FROM GRAIN TO PAINTING
Documentary (50 minutes), screenwriter and director Branko Istvancic, producer Mario Vukadin (Olimp production in coperation with One Sand Production) and coproduction with HRT (Croatian Television), coproducer in Vojvodina Szabolcs Tolnai (Atalanta Subotica), HD shooting format

Short summary of the film:
Very interesting are naive female artists called "slamarke" (straw-girls) from Tavankut (and also in Subotica) among Bunjevci Croats in Backa on the north of today's Vojvodina (Croatian minority in Serbia). The name "slamarke" is derived from Croatian name for "slama" = straw. They use straw weaving for beautiful and poetic description of their life on home called "salas", a small oasis with a hut on immense Panonian golden plain full of cereals, with several trees and unavoidable well called "djeram" - an old type of well. Very common motives are small Catholic churches and Christian symbols. At the 1976 international exhibition of naive art in Moscow Ana Milodanovic won the gold medal with her work with straw weaving. Also, Kata Rogic had exceptional honour to present her work to Pope Paul the VIth in Vatican.

The synopsis of the film:
The aim of this creative documentary film is attempt to make an eternal memory about female straw artisans Croats called "Bunjevci", also known as "slamarke" (straw-girls), that have now become a minority nation in Serbia (Vojvodina), whereby, this is not only a tribute to this special art skill but also our way to inspire people to renew this skill and thereby preserve this cultural heritage which is gradually but surely disappearing. Documentary film with its operating title: "From grain to painting" would be showing the story about the straw knitters, straw artisans, which attract attention in their homeland as well as in the rest of the world by making pictures in straw technique. By using these simple, light, and fragile material-straws, these women aim to express their version of great big world around them, and also to embellish their hardworking life build-up from: fields, sun, dust, constantly bended beck's and sweat; the life of black soil that means everything to them. They are portraying their everyday life by always adding their personal poetic touch. They are working with the patience of the filigree, using fragile tawny material and producing unexpected feelings and effects. Female and male haymakers called would be haymaking the infinite, fertile, fields of golden wheat, thereby securing the future for the following period of time. While they were still on fields, they would start entwining grain coronal and other ornaments made of straw, which would than, be brought to the host in his home "salas" after the harvesting is done. Some girls would start making the straw crowns and rings while still on the field. In the gentle, but sometimes also rough hands of the bread-knitter, the wheat would become handmade ornament. With the ability to shape-up and entwine the thin yellow fibres, those hands would produce various extraordinary handicrafts such as: paintings made of straws, relief's, various landscapes, flowers, functional bowls (dishes), greeting cards and postcards. About the importance and value of this skill testifies the fact that one of the crowns (tiaras) made of straw, was given as a present to Pope Paul the VIth, and is exhibited in the museum in Vatican among other golden tiaras (crowns). Straw production path is not easy: before the harvest artists have to collect the nicest straw stalks, cut, wash, iron and paste them on the background. Every stalk has to be cut by half, watered and ironed. After the lot of work and treatment we get the straw collage, which gets cut into the pieces and than pasted on the background. Piece by piece as the imagination of the creator wants it, a new form sprinkles out - A painting made out of straw.

"The Swamp", by Ana Milodanovic, first painting with straw from 1962

The film was funded with the support of City of Zagreb by City Office for Culture and the Zagreb County in 2005 and Regional office for education and culture in Vojvodina in 2008

PROJECT STATUS: We are planning to compete for the funds available from the Culture Ministry of the Republic of Croatia for documentary films. We will also solicit several foreign funds that finance documentary films from world and European countries. Shooting should start in the November of 2007 and continue untill September of 2008. We are planing the postproduction in the autumn of 2008. Completition of the film is planned for December 2008.

