Across The Lake
Like A Bad Dream
Antonio Mitrikeski
A Picture with Poetic Aura- (Docomenary film, Macedonian TV 2005)
Strange blend of punctuality, pragmatism and clarity of thought and idea with the tools and what we read from the documents – and that is poet behind the cameras, director that with pain depicts beautiful pictures, like Macedonia. An artist that creates visual poetry like aura of a painting, Director’s poeticism portrayed through mystique realism. In any case, we are talking about an author with an exquisite visual expression, for aestheticism that provokes and set things into motion, disturbs the indifference.
Antonio Mitrikeski is one of those film authors that follow the order of things. He is in his early forties and he has made four student films. Two of those films won awards and up to this day, these films are screened as student exercises on the State School for Film, Television and Theatre in Lodj, Poland, where Antonio graduated on the department for film direction. Two television films, followed by the award winning documentary film “Ljubovta na Kocho Topencharov” (“The Love of Kocho Topencharov”) – Gold medal on the March Festival in Belgrade, which was at that time one of the highest ranking festivals in the world, for the. The well-educated, thoroughly focussed artist goes further with this story, opening his poetic soul with the feature film structure “Over the Lake”, in 1997. He says that the visual effect is of the utmost importance to him. Maybe this is legacy by his father, the sculptor acad. Boro Mitrikeski, from that world created by and revolving around art itself. The magic of expressing oneself through moving pictures is in Antonio’s life as long as he can remember. Probably the art street in Saraj has its own prospect of influence, with their atelier and the ateliers of the other artists, with all now historically valued exceptional artistic energies that shine from there.
Antonio Mitrikeski, now an docent of film direction at the Drama Faculty in Skopje conveys his story of being consistent, being true to oneself. Nothing is accidental.
How did I end up in Lodj. POLAND? There was no film academy in Macedonia then; but a film crew from Poland arrived here to work on the Macedonian feature film -”Jad” (“Woe”) by Kiril Cenevski. The actress Malgozdata Poplotska came, the art director was from Poland too, and off course, large number of crew members. I contacted them and found out about the Poland film school and after finishing high school I tried my luck to see if I am going to pass the entry exam. I knew that the entry exams were hard, and that among other things they require good amounts of knowledge of the general culture issues. Therefore, I started preparing myself with film history, painting… I remember that the entry exam lasted five or six days, it was very toilsome. The exam had practical and theoretical elements. We made script analysis, film analysis, took some photographs, made small films. Seven of us had made the cut. I was very surprised, extremely overjoyed, a moment in my life which I will never forget, because from that moment on there is no going back. I started my calling of a movie director.
We went at the homes of the professors, we sat together, drank together, not any professors, we had Vajda. I worked with him in my third year of studies and I have to admit that it was a huge experience. We worked with him on some texts, and we paid great deal of our attention to the work with the actors, how can a director get the most out of the actor.
“This is absurd. You’re drunk. You’re kidding all the time, ‘right?”
“You find this ridiculous?”
“I find it painful”….
The lectures of Polanski were also interesting. He came, although he lived in Paris. He got his degree in the School of Lodj. He came on several occasions, and I know that these lectures were full of other students, doctors, psychoanalysts that were analyzing him. He is a man that in some way makes imprint with his individuality and with what he says. I remember he asked me “What is more important – what you film or how you film it?” and all of us students of first, second year said that it is important how things are filmed. … He said “Guys, it is most important for you to know WHAT you are filming, never pay too much attention on HOW you will make that. The audience looks the narrative line; they have to be entangled by that narrative line”. Naturally, one has to balance the form and the content.
Zanussi is utterly different type of a director. He makes, so to say, “Intellectual movies” with an entirely different approach, but we have learned so much from him too. In addition, Kieslowski has graduated there; I will not name them all. Those are all famous directors that have left their mark in the so-called author’s movie, European movie.
I will also like to add that the documentary film was very important. The method of making the film should be very realistic, documentary. Take the movies of Kieslowski, for example. You will see that he is very realistic. It does not matter that in some way it is very stylized visually. Kieslowski has started making feature films late. Until his mid thirties, he was making only documentary films. I would like to underline this because they requested from us to make only documentary films, and they were very important in the first two years of studies. So I made those few documentaries “Day in Poland’, “Time” and so on that really teach you how to observe, how to search, how to be patient, in a certain way, how to contact with the people that you are working with, how to get the best out of them, how to make the camera unnoticeable, natural part of things. All this helped me a lot for the documentary “The Love of Kocho Topencharov”, one of my favourite films.
Having in mind that the poeticism is one of the main features of the film making process of Antonio, in one of the comparative analysis of his period as a student with “The Love of Kocho Topencharov” one may draw the following conclusion: he gets the ideas for his films from the eternal themes – life and death, love and hope, the infinity of time and space. Vajda-like landscape stills before the union of an innocent love. There is high painting cultural input in every frame. With simple moves, he unveils strong energetic emotions. This success continues with “Over the Lake”, on over 40 international festivals on all the continents. From Montreal, Toronto, Singapore, Cairo, Sarajevo, Thessalonica, Stockholm, he speaks of the Macedonian love story in the time of communism. In 2001, a war conflict broke out in Macedonia. Two years afterwards, he releases “Like a Bad Dream”, a film that has poetic input pertinent to his manner of work.
I think there are two ways to getting a debut movie: there are directors that get there through the short films, or documentaries, and directors who at first work on adverts and commercials and thus got to their first feature film. It was clear to me that I have to pave my way through documentary films and thus get to make a feature, and I have to admit, I was not sure at that time – will I ever film a feature.
