Films, Films, Films... - Director's Cut

I've just started uploading my short films and other stuff on internet, because I would finally like to have most of my work in one place (which will be on this blog - in several days I will rearrange Filmography section).
I've decided to publish them also on posts, as I will upload them, with the short stories about shoots, festivals, etc...
So, here we go:
In winter 2001 I was sitting in Emotionfilm production office chatting with Danijel Hocevar about god knows what. He prepared me a coffee and I went to get some milk, I opened the frige and I saw inside 3 small reels (120m) of 35mm film (I think two were 500 ASA and one 800 ASA). I asked him what's that for and he explained that those were the reels - leftovers from previous project, they didn't use them and soon they would be out of date. I turned around and told him: "Dane, I have an idea!".:)
As I remember, that year we didn't shoot a lot of films in Slovenia, so for one afternoon shoot I called my friends, Sloveniian film workers to help me. Dunja Zupanec and Blaz Valic accompanied by Jurij Meden were actors, Bozo Zadravec was D.O.P., make-up Alenka Nahtigal, costumes - Sabina Buzdon, grips Stane Podobnikar jr. and Marjan Jelnikar, prop master - Rudi Pozeg, sound post-production Julij Zornik, Danijel Hocevar produced it and I was screenwriter, director, editor and camera operator.
Here is a crew.

And a picture from rehearsal.

Funny thing was that this was really no budget shoot, so we borrowed the electricity from Nino&Jelena's appartment. To fix it over the street it looked like this.


Anyhow, here is the film. It was kind of festivals hit, they really liked it, esspecially showing it on closing ceremonies.:) And the film is really made for cinema, because it uses the cinema hall as a film element.


Trivia:
- the voice of producer at the end of the film is acctually the voice od Danijel Hocevar. As I remember Julij Zornik recorded it directly from his mobile phone.
- Jurij Meden, Slovenian famous film critic and filmmaker plays the role of the director.
- on the first few screenings in Slovenia, at the sound of teared film and blank white frame, the cinema operators were constantly stoping the projection. We had to accompany the film reel with the warning: "In this film the effect of teared film is used. Please don't stop the screening.".

J.J.B.

A bout de souffle - commercial

Voila, finally.
I helped Andrew Brooke, the friend of mine, who last year graduated at Eicar film school on his commercial assignement.
He didn't need to persuade me a lot, A bout de souffle is one of my favorite films and I had a lot of fun editing this. It took him another year to fix the music and sound but finally, here it is.


J.J.B.

Slovenia Mix Summer 2007

As I promised, here we go.

I took this photo in the plain day but it was raining as hell. I took it with flesh so this is what I got. Those are Jure Cernec and his girlfriend Svetlana.


One day we were sitting in the evening on workshop Divided God in Ljubljana: Vava, Tom, unknown, Zelimir Zilnik, Maja Ziberna and Dzeni.





On the first part of the shooting with Brina we visited Bled. I insisted on taking photo of Brina and Pascal in front of ex Tito's villa.


Here is a link where you can see a lot of photos from the workshop The One Minute Jr.

And at the end, last day of the second part of the shooting with Brina, party at her place.








J.J.B.

Back In Paris

Voila, after 40 days of travelling around I'm finally home. Actually I came a week ago but usually when I come to Paris after a long period of time I allways need a week or so to adapt. However, for the beginning, two things:

First, I plan to do in a day or to a photo review of my summer activities around but here are two pictures that go out first. One day, while I was on holidays on Croatian island Krk, I had seen a poster announcing the tv screening of the football match between Hajduk and Sampdoria in a bar near sea.. I thought it will be fun so I went there. As you see here, tv was placed on the beach side, with a sea behind it and it was connected with hundreds of cables and antena from 70's. The game started and we could barely see the players moving around but because of the noise in the picture the ball was completely unrecognisible. So we protested to the boss of the place and then the real fun happened. He started to move antena left and right, up and down and in all possible directions that you can imagine. Very quckly also we, the spectators, joined the club; each one had his own idea what to do to fix it. This lasted till the end of the first half time when we got tired and decided to relax during the break:). But ones the second half started we were all there again trying to fix the picture. I think it's not neccessary to mention that we didn't see the minute of the game but we had had great fun.

Today I received an e-mail from my friend Karim Raoul. We worked quite a lot together (among other things he was D.O.P. on paris.love) and after he moved back to New York we stayed in touch all the time.
Anyhow, he opened his website (the link is also among my favorites) with his photo work. Definitely worthy to check. I found this picture, that I'm publishing here with the approval of the author, very strong (bird=airplane); I just don't understand how he didn't sell it at the time.


J.J.B.

I Am On...

holidays:)

Coming back after 20th August.

J.J.B.

Summer Time

...and the weather is easy. After the heat-wave last week I can finally do few things (not just trying to survive in horizontal position). Last week, apart from few meetings, I haven't done much. I shot a statement for Slovenian internet portal vest.si regarding the situation in Slovenian film industry. It's a long story and I don't want to go in details here but few guys in power managed to destroy the politic of Slovenian Film Fund literally over the night. The text in the statement is:
The situation in Slovenian film is finaly balanced and it can be explained by Newton's 3rd Law: If object A exerts a force on object B,
then object B exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.
Populary we call it the law of action and reaction.

Yesterday we had a barbecue with a guys from Luksuz Production. At around 6 p.m. it was still quite easy and then exactly at 7 p.m. we started. I was chef, because I really enjoy in that and the great thing isthat the day before Tom bought new grill.

In few hours I will go to Ljubljana. The whole next week we will continue shooting Brina's portrait for national TV.

J.J.B.

Business With Pleasure

As usual, I would say. As I moved to Paris, my visits to Slovenia are always connected with some work and a lot of pleasure. Last week I spent two days in Ljubljana because we were shooting "Slovenian part" of the documentary Lady Svit. I stayed at my friends appartment Nino and Jelena. I know them for quite long and we have also very long professional relationship: Jelena made music for my first video films, then they both made music for Straight Ahead, after that I've worked for almost two years on docu-fiction TV emission Odklop and Nino was making the music and again we worked together on paris.love.
Shooting days with Brina were very nice. First day we spent in Ljubljana shooting interviews with Zdravko Dusa - her editor and Peter Kolsek, writter and old friend of Brina. Peter was a bit ill so we couldn't do a lot with him, but the part we shot was very nice and we caught some emotional moments.
Next day we went to Kras, where Brina and Pascal have their house - summer residence. Unfortunately no pictures from there but for the next time I promise some because the place is magnificent.

J.J.B.