Between October 27 and 31, 2021, Lumbardhi Foundation presented Kosovafilm: Fragments with the screening of five films produced by Kosovafilm at Dokukino.
Kosovafilm is a public film production, distribution and screening company which was established in 1969. Together with RTP (Radio Television of Prishtina), the company had a major role in the development of the cinematographic culture in Kosovo. It produced more than 35 films, including fiction, documentaries, and animations. Kosovafilm has also imported and distributed more than 200 films, mostly from Europe and the US. However, the revitalization of the film production in Kosovo coincided with the beginning of a political repression against the country in the early 1980s in Yugoslavia.
Kosovafilm: Fragments screened 5 films from those divisive years, including films by well-known directors such as Isa Qosja, Besim Sahatçiu and others. In addition to aesthetic values on the one hand, through their cinematic metaphors, enigmas, mysteries and tensions, the films present a glimpse of the contradictory existence of a country.
The screening of the film ‘Proka’ was accompanied by a live conversation between the film director Isa Qosja and the program curator, Tevfik Rada.
Below, we bring you the full conversation.
Tevfik Rada: Thank you very much for coming, for accepting our invitation for an interview, Mr. Isa Qosja.
“Proka” is your debut film, my favorite film in this program. But before we come to Proka, I will ask you some questions about your artistic background. How got you to cinema? What were your studies like at the academy? What films did you make before “Proka”? What were your short films as a student and who did you collaborate with at the time?
Isa Qosja: Before I went to the Academy, I was an actor at the Prishtina Theater. I spent about 10 years as an actor. If anything can be said about those 10 years, about their worth in my artistic life, then I can say that experience helped me later with directing. However, the question arises: ‘why would an actor leave the stage to get behind the stage?’. Let’s just say I had exhausted my interest in the stage. So, I played some roles and saw there’s so much an actor can do. He plays one character, continues with another and so on. So, I continued with my artistic interest aiming at directing. Of course, directing was a field not well researched for me, in terms of the overall concept. In terms of what I had to do in the future, directing was quite enigmatic because I knew there are a lot of arts being synthesized within directing. The film synthesizes the art of literature, the art of music, the art of photography, of course, and the personal art of thinking. I was motivated by this profession. Remember, creativity is motivation. It is not just going behind the camera; you have the actors in front of you and you do whatever you want. No, motivation is very important. I became a directing student at a not very young age, sometime around the age of 29.
What did I work on as a student? I worked on some of the classic assignments, on some of the ideas that were the fruit of my curiosity about certain topics that for me constituted research towards my creative identity, but that presented more and more dilemmas in all directions and situations.
The moment I watched Fellini’s film Amarcord, I told my professor ‘I do not want to study directing further’. ‘Why?’ – he asked, surprised. ‘Because I will never be able to do something of such a high ideo-aesthetical level.’ So, my dilemma of continuing my studies lasted for a while. I took it very seriously. However, I continued with the conviction that I should dedicate myself even more to this craft. In my third year, I made a film based on Beckett, which no one ever intended to make into a film. Beckett was theater. Somehow a guaranteed failure. It is very static and stable on stage, but not an experiment for film. However, I made a short film that was rated quite well so at the end of the year I worked again with another Beckett text. I was obsessed with Beckett’s texts. So, at the end of the third year, I shot and made a stage film called “Ah Joe”, a film and theater play with which I graduated. Faruk Begolli played in it, and this marks his first appearance on the theater stage. Half of this film was theater and half film. The moment Faruk, who played John, enters the stage, he enters through a stage designed film strip, and so the projection ends with his entry on stage, where the play begins. The moment he leaves the theatrical stage, he does so by coming out through the same performance of the film strip. The exterior was filmed accompanying the actor, wherever he acted. This experiment was much liked by professors and viewers. My other student short film was ‘The Suicide Squad’, also a research topic. Which of the characters carries out a suicide most effectively? These and some others are my films from the time I was a student at the Academy of Film, Theater and Television in Belgrade.
Tevfik Rada: And where are these films?
Isa Qosja: They are at the Academy. The Academy of Belgrade preserves all these films and I think that every student who studied there had to leave the films in the student archive of the Academy. It’s quite logical to put films there, it’s reasonable. Unfortunately, I did not have the vision to take any with me then because I considered that when I close that chapter over there, I do not need that part of my biography.
Tevfik Rada: When did you come from Belgrade to Pristina?
Isa Qosja: I came back in 1982, I worked in Prishtina television for three years, in a show called ‘Late Hours’. A three-hour show with a journalist who now lives in the US, Hys Shkreli, who in my estimation has been very talented in his work as a journalist.
Tevfik Rada: As far as I know, directors in Yugoslavia were employed as freelancers (independent artists), meaning they did not have a regular employment contract.
