BRANKO SUJIC, director of the experimental film «MOONLIGHT»

SEARCHING FOR A FILM EXPRESSION

Before you started making films, you had been a photographer? What attracts you to the photography so much?

Photography is simply a picture. It is an integral part of the film and there the artist has a much bigger possibility in a production sense to make some bigger things than in a film. For a film a much bigger organization is needed, but as far as the aesthetics of the picture is concerned, it is very, very similar, but, I repeat, the control in the photography itself is much bigger than in a film.

You have already done two documentaries, «Moonlight» is your third or fourth experimental film. It seems that you insist on the experiment. Why?
It is a kind of research that is always interesting. On one hand, it is the connection of the photography and the film. The experimental film itself offers much more possibilities than a feature or a documentary form and it is something where the artist can do the research with his own self, as he doesn't need many things that depend on the production and organizational conditions.
We have heard from the members of the Selection Commission tat they find it strange and that they are sorry that at the Festival this year there are few domestic experimental films. Can you presume why your colleagues don't deal more with that film form?
The experimental film is probably, a process that through the research in some moment simply forces the artist to do it. Maybe the people have started doing some other forms. It seems to me that there are a lot of people in Belgrade who work on the experimental forms. I think it is more true that they simply don't send their works to the festivals, but are rather doing experiment as such.
We have heard the selectors praising your film. Besides, we have heard the sentence that if a new film aesthetics is arriving at the Festival it must come from the Faculty of Drama Arts. You have finished your first film school at the Academic Centre “The Students' Town” and only after that you started studying (the Department for TV and Film Camera) at the Faculty of Drama Arts. How much does AFC “the Students' Town” contribute to your development as a filmmaker?
I finished that film school a few years ago. AFC is a very, very good school for the people who start making films. There are different lecturers, even from the Faculty of Drama Arts. Simply, the people for the Civic Centre “The Students' Town” are very open for any kind of cooperation and accept new ideas brought by the authors, enabling them to do anything related to the filmmaking.
Can you already presume, as a young author, what your film vocation is? Are you considering a feature film?
I wouldn't define myself in that sense. I think that people feel different things and can express themselves in different directions, it is just a matter of the moment and the matter of thinking. I believe that every direction of the film expression has its value.

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