Our production is small and I think that the themes that we work on must say something about the time their creation and leave a mark on the period of their making. I endeavour for all my movies to leave a milestone in the time of their making. The problem in “The Love of Kocho Topencharov” is not just love – it is the boarders too. We still have that same problem. I was lucky the Tashko Georgievski wrote the script entitled “The Yellow Rose“. Later on I changed “The Yellow Rose“, it was a good symbol of Love, but I took it out of the script, because I wanted to make a simpler story, one that would be more clear, with a straight linear structure, one that would have inner poetry. I used the music of Zamfir as an inner model of a conflict, in a way.
The lake was a symbol for me, in a way – the soul of Constantine, and of the complete Macedonian nation. In addition, I used the lake as a kind of metaphor, something additional that has driven me to work on that movie. That is why I consider it very important for a director to be able to analyze the mentality of his own people and to show it. We have our own distinctions as Macedonians. Every film, every author-director must strive toward this and every great director too. That is the psychology of it. The American author-directors have this too, Jim Jarmush, Oliver Stone to name but a few.
The Italian neo-realism has had the biggest influence on me. I had studied all these masters, all from that period while I was in Poland, I hold them very dear and I still go back no them from time to time. Visconti, a real master; they say that he has an approach like an opera director. Fellini, he has this circus approach… All those directors have analysis of the mentality of the people.
There is Realism in that psychology, that validity, the mentality, analysis of our Balkan type of a person… in the way of talking… We cannot make movies as they make them in Los Angeles, because the average time that a person from Los Angeles spends in car is four, five hours. The Macedonian has a different way of thinking and accepting things. I think that he does not talk a lot. This is where the truth, the sincerity lies here, through analysis our mentality and how a director will choose to show it. This is just one side of it. The other side, concerning sincerity, the documentary approach is the manner one chooses. It depends whether while delving into a theme, getting into the documents one will choose a documentary manner, so to speak… it does not necessarily have to have unprofessional actors… the camera may be a bit hidden, more delicate. On the other hand one may choose an expression which is not so much documentary.
Antonio’s world is a picture. That is how he discovers and recreates reality. He does not talk much about it but the reviews say – Mitrikeski has a certain power with which he can transform the silence and hush into energy. The movies have scenes in which seemingly nothing happens. Through symbols, music and silence he depicts the dramatic structure of the painful themes. It is a risky but highly authentic author story.
The experts say the “Over the Lake” is poetics of the stoicism. Love gets drama companion – the Evil. Rhetoric restraints, silent hero, reduced violence, unspoken but not concealed eroticism. The atmosphere and the magical music have the leading role, Georg Zamfil the world-class virtuoso on the pan-pipes was in charge. The selection was a sort of co-point of the movie. The author states: I am working on a brave movie, a movie that will touch the soul. Constantine is a representative of a whole nation. The world media responded to this true story. Arts and Film writes – successful poetic combination of intimacy and silence. Balkan Cinema wrote – a story about Romeo and Juliet, but fresh and unique. Beautiful pictures compiled as a contra-punkt of the cruel reality. Variety – A work with an individual spirit. Toronto star arts – erudition which through love depicts the destructive energy of nationalsm. A movie with a poetic aura, with a rare poetic beauty – Thesaloniki film festival.
In the second feature film “Like a bad dream” Mitrikeski speaks of love. It is based on two acts from a play by Dejan Dukovski “MME koj prv pocna” (?). There are also psychoanalists that are concerned with the dream traumas speaking of the creepy visions of the global world. A movie that either overtakes you, or pases you by, but in no case it will not leave you indifferent. Everywhere you’ll see “A difficult movie, difficult movie”. But the director insists on it – what else can it be when it rises from the most recent Balkan wars. Let the dream spread here, and everywhere. This is the world today, the whole Balkans are like this, the critics say.
The movie was made in 2001, in the time of the trouble in Macedonia, when there was a war in the western part of Macedonia, those were the stories that show that time. But I was not interested in the war itself, but in the internal psychological turmoil of the heroes in that period. So here we have a man that comes back from those wars, confused because he does not know who he was fighting for. It was not so important for us to state whether he fought for the Serbs or the Croats… after several changes, after getting into paramilitary formations, he, Shejtan played by Miki Manojlovik comes back home and cannot make contact, cannot communicate with his wife. He cannot express himself, cannot say a single kind word or carress her, he tries, but can not succeed.
Ivan’s character is for me a character that is also very engaged, not just Shejtan. Lot of young people go to study abroad, lot of young people want to escape abroad. However, no matter all that happens to him, no matter all the trouble that he has gotten himself into, he manages to come back to his love, to Verce, to his home.
Ethnic tension. Civil war. Fratricide. Thrill and passion. The worse it is – the better. One cannot get out of his own skin, no one can. The world is absurd. The politics is madness. Something is rotten these years in the hope of Europe. The Balkans are a prison. If I could, I would start from the very beginning. It will be better. Common people, all my life I liked only common people.
I had to film what was coming out from me. Yes, it is true, this is a heavy movie, a depressive movie, but I think that this kind of a movie should remain as a reminder for a period, for our Balkan. It is very important for a director to know how to cast out. I would like to say something that I learned as a child while watching my father make a portrait out of stone, or clay, or from wood, he constantly tries to get to the eyes by casting out, to the psychology. You know, that is very important for a director. The work of a director consists of casting out, clearing, taking things out. Why had I cast out the Yellow Rose from the script and called it “Over the Lake”? Exactly because of that clearing out, so we can get to the extract, to the geneses.