Isa Qosja: It depends. So, there were some, but there were also those who were regular.
Tevfik Rada: “Proka” was made in 1984. Can you tell us a little about the technical details, how it was made, how the film was financed?
Isa Qosja: I want to reveal a detail that I have not revealed before. When I switched from working at TV Prishtina to Kosovafilm, I was offered a project called ‘The Bridge’. A qualitative scenario themed around a bridge that was worked on by day and demolished by night. This topic is familiar to us, but it was developed into a very attractive scenario. The budget for this project was about one and a half million marks and this amount was provided. My friend Agim Sopi had a script called ‘The Man from Soil’ and the director of Kosovafilm at that time was a man whom I remember with great respect, who is no longer among us, Azem Shkreli. I said to him, ‘Azem, why aren’t we sharing this budget with Agim’s project?’. I had already read ‘Proka’ as a treatment so we decided to divide the budget; he made the movie ‘The Man from Soil’, I made ‘Proka’ and we forgot ‘The Bridge’ which had the highest cost, since it required the construction of a bridge by The Holy bridge of Gjakova. Its scenography was costly. So that project was forgotten and in the meantime the budget for filmmaking started to decrease hence as the time went by, the commitment to art in general, dropped down.
Tevfik: The movie “Proka” is very interesting, and it has an anachronism, something that I think was done intentionally. For example, there are inquisitions, but there are also officers with weapons, there is a village that is backward, undeveloped, a village that is full of water but does not have technology to use water. The timing of the film is also a bit vague, however I think there is something at least on a symbolic level that resonates with the nationalist atmosphere of Yugoslavia, which became clear during the 1980s. What do you think about that?
Isa Qosja: The film goes beyond local frameworks. How? Through the costumes, the people who naturally behave between what is called a civil and religious behavior, between what is called religious and servile to the ascendancy, so these are the elements that open the frames for it to be a universal film. These relationships exist in every country, the secular and the religious, the relationship between those in power and those who are always subject to power. Of course, other relations too such as those of the human with their ambitions and desires. I here had the basic purpose of sketching an autochthonous man who can also resemble the fate of a Mexican, Portuguese, Peruvian person that mainly deals with his work, ideals, illusions, dreams, commitment, efforts, but in our environment this character always becomes the focus of the obsession and the curiosity of others, and this curiosity produces punishment. This is tragic. So, we, who want to do something completely personal, are obsessed with the punishing curiosity of others. This is an evergreen topic in this country and many others, but in provincial settings, more or less, this is a crucial topic. I think that ‘Proka’ aims to portray this phenomenon and then come others where the properties of people are naturally scattered in different fields and directions and those properties are either self-managed or managed by others. They are mostly managed by others, and we always come to a bad conclusion. I do not make movies with a happy ending; I try to show what should not be done. So, if serious scenes dominate my films, I do it so that people can see how bad it is, how worthless it is, how troublesome it is and how unacceptable their behaviour is. Imagine if people were to invest as much positive energy as they do on negative energy, how much more beautiful this world would be. A wise man once said: ‘when you deal with trivial work, you do not have time to deal with important work’.
Tevfik Rada: What was the reaction of the audience and critics in Kosovo and Yugoslavia towards this film?
Isa Qosja: The reactions were mainly of the ideo-aesthetical level. I remember the critique of a good film journalist in the former Yugoslavia named Mitić who wrote that every picture of this movie looked like a fresco hanging on the wall. For me this diminished the ideological impact of the film. In my work I try to make sure that each frame has an aesthetic dimension, even when dealing with drama or a cold atmosphere, I have to see the cold to warm up. In our environment there were those who asked questions about where this event takes place. I remember then there were journalists who asked why there is no folklore incorporated in costume design, scenography or in the dialogue, you know, to identify the place and time of the event. It is natural that in the first films of our cinematography this dimension is required, it is natural because we were marking the beginnings of our autochthonous cinematography. Up until then, the main investors in the construction of the basic infrastructure of filmmaking; directors, cameramen, actors and generally technicians, were from other republics, mainly from Serbia. Generations that came back from Zagreb or Belgrade enabled the beginning of the production with complete infrastructure here in our country; screenwriters, directors, cameramen, actors, scenographers, costume designers, voice actors, all. So, the Kosovar film started to be produced.
Tevfik Rada: In your next film ‘Guardians of the Mist’ dating back to 1988, the character is again a lone dissident intellectual, opposed to Serbia’s police and secret services. However, unlike ‘Proka’ this time, the film takes place openly in Ranković’s era. Within the Kosovafilm: Fragments program, we have seen other films where I can say that the open or secret reference to Ranković’s time is one of the most important. For example, in ‘The Wind and the Oak’, but also in ‘The Man from the Soil’. How do you see this anachronism of the ‘80s? How was the atmosphere back then?
