Honoring The Man

Exactly 37 years ago, on this day, Viktor Gotovic, one of the most famous Slovenian actors was born. His peak in Slovenian filmmaking was in '99 and 2000 when he appeared in several movies. Me and him were quite a friends but one day he's just disappeared. There are roumors saying that he is in California surfing the waves, the others say that he grows popcorn in Asia, the darkest forecasts are that he died from overdose in Columbia. I don't really believe to any of those. Still, I would like to know what has happened to him. If anyone has any news, please let me know.

J.J.B.

Karim is in da House

Karim finally found him self.

J.J.B.

The Last Cigarette in the Parisian Bar

Here is how I smoked the last cigarette in the Parisian bar on 31st of December 2007.

J.J.B.

Reflection

When I came to Paris in October 2003, I had a Russian plan: I will stay in Paris for 5 years no matter what happens and after that period I will draw a line and see if the things are working for me or not. The fifth year have just started and it's still a bit too early for final account, but here are some pluses and minuses in the last 4 years.

- After being in Paris for 2 months, in december 2003 I shot a short film-exercise on super16. I've already written about that here, now I finally uploaded the whole film.

in case of problems, try to open it directly from here

- first year in Paris was very tough for me, I was almost all the time without the money, I didn't understand the word of French and it didn't seem at the time that the things will change. I remember that I was crying out of frustration several times. However, through Balkan connections I got a job at Orly airport (I was "slapping" the luggage as we say in Bosnia) and somehow survived that first year.

- second year started much easier since I got a scholarship from Slovenian Ministry of culture. Suddenly I had a lot of free time since I didn't need to run around like crazy trying to earn few euros. Consequance will be described in next line

- I spoke with at the time my directing professor Ilka Jarvilaturi. I told him how frustrated I'm because I don't speak the language. He told me:"To learn a language you have to either shoot a feature in French or you have to find a french speaking girlfriend.". Just to be sure I did both :)

- third year, partial breakthrough, I got a job as a professor of film directing at the school where I was a student. Great international environment. Big plus.

- that same year passed by working on post-production of paris.love

- fourth year, continuation of teaching. Started a project with Brina Svit, travelled with her to Buenos Aires and spent a summer shooting in Slovenia

- voila, here we are, fifth year, not bad at all. The only big minus that's following me all this years is French breaucracy. Although Slovenia entered the European Union in 2005, the things for me haven't changed much; I still need to wait in queue to get my working papers and the fact that I'm from European Union doesn't make the things really easier

- anyhow, recently I started to work as a camera operator and editor with a swedish journalist shooting the news for swedish TV. Although I started my career back in 94 working the same things, I enjoy a lot rediscovering it now

- so, when I don't work at school or with swedish guy, I edit the documentary about Brina. So, here I'm am, doing my best of Rodin's Thinker.


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.