Balkan Rhapsodies by Jeff Daniel Silva

Run time: 58 minutes (2007)

Balkan Rhapsodies is an episodic documentary in 78 parts that weaves together a mosaic of encounters, observations and reflections from Jeff’s travels through war-torn Serbia and Kosovo.  Mr. Silva was the first American allowed into Serbia after the NATO bombings in June of 1999, and the filming he did while there makes up the heart of the project.  Jeff returned back to the Balkans later again in 2000 and a final time in 2005 to complete the project. At the heart of the project, is an episodic yet integrated structure inspired by the free-form and emotionally infused musical rhapsodies of the 19th century that tend to feature a series of short non-linear compositions with a range of highly contrasted moods, colours and tonalities.  The rhapsodic structure in BR destabilizes linear time, highlighting the fragmentation of time, memory and history and its metaphoric implications of what became of the Former Yugoslavia.  Balkan Rhapsodies weaves together an array visual and sound fragments, moving between intimate observational footage, candid testimonials from survivors, humorous musical interludes, conversations with renowned American intellectuals Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and appropriated TV and web footage.  The collection of detritus and shards of memories, evidence, and experiences builds to a melodic echo that resonates with the absurdity of the situation and reflects a political and social imperative beyond the conflicts in Yugoslavia into of our present day crises.  The war in Kosovo may be long behind us but the issues and residue of history is still very present.  The fact that Kosovo’s status to this day is being heatedly debated in the United Nations amidst a score of other new challenges from Iraq to Sudan serves as a vivid reminder that, as T.S. Eliot eloquently expresses:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

Aesthetic Treatment

Balkan Rhapsodies uses the particularity of those early transformative experiences in Serbia and Kosovo as a starting point to explore universal themes of conflict, trauma, nationalism, globalization, representing the “Other”, and the problem of memory. Inspired by rhapsodic literary and musical structure, BR embraces those fragmentary and open-ended musical principles to create a non-linear metonymic viewing experience.  BR builds a rhizome structure through the episodic assemblage of 78 discrete units, where connections and relationships between episodes build meaning over time through a process of internal quotations and linkages through inter-titles and juxtaposition.  Balkan Rhapsodies ruptures temporal linearity, creating a piece that explores time and memory both within the film and within the viewer, empowering the viewer to build meaning as the piece unfolds.  The rhapsodic structure of the film embraces ambiguity and fragmentation as an aesthetic device, inviting the viewer to create meaning through the space in between the images, as they bring their own cultural and historic experiences into the piece and respond and relate to the nuances of the relationships between filmmaker and subjects.

Back Story to Balkan Rhapsodies:

Balkan Rhapsodies as a project began rather unexpectedly and innocently, in 1999, while I was working as a video producer at MIT.   I was spending considerable time working with linguistic professor Noam Chomsky on several non-related projects for the institute and was inspired by his political commitment and commentary.  It was through our casual conversations and my continued exposure to Chomsky’s work where I finally became activated towards social responsibility.  During our work at MIT in March of 1999, by happenstance, the NATO bombings of Serbia and Kosovo began, which would end up lasting for 78 days.  Having no ethnic ties to the region and a very limited knowledge of Yugoslavia’s past I was mystified by the intense ethnic conflict that had arisen and the general lack of the American interests in US foreign policy and military activities.  My dialogues with Chomsky led me toward many more questions about what was really going on in Former Yugoslavia that were not being answered in the mainstream media, so I rather capriciously decided to go to see it with my own eyes.  I flew to Greece and after two weeks of pleading, negotiated my way into the country with the help of Yugoslav filmmaker Emir Kusturica and his producers at Komuna.  Emir’s producers wrote me a sponsorship letter that convinced the Milosovic regime that I was not a CIA spy.  From that point I flew to Budapest and then traveled by bus to Belgrade and was greeted as the first American to be allowed entry to Serbia after the American led bombings.


