Father Geek here with a special report from one of our longtime Eastern Europe reporters. Edgard contacted me last week about this "state of Yugoslavian cinema" piece. "Should I go with it?" was his query, "and if so should it be part of the regular weekly column?" I told him to set it up as a special report as he has it here and send it on in. I know there will be differing opinions on what is said here, but we are a site with a worldwide audience looking to international issues, problems and news, (When social issues such as this impact cinema we should cover it) so I felt the best thing to do was to expose this to the light of day and not hide from it. I'm not really in a position to sit in judgement of some of the things brought up here, I live in Austin, Texas not what's left of Yugoslavia. Most of you know no more 1st hand than I on this issue, so read this, open your mind, and thank your luckly stars that as film lovers you live elsewhere...

Hello AICN readers... Edgard here with a different kind of report than usually...

Since EURO AICN was created a few months ago, we have exchanged frequent messages with people from ex-Yugoslavia... News, reviews, reports... Like everywhere in the world there're people over there who love movies, who love to talk and discuss about films... But unlike most of us living in Western countries, Yugoslavia - or what's left of it - has to deal with many difficulties to access easily to the films we all enjoy to watch. As I live myself in Paris, I know my luck : Paris is one of the most "movie loving" city in the world as I can have access to films from all over Europe, America, Asia, Africa, Australia in many many cool movie theatres...

Here below you will find a kind of statement from a group of movie fans in ex-Yugoslavia who have decided to create a film magazine to communicate this passion. I know many of you don't read Serbian, but I still think this is an important matter. I still think it's necessary sometimes to forget about our own comfort and understand that other people have to face uneasy situations. In this case, I can feel the true passion and dedication in the belief of this group of movie fans. That's the important thing here for me, that despite our differences, our ways of life, it's still the same passion and desire to be amazed by 24 images a second...

Remember that NOT everyone at AICN's various offices around the world may necessarily agree with this point of view, and this is NOT an AICN headquarters editorial, but an opinion piece from one of our regular individual field reporters living "ON THE SCENE" in Eastern Europe... We feel these issues are important enough to bring them to light, and open them up to public discussion...

THE `ANTIPIRAT` STATEMENT

The only possible way for an urban Serbian audience to cover the contemporary cinema is to rely on bootleg and pirate video sources that are dominant in our fatherland. Those sources mostly provide us with murky video recordings taped in the theatres near your own American homes. This is of course an illegal network but it is the only way to maintain the Serbian moviegoing culture (if you didn`t know-it truly exists).The war in ex-Yugoslavia initiated the global devastation of our national moviegoing and moviemaking culture. Our film industry ceased to exist in a legitimate way and it turned into a semi-criminal private endeavor enjoyed only by those close to the Serbian ruling dictatorship.

Before the war we had an immaculately strong film critic scene which was potent,influential and governed by Serbia`s own Jay Cocks-screenwriter and movie expert extraordinaire-Nebojsa Pajkic,PhD. Thus it could be considered as powerful contemporary successor of the critical and essayistic embodyment of the French New Wave (Truffaut, Godard,Chabrol).

The crowning jewel of the whole movement was the publication of the first compilation of critical essays regarding `New Hollywood` named `Svetlo u tami` (e.g. `Light in Dark`). This book was a founding stone of the new and internationally recognizable form of expressing the analytical statement about movies.Sadly,the war prevented this seed from growing and this milestone book from being published abroad.

Today,the international approach to the movies is drowning in its own shallowness and despair.On one side we have undiscriminating fanboys and on the other side we have aging `have beens` that are influential and easily fooled because they are unable to decipher the real importance and,sometimes covered, meanings of the modern film medium. Fanboys tend to overestimate while mainstream critics underestimate the pop-cultural importance of Hollywood movies while not really understanding it.

The favourization of pseudo-artistic excuses for movies is also present on both sides.

People who founded `Antipirat` can`t cope with that no more.They are fed up with having to endure the lousy tapes of great movies that were misunderstood and mutilated by the likes of Roger Ebert.We`re also fed up by the ferocious monster of political correctness tending to desacrate the film medium for all times.We are tending to revive the true independence and integrity of cinema thinking in our homeland and abroad.This is our attempt to defeat the fake bootleg culture prevailing in our country as much as to disgrace the shameful foreign movie thinking policy which misguides the moviegoing public.That form of misguidance can also be considered as spiritual piracy.So `Antipirat` does not only address Serbia but also the moviegoing conscience of the whole world. For now this is the guerilla style of thinking but it intends to become universally legitimate.It all may start as a young critics` Fight club but who knows-we may be preparing our Project Mayhem.This time Mayhem means spiritual and cinematic liberation.

We are covering the same material as `Empire` only we are not covering as the film magazine.

God bless,

Aleksandar Radivojevic,Editor

The magazine is unfortunately still in Serbian and you can order it via e-mail by clicking Right Here

If you have scoops, gossip, news, or comments on the Euro-Filmscene send that info to Euro-AICN's offices in Paris, France and we'll see that the world hears about it.

Edgard out