FROM GRAIN TO
PAINTING
Documentary, Duration up to 75 minutes
Croatia and Serbia, 2010, HD, color, stereo
Olimp production Zagreb Croatia
HRT Croatian Television
Atalanta Palic (Vojvodina) Serbia
Screenwriter and Director: Branko Istvancic
Camera: Branko Cahun
Music composer: Pere Istvancic
Editing: Branko Vukovic
Producer: Marijo Vukadin
Co-producer: Szabolcs Tolnai
Photo by: Ivan Ivkovic Ivandekic
The Croatian minority in Serbia in the last years absolutely experienced the fact that culture depends on politics. From one side, from the aspect of the state, Croats in Vojvodina are good for obligations like paying Serbian taxes or for recruitment in the Serbian army, but not desirable when mentioning it as a new minority after ex Yugoslavia because of special rights. From the other hand, in the Croatian community, the culture strongly reflects the opposition of two sides: the Croatian political elite, and the Catholic Church. Luckily, the concept of culture includes also things like inspiration, creativity, imagination, which can also bring some valuable fruits. It will be document about wonderful Croatian minority as well as people who are ignored and marginalized in Serbia today and forgotten by their Croatian homeland in the other hand.
Naive female artists called straw-girls Croats in the north of today's Vojvodina are something like forgotten miracle. The name "straw-girls" is derived from Croatian name for straw. They use straw weaving for making beautiful and poetic description of their hard and lonely life at home which is a small oasis with a hut in immense Panonian golden plain with several trees and unavoidable 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 aim of this creative documentary film is attempt to make an eternal memory about female straw artisans Croats called "Bunjevci", 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 project is financed by the support of City of Zagreb by City Office for Culture
and the Zagreb County in 2005, Regional office for education and culture in Vojvodina in 2008 and Croatian audio visual centre (HAVC) in 2008.
Useful link: http://www.matijagubec.org.rs/
|