While in Serbia I was often first met with suspicion about my intentions, but I quickly gained the trust of many young people who took me into their lives.  I stayed in their homes and their dens, talking and drinking with them late into the nights.  Towards the end of my first journey I was also interviewed on Studio B’s National news program to discuss my opinions about what I saw in Serbia.  The intimacy of the relationships with the many people I encountered on my journey had a profound effect on me and although I didn’t know it at the time, that experience has continued to inform my creative and personal life.


Over the years I made a few more trips collecting testimonies and observations of life in Serbia and Kosovo without a clear understanding why I was doing it.  It was not until I had some distance from my experiences that I could see the material in a new way and I began reconstructing the material into theses episodic rhapsodies.

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Balkan Rhapsodies: 78 Observations, Encounters & Afterthoughts on Serbia & Kosovo 

Selected Festivals and Screenings:

February 21, 2008          Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)- NY Documentary Fortnights -08 - US Premiere

December 12, 2007        DocHouse Brussels, Belgium

December 3, 2007          ForumDocBH, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

October 6, 2007             Valdivia International Film festival - Chile - Latin American Premiere

September 23, 2007       DokumentART Festival - Neubrandenburg, Germany- European Premiere

Credits:

Production

Director: Jeff Daniel Silva

Producer: Jeff Daniel Silva

Cinematographer: Jeff Daniel Silva

Additonal Camera: Alla Kovgan, Charles Jevremovic, Almira Zejnilagic

Editor: Jeff Daniel Silva

Sound Mix: Ernst Karel


Editing Consultants

Rebecca Baron

Gregg Bordowitz

Andrea Chignoli

Daniel Eisenberg

Jane Gillooly

Sharon Hayes

Saul Levine

Lana Lin

Lynne Sachs

Jason Simon


Cast/Interviews

Igor Basorovic

Noam Chomsky

Elizabeth Chung

Danka Kojadinovic

Beatrice LaCoste

Igor Milic

Ivan Nedeljkovic

Boris Popovic

Misa Radic

Mateja Radonovic

Zoran Ristovic

Vladan Stefanovic

Almira Zejnilagic

Howard Zinn


Financial Support

MIT Council for the Arts

Somerville Arts Council


Additional Support & Special Thanks

Michael Albert

Goran Alexic

Julia Ananina

Tarek Ani

Dejan Antic

Katarina Avramovic

Ilisa Barbash

Lisa Barca

Todd Bartel

Igor Basorovic

Dragan Bjelogrlic

Andrea Bowers

Romina Diaz Brarda

Maksa Catovic

Noam Chomsky

Susan Cohen

Moyra Davey

David Deitcher

Allan DeSouza

Dragan Djordjevic

Bob Doyle

Vesna Gosic

Wayne Hall

Robert Harris

Sharon Hayes

Andrija Ilic

Eungie Joo

Janet Kaplan

Ernst Karel

Kevin Kirwin

marko kocic

Danka Kojadinovic

Sergeant Ian Fitzgerald

John Gianvito

Aleksander Gubas

Charles Jevremovic

Alla Kovgan

Emir Kusturica

Miwon Kwon

Sowon Kwon

Beatrice LaCoste

Saul Levine

Lana Lin

Branka Lukic

Jessica Lutz

Alexander Lykourezos

Elia Machado

Ellen McMahon

Matt McMakin

Ana Miljacki

Mateja Miljacki

Dragan Milosovic

Michael Minelli

Ivan(a) Nedeljkovic

Bob Nesson

Nadya Nilina

Michael Oatman

Jelena Pavlovic

Vlada Petric

Andrea Ray

Humberto Ramirez

Antonio Riestra

Zoran Ristovic

Maria Roussi

Marie Shurkus

Arthur Silva

Janice Silva

Jeffrey Skoller

Vladan Stefanovic

Dragan Stokjkovic

Lucien Taylor

Patricia Thornley

Jasna & Vuk Vukovic

Faith Wilding


Organizational Thanks

Belgrade Zoo

DTV Group (Cambridge)

Komuna (Belgrade)

The Filmmakers Collaborative

Film Study Center - Harvard University

Marf Scakers

MIT Council for the Arts

Nea Ecologica

Somerville Arts Council

Television Studio B (Belgrade)

Vermont College of Fine Arts