"I lost my city during the war. This is why I wished to build my own village. It bears a German name : Küstendorf. I will organize there seminars for people who want to learn how to make cinema, concerts, ceramics, painting. It is the place where I will live and where some people will be able to come from time to time. There will be of course other inhabitants who will work there. I dream of an open place with cultural diversity which sets up against globalization." (Emir Kusturica, july 2004)
This is a project Emir has worked on for several months. And it is becoming reality. Küstendorf is the name of a traditional village that Emir is building where the shooting of Life is a miracle took place, southwest from Belgrade, in Serbia, close to Mokra Gora, not far from the Bosnian border.
The (German) name of the village was chosen by Emir himself. It is funny to learn that it means "village on the coast", whereas it is located in the heart of the mountains... or maybe is it just a pun on his own name : kustu-dorf, the village of Kustu ?
Emir's dream was to build a cinema school, to develop agro-tourism in this area, to give a second life to the many kilometers of railways built for film... It is almost done, with also a church, an hotel, a restaurant, shops, and guesthouses, for him, his family and his friends.
The school has opened during summer 2005 on the theme "Art is (not) in transition", oriented on the transition in the Balkans from communism to capitalism. The one week cinema workshop, directed by Emir Kusturica himself, took thirty young filmmaker students from the whole world. Living in the village, the "First Küstendorf class" had during the first days theoretical classes where Emir presented extracts of his favorite films, along with some scenes of his own movies, by making the students thinking of the techniques of the filmmaker.
In the second part of the workshop, the students made two short films, based on scenarii written in Küstendorf, and taking as a main character the cook of the village.
Those workshops are likely to be held again, probably during summer 2006. Information will be given here as soon as available.
The village was rewarded in 2005 by the prestigious Philippe Rotthier architecture prize for the reconstruction of the city. All the details on the exhibition and the prize ceremony.
The village has now its official internet site : www.kustendorf.com
Also called Drvengrad (wood village), the postale address of the village is :
Drvengrad
Resavski put 10
31000 Užice
Serbia & Montenegro
On the following map, wee see Küstendorf is not far from Višegrad, the city with the famous "bridge on the Drina", depicted by Ivo Andrić, and situated on the other side of the serbo-bosnian border.
The village was inaugurated with pumps and circumstances on 25th september 2004, with the première screening of Life is a miracle. We can see below Emir Kusturica with Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica.
The railway which leads to Küstendorf is called "Sarganska osmica" (the Eight of Chargan), after the name of the Chargan mount which the machines has to climb up, in an impressing landscape of forests and ravines. In station Mokra Gora, one can see the railwaymen working. They polish the two antiques locomotives with a very particular care for small "Elza", of German manufacture. On a route of 15,5 km, the train, which can carry a hundred passengers, passes under 22 tunnels, crosses a dozen bridges or viaducts while describing a eight around the Chargan mount. It is the genuine model of this landscape which Luka builds in film life is a miracle. Approaching each four station on the course, close to which several hotels, restaurants or coffees are still in construction, the driver activates the powerful whistle. The line, rebuilt in 1999, is a curiosity of Serbia which the authorities want to emphasize so that their country reappears finally in the tourist guides.
The "Eight of Chargan" must still be widened. Toward the west, to the Bosnian city of Višegrad, and toward the south to the main serbian railway which connects Belgrade to the Montenegrin port of Bar. The small green train would there find its first vocation, that of its construction in 1920. It was then intended to connect between them the various parts of what at the time was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians.
"There will be one day a railroad on the Chargan mount", had predicted more than 150 years ago the Tarabić brothers, sort of local Nostradamus, famous in the area because they would have said that one day the men could communicate remotely thanks to an odd apparatus : the telephone. "And a day", they had added, "people who would take this railroad wouldn't do it but for their pleasure". A prophecy which is indeed becoming true.
Emir Kusturica in march 2005 with Prince Alexandre Karageorgevic of Yugoslavia (son of King Peter II)
Thank you Julia & Nina for the pictures.