ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Interviews - 1989</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#000000" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFFFF" vlink="#FFFFFF" alink="#FFFFFF"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <a name="lexpress_1989"> <table WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><tr><td> <p><strong><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono" color="black">"Le Temps des Gitans - La vie devant soi", interview parue dans <i>L'Express</i>, magazine français, en novembre 1989</font></strong></p> </td></tr></table> <p><br><blockquote> <p><br> <p> At 36, he has already quite well fullfilled his life : a golden Palm, and a director price with "Time of the Gypsies". <p> When Emir Kusturica, in 1985, returned to Sarajevo crowned by his golden Palm for "When father was away on business", he was celebrated as a national hero, then his first false step was awaited. Between his rock'n'roll group, his football matches, and his courses in the United States, the child of the Yugoslav cinema made a pause. To choose, and to film. "I do not want to work without passion", he explains, "and passion requires time ! ". <p> Summer 1986 : the Yugoslav press denounces the traffics of gypsy children at the Italian border, Kusturica imagines a first version of "Time of the gypsies". Then he impregnates himself of their manners. "I always lived in an area of Sarajevo close to the district of the gypsies ; as of my adolescence, my way crossed theirs. I lived with them, played with them, I flirted their daughters ". <p> The shooting, which lasted nine months - time made possible thanks to the American financing, Columbia of the time of David Puttnam - sees a work in constant changes. "It was seeking itself, I almost lost it. The films are like human beings, similar to those who do them ; sometimes, their life slips between our fingers". The genius of Kusturica knew how to catch it back, and tells the story of Perhan, a smart teenager, victorious of his enemies and martyr. Sad destiny, and yet fresh and joyful as freedom. <p> Single film. Between dream and reality. Between Bunuel and John Ford. Kusturica smiles. "It is by knowing better the Gypsies, introduced by Ljubica Ad~ovi, this extraordinary grandmother, that I approached their symbolism, and found certain images". Like the geese : "Because the legend says that they brought, two thousand years ago, the gypsies from India to Europe. And that today, their wings have been cut". Or the suspended house. "What a beautiful symbol ! They survive everything ; even if one pulls their houses in the skies". <p> Perhaps this is less the subject which interested Kusturica that the aesthetic points of view it permitted : those of a poetic cinema sailing unceasingly between dreams and awakening. Between melo and visionary. "What is the film about ?" asks Kusturica. "Of family, of promess given ; values, respected or not, which remain, for the gipsies, only because the magic belongs to their life. Without magic, it's the apocalypse. You simply have to transpose ; our magic, it is the imaginary, the culture, the cinema. But not any cinema." His cinema requires an "availability and an emotional collaboration ; it tightens the heart, but makes happy, avoids the folklore, to the profit of a sincere humanism". Kusturica left Yugoslavia for the United States. Temporarily. He multiplies the projects : a "Crime and Punishment" located nowadays, in Manhattan ; the adaptation of a novel of Jorge Amado. The project will take time, we will be patient. <p><br>Back to the <a href="interviews_en.html">interviews</a></blockquote> </BODY> </HTML>