Moderato Cantabile
This short video presents an overview of some of my paintings that were created during the first ten years of my life in the Netherlands.
Perun’s Oak and Maspalomas
This short movie presents a journey through my works comprising series of paintings “Perun’s Oak” and “Maspalomas”.
Perun is the supreme God of Slavic mythology who lives in the canopy of a large oak. Maspalomas is the name of the seacoast in Canary islands, famous for its pigeons and doves.
They both reflect my admiration of the intact Nature, its poetry, rhythms and harmony, as well as my belief that our future entirely depends on our ability to embrace it and protect it.
Op Zoek naar de Muze
Greek mythology, the Muses are inspirational goddesses of literature, science and arts. According to Hesiod (8 century B.C.) they are nine daughters of the supreme divinity Zeus and the Titan goddess Mnemosyne (“Memory”). They make people, at least briefly, to forget pain and be released from constraints, duties, and pressures of daily life by inspiring human creativity.
Sometimes, they appear unexpectedly in one’s life and change it for good. Some other times, although desired and invited, they simply fail to show. The search for inspiration, for sense and purpose of human transitory existence, is arguably the most compelling quest that every individual, at some point, encounters in the course of her life. The film “Looking for the Muse” is a testimony to the artist’s search for her inspirational muse.
Equinox (trailer)
…her magic transformation, in Slavic mythology, takes place
in the night of equinox.
This film is inspired by motives from old Slavic mythology, which is comparable by its rich structure to its better-known counterparts coming from ancient Greek or Indian cultures. The film revolves around a ritual that typically takes place on the night of the spring equinox. Initiated women bind together and transform into beings of extraordinary powers, invoking elements of nature to assist them in their travel across the boundaries of ordinary reality.
Lost in Gossipland
The film addresses the contemporary world where personal interactions, media and social networks create a virtual reality largely based on colorful gossips, rumors, and hearsays. Gossips require disregard to all that separates truth from fabrication, honesty from deceit.
As a consequence, while truly dramatic processes take place and influence our lives they remain barely noticed because the public is preoccupied by the most recent stories that promise to make us privy to otherwise hidden “facts of life”. Making and consuming gossips we are led to believe that everything is equally unreal and unsubstantial. This attitude results in frivolous irresponsibility and history warns that tragic consequences easily come about whenever such a sentiment prevails.
The film communicates this idea by using materials drawn from publicly available sources dispersed throughout the Internet, this vast open repository of knowledge and wisdom as well as of fabrications and gossip. The music is also selected for its popular presence: the film combines one of the most known pop songs of modern times (“Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” of Beatles) with iconic piece of “classical music” (“Toccata and Fugue in D minor” of J.S. Bach). Using those means, the film ironically questions the possibility that expanding culture of gossipmongering could leave real issues unrecognized for their seriousness, so much so that even the end of world as we know it might pass unnoticed.
The Red Scarf
This film is dedicated to all artists who, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were deprived of sharing with their public the joy of live performance.
The red scarf symbolizes the art and passion of its creation. This short film follows, in a comic-like manner, a band of local musicians from whom their art was unexpectedly snatched away and who run after it trying to regain it again. Once it was recaptured they discover that in the frantic chase they forgot their instruments somewhere along the way, and their pursuit continues. Finally, in the quiet of the night, under the heavenly dome of stars, they turn the moonlight off, ready to rest and enter a new, sunny day.
U potrazi za Perunom (trailer)
“Searching for Perun” presents the authors’ personal testimony about the quest for Slavic mythological roots that starts by exploring an old Croatian town of Mošćenice and ends by the encounter with Perun’s oak tree in woods of Trebišća, on the slopes of Učka where, according to legend, Slavic deities resides. The film is based upon idea that for perceiving extraordinary things one requires extraordinary senses, a poetic sensibility that would recognize what escapes our everyday experience. There are no people featuring in the film, only occasional traces of their historical presence. The narrator leads the viewer towards Perun, and along that path they meet elemental Slavic deities who direct them towards Perun’s court: Jarilo in the form of wind, Mara embodied in the water, Veles in his underground domain. Finally, the journey ends at the Perun’s oak-throne or what is left of it. In an anti-climactic encounter the seeker finally finds the key of the quest that reveals the Thunder-God in his full creative power.
Memory of Water – Poseidon (trailer)
Recent scientific investigations of the properties of water show that water has capability of storing information. Although the mechanism of this process is not fully explained, a poetic imagination is tempted to think of this omnipresent element as of a repository of the memory of events reaching back to primordial times.
Its ever-changing dynamics encompasses events from innumerable individuals, myths, cultures – stories of things that rose into reality and perished, returning to eternity of their immortal liquid motion.
Therefore, preserving this resource of life is not only about securing the future of humankind. It is also about maintaining our continuity with its past, with roots laid where the present-day world comes from.
The men of letters
had named me Poseidon,
and I am the God of Waters
Those from above
and those from below;
seas, rivers, lakes,
mists and rains.
I am three quarters of your body,
I am a cover for three quarters of your world.
I am older than life, and I remember it all.
I am the voice of history,
where things shortly last,
thus, don’t forget –
as much ashes returns to ashes,
and dust to dust,
three times more will return to water
In Beweging
Mondriaan’s Shout for Joy (trailer)
The film “Mondriaan’s Shout For Joy” traces the personal and artistic path of Piet Mondriaan epitomized by two of his paintings made within the time span of 40 years.
The film also presents an homage to the pianist Albert Ammons, the godfather of boogie-woogie, a great musician and Mondriaan’s contemporary from the New York. The film is accompanied by his music, which profoundly inspired Mondriaan’s late works.
Memories – work in progress
Romeo & Juliet (trailer)
The film exploits two “families” of objects, clearly distinguished by their fundamental features as “Female” and “Male” objects, set in a Shakespearian-like environment of two distant cities/castles. The story follows two major shapes (characters) haunted by the feeling of incompleteness, each in search for their complementary half. After discovering one another, they face the initial refusal of their respective communities to accept the alien and unknown “Other”. This antagonism and intolerance lead to their final encounter and recognition of a unique harmony that only their union can produce.
Sound & Form (trailer)
Beyond the limits of our daily experience, there is a world of strange objects, living through cycles of seasons that span from blazing heat to freezing cold.
The video-animation movie focuses on interplay of sound and form as objects that inhabit this world start out on a journey in the quest for freedom.
Three modern composers and musical performers, coming from three different countries (The Netherlands, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia), wrote original musical scores for this animated movie.
What a City Dreams About (trailer)
On quiet nights cities sleep just as people living in them do. Sometimes, a city can have a dream where long forgotten recollections appear – memories of the world of nature, of its freedom and unbounded forms.
This animation movie follows such a dream, in which a city of uniform, rectangular shapes encounters a life of flower and blooming trees, and discovers how dancing can bridge the gap to the world of natural and playful forms.
Born as a Woman (trailer)
How free are we in shaping our own identity? What limitations are we facing in that process?
It was Simone de Beauvoir who said “One is not born a woman, one becomes one”. In that journey a woman passes through diverse roles and expectations, following the path of self-development.
This path leads from her childhood and adolescence, through becoming a responsible member of society, the one who cares about home, follows her career, tends her partnership, becomes a mother, and ultimately attains her inner wisdom and spirituality…