Boris Miljković: A paper dream is a valuable gift
Edited by: Emir Imamović Pirke
Snovi od papira (Paper Dreams) is a documentary filmed by Belgrade author Boris Miljković, in honour of the first 30 years of the Pula Festival of Books and Authors – Pula Book Fair(y) in Istria. The movie is produced by Castropola d.o.o. and Pula Book Fair(y), and realized with the support from HVAC (Croatian Audiovisual Centre), the City of Pula, and Istria County.
If culture is boring, and art is even more boring, then a documentary is…: Culture is boring primarily because people who introduce culture into our everyday behaviour are boring. Do you remember how boring the parents who taught you not to put your elbows on the table were? And that you have to eat with a knife and a fork, with the knife in your right and the fork in your left hand? And they kept repeating this until you learned to eat as instructed. How boring were the teachers who taught us to write the slanted and vertical thick line, a hundred times each day, many days a year and again a couple of years ago. Until you learned how to write. It was boring. But it would be even more boring if they hadn’t done that: the thing with the cutlery and the thing with the letters. You’d be grubby and illiterate. Boredom sometimes makes you smarter, prettier and better. That’s what culture does and documentary films are no exception; they make the mule a man.
Books can also be watched: Books can really be watched. Actually, books are most often watched. The best among them are read and watched at the same time, without going to the cinema, without a special ticket, it’s all between the covers. Books are, of course, often made into movies and series, but as we said, the best among them are all in one, but absolutely everything in this “paper dream”: the movie, the kiss, the horror, the fear, the theatre, the show, the morning, and midnight. A paper dream is a very valuable gift, some will say the most valuable amongst gifts, and you decide what to do with it. Will you keep it in your memory and make some new dreams out of it, then share them with your loved or hated ones, equally as cure or poison – or will you simply discard it? In the trash. In the nightmare. It’s your own private decision.
Films can be read: Again, the best films can be read. In the way that, when they are read, each audience member interprets them differently. To someone, Hitchcock’s The Birds is a horror film, to another a deep psychological analysis and to some, a fantastic tale of flying machines trained to kill. Kubrick’s The Odyssey is a source of various interpretations to this day: what is the monolith, where are they flying? Why Eyes Wide Shut when we know that image doesn’t exist?
Women are a Fair, and the Fair is… : A fair is a very special show. Shows don’t exist without women, just as this Fair wouldn’t exist without women either, and this isn’t a metaphor; it simply wouldn’t exist without the women, whose names I could easily enumerate one by one, but I don’t need to do that, and they, especially they, don’t need me to do that either. A lot more can be said, about irreplaceability, dedication, attention, and intelligence… But in the end, the men who write, write because of women, in the hope that someone will read them, share their suffering, memory, intelligence or simply their charm. And who can do that better than a woman? The men who write, hope that some special woman will read their writing and become someone important to them in their paper dream. This, of course, happens sometimes, but women stay quiet about it. The men who write hope that through their writing they will become artists, poets, and women love poets. That is mostly what men hope for, but women who write are a secret. It seems they write for themselves. Sometimes it seems to me that even the women who make these shows – called Fairs or Fair(ie)s – make them for themselves and the rest of us are only their guests. Just like in real life. Both of them, both those who write and those who present and exhibit, rule the cosmos in which we are only guests, but even we are wholeheartedly thankful even for the mere participation! Were it not for this, “There would be no sun in our blind apartment”, as one man remarks withing the pages of a book thinking that surely sun is the limit of highness and wonder. But women know it isn’t quite like that; there are depths far greater than the sun itself, they think to themselves, laughing in secret. But, well, let him have it.
Three decades of continuity in a world without continuity: Duško Radović once said: “Everything that grows, would want to grow” – this seems to me to be some female principle of this thing of ours. In that sense it’s no wonder that this is growing and already exists for thirty years. Well it’s their child! It grows and would want to grow, and what lame world, with what discontinuity can stop him? What force can oppose it? The Force fails, no matter how much it tries to shackle, confuse, beat and defeat him. On the contrary, it seems that in this case The Force is on our side, everything succeeds despite the odds. This accounts for the existence of the famous saying “May The Force be with you!”. It might seem to some that they heard this in “Star Wars”, but no, it’s the unusual mental mechanism which has held the Pula Book Fair(y) alive for more than thirty years, and it doesn’t appear even a day older. On the contrary, it’s getting younger and crazier.
What does the eye see and what does the camera reveal in Pula?: The camera doesn’t reveal anything which the eye hasn’t seen already. This is not an art film, this is a chronicle of a wish, it is not known why it really exists, except that it exists very strongly, and consequently, after some time you don’t know why and you don’t ask yourself this question anymore. The metamorphoses of the Fair to the Fair(y) is very significant in this case – you simply couldn’t run away from it. That is why the camera perceived the people as dreams: those from the streets, coffee places, bookstores, fairs as well as those from Uljanik, the farmers market, and Giardini Street, the eye noticed all of them first and fell in love with the colourful tapestry of ideas, which tangle themselves around the two fighters in the field: the one who writes and the one who reads. Sympathies are given to the one who reads, not because of his natural passivity, lack of action, or lack of dynamics. On the contrary, exactly because of the meaning he holds. If it weren’t for him, the other would have no reason to exist. Something like the form of an ancient Egyptian deity which holds the key to life in its hands. It resembles the reader of this movie journal.
“Marina Abramović and her children” and Magdalena Vodopija and her writers: I think Magdalena has more in common with the woman known as the Christ’s lover outside the context of the gospels, after whom she was actually named, following a series of distant events and names – than with Marina Abramović. She, Magdalena, is realistic and represents all the unfortunate ones who walk and write, who go in circles on this “speck of dust flying through the universe”. Not only does she represent them, she also stands for them and fights for them with all her love. Sometimes it seems this love is the only thing she is left with. Marina, on the other hand, represents herself and her art, which, in some distant sense represents the apotheosis of physical pain, and is reminiscent of the Christ himself. In that sense, Marina and Mary Magdalene could be lovers. Of course, these two films or these two themes have no points which could be considered in parallel or compared. Except the aforementioned insinuation.
Boško Obradović: My comrade. I purposely don’t say “my friend”, because Bole was actually my comrade. This was the time of “comrades”, and they appeared in various meanings. Mine was: my comrade, Bole. This cannot be inferred from the film, but what can is the kind of daughter this comrade of mine had. Actually, still has, in a way. This is an addition to the story about Mary Magdalene and Marina, with me as the mediator. Paper dreams is, apart from its main “intended” purpose, actually a story about the kind of daughter Boško Obradović had!
My Istria: It’s not hard having your own Istria, in the same way it is not hard being in your Istria either. Magda says that Istrians don’t poke their noses into other people’s business until you do, then they wipe you off the map. A special sort. Balkan people are used to constantly poking their noses into other people’s businesses, whatever that is, whatever that means, and however stupid that is. But poking noses is a sport so beloved by the people behind Učka –looking from Pula – that it is completely natural that Istrians distinguish themselves from the others. They don’t like tourism as much as, let’s say, Dalmatians. Or tourists. A man can be alone in Istria. That is very valuable for me and my family. We love to be alone, and we love company when we want to be around one. Istrians do it similarly. Besides, they are anti-fascists, which is so rare today that it has become precious.
My books: All books are mine. The least of which the ones that I wrote. That is why I love the Book Fair(y). For a few days at least, it seems to be the main thing, at least for a few days, to read, watch, drink wine and meet people you find interesting. And it’s a lot.