Useful link: http://www.matijagubec.org.yu/

HRT (Croatian Television) coproduction

RON HAVIV Blood and Honey - Photo Essay

ALBUM

Documentary, 50 minutes
Shooting should start in the Spring of 2007 and continue untill November. We are planning the postproduction in the autumn of 2007. By the end of 2008 and the begging of 2009 we plan to finish film.
Production Factum

Synopsis: The central premise of the film "Album" is the attempt by the protagonists to rebuild his life after the war by searching for lost family photographs that disappeared during the war, mostly in situations when the protagonists were forced to hurriedly abandon their homes. We will take the example of the known literary figure Miroslav Kirin, just one of many that are trying to reconstruct a family photo album lost in the war, when he and his family were forced to leave their home in occupied Petrinja, solely from memory. After the war, he is surprised to find unusual "compensation": in his house he finds, instead of his family photographs, an undeveloped roll of film containing photographs of an unknown family that lived in the house during the occupation. So these photographs, ironically and disturbingly, become a part of the family album. The protagonists of the film are those who share the same desire- to locate family photographs, a quest that in effect intertwines their destines into an almost identical drama in which we tackle the question of the former socialist regime, the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the present situation, all through a somewhat surprising point of view of interesting persons and life paths. Their common problem must, at its very end, have elements of insight into the broader social situation in the area of ex-Yugoslavia, a metaphor of today's complicated interpersonal relationships (co-existence and score settling) and misunderstandings between countries. By balancing between personal drama and by elevating its content to a higher level through "samples" set in relationships so that they contextualize the present moment, our primary task is to point out the sheer significance these photographs have for our protagonists, and to film everything they are ready to go through to retrieve them or to face the fact that the photographs are irrecoverably lost. These guidelines describe an interesting and provocative subject, achievable by not utilising the off-speaker, by clear organisation of the film story and by avoiding the expendable daily actuality.

The film was funded with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia

Production
FACTUM

Album was on Training workshop and pitching forum for documentary film projects ZagrebDox PRO, from February 26th - 28th 2008

When the Fogs Lift / Kad magle stanu

Full length fiction film, 100 minutes, screenwriter Josip mlakic, director Branko Istvancic

Story outline

"When the Fogs Lift", a feature based on the eponymous novel by Josip Mlakić, is one of the first films to deal with the war between the Croats and the Bosniaks, focusing on the destinies of little people in the chaotic, even apocalyptic times of war. Mlakić's "When the Fogs Lift" attracted a lot of attention both from the critics and the reading audiences, and was hailed as one of the best Croatian war novels, which adds attraction to the prospects of turning it into a major motion picture.
The goal of the film, and the novel it's based on, is to avoid unnecessary politics and relate the tragic destinies of little people, showing how the war turned those characters, who were quiet and withdrawn people only yesterday, against their neighbours; they travel the distance from common man to murderer, and they find it impossible to deal with the fact that the reverse journey is impossible.

Synopsis

After the end of the Croatian-Bosniak conflict in BH, the film's protagonist, Jakov Serdar (a Bosnian Croat) is in a mental institution somewhere in Croatia. As a part of his treatment, his therapist asks him to relate the most traumatic events that have caused his severe condition. This initiates the constant cross-cutting between the hospital and the war scenes in the film. This other part of the story, Jakov's remembrances, forms the key part of the film. We realise that Jakov, who was a quiet, withdrawn person before the war, has become a double murderer there. This detail forms a constant motif in the film: the fragments begin forming a story of the ways in which common men become murderers in leaden times.
The story focuses on a company of Croatian soldiers, Jakov Serdar among them. As they come to the ruins of an administrative building, another soldier, Keške, finds some documents of the former Yugoslav Secret Service, and uses them to pull a dirty trick on Jakov, implicating Jakov's pre-war friend Mirsad, a Bosniak, who he knows is currently a Croatian prisoner of war. Not perceiving that he is being tricked, Jakov goes to the prison and kills Mirsad. After the killing, Jakov ends up in prison and dreams for the first time of fog. This motif will keep following him from then on, but never overtly and pretentiously, predominantly as a background image.
Escaping from a police vehicle, threatening his MP guards with an armed bomb he stumbled upon in a car that was driving him to the hospital, Jakov returns to his bunker on the frontline and kills Keške, the soldier who set him up. Finally, he has a nervous breakdown.
These acts bring Jakov to a mental institution for the first time. He escapes after a while, and returns to the war zone, but to a place where noone knows him. There he stumbles onto a landmine. Heavily wounded, he's taken by helicopter to a hospital, and then to a rehabilitation centre. Suffering the burden of his deeds, Jakov has another mental breakdown, and gets transferred to a mental institution again.
The final scene of the film shows Jakov wandering through a thick fog that leaves no escape; familiar faces and scenes emerge from it for a fleeting moment or two, only to irrevocably disappear again.