Isa Qosja: Of course, our cinematography had no political purpose, however that arrhythmia had to be addressed because it was necessary. Thus, some of the good works, to call it conditionally good were born, through the treatment of this topic which disturbed the artistic and political opinion in the former Yugoslavia. Without modesty, I can tell you that a bit of credit for the contribution to the most articulated rebellion of the Albanian people of Kosovo in those years belongs to these films, namely ‘Man from the Soil’, ‘The Guardians of Mist’ and ‘The Wind and the Oak’. I consider that this contribution was welcomed both politically and artistically by Slovenian and Croatian creators. Serbian journalists and public opinion described them as nationalist films. I do not think so. However, after a few days of screening in Prishtina, the film was prohibited in Prizren, on the sixth day of its screening, as far as I remember.
Tevfik Rada: The film ‘The Guardians of the Fog’ was the last film produced by Kosovafilm, right?
Isa Qosja: No, I also worked on ‘Kukumi’ within Kosovafilm.
Tevfik Rada: I mean before the war.
Isa Qosja: Yes. Before the war, yes.
Tevfik Rada: In what year was ‘The Guardians of the Fog’ banned in Prizren?
Isa Qosja: In the year ‘87 or ’88, right? You can correct me if I am wrong. It was banned and it has not been shown since then because of the violent measures and a whole history of events that followed until the liberation of the cultural space in Kosovo.
Ares Shporta: What was the role of filmmaking in the ’90s and what were the opportunities within the impossibility to deal with film in Kosovo in the’ 90s?
Isa Qosja: Well said, opportunity within impossibility, this is what it actually was. It used to be very difficult to go out with a photographic camera on the streets. A photographic camera.
Not to mention the film cameras. I did however write a screenplay for a TV film. The question arose though ‘Where to shoot it?’. We did not dare to do it outside so we shot it in Isniq, inside a tower. The whole film was shot there. Istref Begolli, Nexhmije Pagarusha, Mentor Zymberaj, Anisa Ismajli and others played in it. That was in 1990, as far as I can remember. We got the technology from Slovenia, the cameraman as well. So, even if we were trying to shoot something, we had to go inside, in the interior, to avoid being seen on the street by any circumstances. The police stopped me once, found some pages of the director’s book, took me to the police station and detained me until the evening.
Ares Shporta: What is the name of the film and can we see it somewhere?
Isa Qosja: Mentor Zymberi was its producer and he should have it.
Tevfik Rada: What is the name of the film?
Isa Qosja: “The Living Sphinx”. So, it had nothing to do with Serbs. However, everything that smelled of art had to do with Serbs.
Ares Shporta: As a film and cinema community, how did you experience the gradual degradation, closure, and non-return of cinemas to the public space in Kosovo? That is, during the beginning of the ‘80s we had 42 cinemas, if I am not mistaken and in 2013 when this cinema was reopened (Kino Europa), only the ABC cinema operated in Prishtina. How did you experience this and was there any mobilization, any request to change the situation on your part?
Isa Qosja: The experience of a creator whose cultural spaces are usurped is terrible. You can guess. It was pointless for a regime to think that the cinema was a place where enemies could be forged. That is why cinemas were closed. There was no more scent of movie theaters. There was no longer a projector beam, a meeting place for filmmakers. Yet we met in peripheral cafes and almost did illegal work by talking about art and projecting some ideas for cultural activities. This also happened with my TV film that I talked about earlier. In the cafe ‘Prestige’ I met Istref Begolli. He came with a notebook with wide lines, one or two pencils, and an eraser. We talked about his role; he took notes. We discussed and we were happy we could do that. Imagine, Istref Begolli, an acclaimed actor with such a rich career, appreciated all over, was forced to work this way. At the corner of a café in the outskirts. What a miserable situation!
I was still going to Kosovafim and one day the director of Prishtina television came to me and told me ‘You are being expelled from Kosovafilm for non-compliance with the measures. Everything went under the control of the police authorities.
Beyond the questions, I want to say that currently and fortunately, Prizren is the capital of culture in our country. Here we have a festival that is very important. People around the world have asked me about DokuFest, expressing a desire to visit the festival and Prizren. Directors, distributors, film selectors. In addition, you have creators, so you have people who articulate the cinematic voice quite powerfully around the world and you have many reasons to be on the forefront in the realm of cinematic culture. I am happy that this is the situation, and I am happy that this happened exactly in Prizren. Despite the fact that I wished the hall could be full tonight, this in no way denies my desire to come to chat with you and people who love cinema. I wish you all the best and hope to see you again.
Tevfik Rada: Thank you very much.
This interview was made possible through the “Cultural Spaces of Kosovo” project, supported by the European Union.