Wednesday, November 22, 2006

#10 Minutes#-Antiwar film of Ahmed Imamovic for Sarajevo Siege



This short film, as its title indicates lasts only 10 minutes, but it tells a much longer story which unravels only in our imagination upon seeing the end of the film. While 10 minutes in someone's life mean nothing, they can be fatal in another: a boy and his loving family, tragedy in a war-torn city, death and destruction. All in just ten minutes. The film follows two simultaneous story lines: one set in Rome, and one in Sarajevo, in 1994, the worst time of the war in Bosnia.(more)
Ahmed Imamovic was born in 1971.He studied philosophy and cinema in Sarajevo.(more).DESET MINUTA(10 Minutes) won the "best european short film award" in 2002

7 comments:

Ecumene said...

Although the Rome part was not filmed on the original location, that does not take away anything from the quality of the film, it was just a symbolic element anyway. Cast is great, story is very compact and well written, direction dynamic and precise. There is nothing out of place in the film: well structured, stripped of false pathos, realistic, it is very straight forward. In other words, this is a jewel of a film, and it was not by chance that it won the award for the best European short film in 2002. 10 minutes for me is definitely one of the most moving and powerful films about wartime Sarajevo. Ahmed Imamovic, in search of Japanese for the role of the tourist, had to go to the Japanese Embassy in Sarajevo and ask one of the staff to perform in the film. Luckily for the director, the Embassy allowed one of their employees to star in the film.
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“Go West” 2005, 95 min


In the 1990s, the Yugoslav Federation disintegrated in a series of bloody wars. Perpetual student Milan, a Serb from a patriachal community, and Kenan, a Muslim cellist, are a homosexual couple living in Sarajevo. Their lives, intimate and public, are shaken by the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose devastating consequences include overt ethnic hatred and massacres. Trapped in Sarajevo during the city's siege by Serb forces, the lovers manage to flee to Milan's home village, and there they hide out, waiting for Milan's father to find a way for them to escape to the Netherlands. Witnessing the brutality of the Serb forces, and their hatred for the Muslims, Milan decides to improvise: he disguises Kenan as a woman and presents him in public as his wife Milena, a secret quickly discovered by his best friend Lunja. Milan is drafted into the army and the situation becomes almost unbearable for Kenan. His one companion is Ranka, a waitress in a local cafe, a woman whose dark secrets terrify most of the villagers around her...

GO WEST


Grand Prix des Amériques-Montréal World Film Festival-2005

Ecumene said...

"Είναι μεγάλο προνόμιο για μένα να ζω στο Σαράγιεβο, είναι προνόμιο ότι η ταινία '10 Λεπτά' συμπεριελήφθη καν στο πρόγραμμα του Φεστιβάλ κινηματογράφου Σαράγεβου, για να μην αναφερθώ στην τιμή που μου γίνεται με το γεγονός ότι η ταινία μου θα ανοίξει τις πύλες του φεστιβάλ," είπε ο Ιμάμοβιτς.

South East European Times

Ecumene said...

The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. It lasted from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996. It was fought during the Bosnian War between the forces of the Bosnian government, who had declared independence from Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska (RS) forces (VRS), who sought to destroy the newly-independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

An estimated 12,000 people were killed and another 50,000 wounded during the siege.

From a pre-war population of some 500,000, the city was left with a mere 250,000 or so people.

In 1991 Bosniaks formed 50% of the population, followed by Eastern Orthodox Serbs with 33%, and Roman Catholic Croats with 7%. However, in 1997 Bosniaks formed 87% of the population, with Serbs at 5% and Croats at 6%.[20] If the East Sarajevo (Republika Srpska) population were to be included (130,000, mostly Serbs), the Bosniaks would still have an absolute majority, followed by Serbs at around 33% of the overall population.
Demographics

Since the gloomy desolate years of the early 1990s, Sarajevo has made tremendous progress, and is well on its way to recovery as a modern European capital. By 2004 most of the damage done to buildings during the siege was fixed. A slew of construction projects have made Sarajevo perhaps the fastest growing city in the former Yugoslavia. Sarajevo's metro-area population in 2002 was around 401,000, which was 20,000 less than the population of the city itself in 1991. With its current growth and reconstruction, Sarajevo may one day in the not so distant future return to its late 1980s form and is clearly on the fast track to recovery, but the scars of the siege of Sarajevo on its history may never fully disappear.

Siege of Sarajevo

trol said...

hmmm...'anarchitecture' was born there and at that time...great work the film

Belinha Fernandes said...

I'll be back to watch this film.Figueira 21 is a local magazine not a newspaper.It's number two.They sent some questions to bloggers and started publishing the answers.It's not really about my blog. It's about local bloggers. Honestly I never thought of me as a local blogger because I don't like bonderies of any kind.And for me the idea of blogging is all about going out behond ourselves and our reality.My city is a depressed and claustrofobic reality.To go out is what I do in every way possible!!So I think I don't fit in that local reality... I don't visit a lot of bloggers from Figueira (this city) and I don't get comments from them either!!Most are about politics, sports and local stuff.Our local newspapers are week.So bloggers keep discussions open.Really I don't care much about that. It can't open my eyes or my imagination.Local blogging will not solve this city problems anyway. Some blogs are nice but most of them are a bore (to me.)I like one that publishes old photos.It's owner thinks his blog is rubish!!!!I like it!In fact I want to draw some of those photos.Well, bye-bye!!!

dodo said...

Ως καλός διαδικτυακός ρεπόρτερ μάς θυμίζεις όσα ο "επαγγελματικός" τύπος συνήθως ξεχνά...

Deepak Gopi said...

:)where r u ?

Για να καθαρίσουμε την Ελλάδα / To clean-up Greece Site Meter