Jasmila Zbanic Quotes
-
As a woman filmmaker in Bosnia, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I feel I can do more than my male colleagues with a motherly approach rather than a male approach.
-
It was important to feel that you were resisting the fascism around you. But we had no electricity to watch movies. We were imagining our movies.
-
Film is the most liberal of arts and, at the same time, it can be a very conservative art. Money that is involved in filmmaking is distributed mostly to men, thus creating a celluloid ceiling for women.
-
The more empathy you have and the more connected you are to society, the better off you'll be.
-
I have never understood why people identify with criminals: even if your father and grandfather were criminal, you have to find a way to be free.
-
I hope that this will change your viewing on Bosnia.
-
What I'm trying to do with my work is to break open things that are sealed, that are under siege.
-
My generation has to deal with how to overcome a trauma, how to overcome destruction, and how to tell the truth to the next generation.
-
I want to create films that will speak to different parts of our hearts and brains, stories told from a different angle.
-
In my country, though it is very patriarchal and male-dominated, the public enjoys women-directed movies.
-
Always, for me, when I am dealing with subjects related to my country that are very emotional, I have to find the right tone and distance because, obviously, I start with anger, asking 'why that happened' and 'why it is still happening.' I work to rise above my personal anger but still stay connected to my emotions. That's a big challenge.
-
I want to show that drama doesn't lie only in blood and destroyed buildings but in daily life, in ordinary human beings.
-
In the case of Bosnia, studies showed that turning to religion was a consequence of post-war depression and dissatisfaction.
-
I did go to a film school in Sarajevo. I studied film and theatre directing. There was a war raging in the country while I was studying, and we did not have neither electricity nor cinemas for three and a half years.
-
'For Those Who Can Tell No Tales' is a story of memory and the energy of places that remain full of drama, pain, and denial.
-
The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.
-
'Grbavica' is first of all a story about love, about love that is not pure because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair.
-
If you love your film, you have to fight for it.
-
I grew up during the shift to socialism, and since it was my childhood, I used to think that everything was beautiful and human.
-
I have always written - since I was a kid. I might say that I am essentially a writer who is bored to be alone in the room writing. I need to have more people around me. So, I 'write' with a film camera and have a party at the same time by having a bunch of people around.
-
Music, for me, in a film is never... I don't want to use music as a slave of the image. I want music to be art, or a body in itself to give something to the film.
-
As a filmgoer and a filmmaker, I want to participate and tell stories of woman and man that will move us forward.
-
As a child, I used to 'torture' other kids by making them be in my shows. I would sell tickets to neighbors and organize performances.
-
When I go to a cinema, I don't care if the film is made by a man or a woman as long as it tells me a story, as long as it offers pictures that shed light on my existence, characters I can identify with, jokes I can laugh at.