered to me that he’s a student of some Film Chatedra at some student campus in Champagne, Illinois. He were at CB-GB club, where the famous Talking Heads, Ramones has began their careers… Boris (Damovski) was with him. Boris takes pictures with a photo-camera. Click, click, click. Milcho has a beard, Boris is younger. They have a friend named Tory. Milcho likes to watch movies, and he also likes to make them. He loves and knows the pop-culture. John Travolta is his favorite actor. He likes to comment pop-bands still totally unknown in Yugoslavia.
The rest for MM – we all know everything. He came to Macedonia, shot a few music clips, one short feature, he didn’t make it with the script for the film MUSAKA, some claim that he published something in the Ekran magazine (I never bought that magazine, not even with the TV Guide for the Labor Day holidays). But, he wasn’t given a proper chance to work. And, what to say – in every misfortune, some fortune can be found. He ran to New York,
where he works, improving himself in the filmmaking, for – more or less – ten years, shooting music video clips and commercials, waiting for a chance to come back to Macedonia, and to prove to everybody what he can do. What size of an Ego1F requires this kind of acting…? Rade Sherbedzija called him a lonewolf and a gunman. With his film BEFORE THE RAIN he showed to the Macedonian people – who is who here… He proved that to all who didn’t believe in him. I think that was his greatest reward. Greater that the Venice „Lion“ he got. After that, he was writing stories, books, he cancelled and quitted on some films, he made a war to Hollywood, he made some photo exhibitions… Boris wasn’t taking any more photos of him. I don’t know why. MM would’ve come to Macedonia, and then he would’ve left Macedonia. He shot a commercial. He established the film company “Shadow film”. Shadow. Mystical. I did grew up a little and I still can see a great man in him, an artist. After 20 years from then, Travolta is still my favorite. I often listen to Ghost Town by Specials2F. The puberty is a dangerous period. MM shot a new feature film – DUST. That film opened the Venice Film Festival. Happy end? I’m sure of it…
#b
1. Ego and Super-Ego, Sigmund Freud
2. “Ghost Town” – song by Specials