Bal-Can-Can (MK/IT)

Directed by Darko Mitrevski
Macedonia, November 2004
Making of directed by Mario Canale

Darko Mitrevski – Director
The story of Bal-Can-Can is based on an urban legend about an old woman rode in a stolen carpet. I have heard about that story, like ten years ago maybe. And in those times I considered it like a true story that really happened to some people. And then I found the same story not only in Macedonia, but in Serbia, in Hungary, in Croatia, in Romania– all over Balkans. And at the end, I found an article written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In that article he mentions the story of a grandmother — that grandmother rode in a stolen carpet… the story he heard about in Columbia, France, Viet Nam. Of course, we did a little make up so I invented the background of it, actions that begin like fifty years ago and then in present times
I also use it to tell the story of the Balkan underground– criminal underground today. Like a comic version of (and not only comic because it ends pretty seriously) to tell the story about the corruption, the story of crime, the story of little people lost in the time of crime.

 

Giacobbe Gamberini – Editor
I immediately started to collaborate on the film. The script was not yet finished. I met the filmmaker here in Rome, he told me about his script project and then our collaboration started. I proposed to work as an editor to the director and the production and I then started to follow the project especially because it isn’t exclusively in Italian. It’s a film in several foreign languages, in Macedonian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegran… We could think indeed that there is only one language in the Balcans, the situation is however quite identical to ours regardind the linguistic variety, perhaps even more since there are distinct languages with totally different roots.
I asked them to be able to follow the shooting in order to be well-prepared for the editing. I handled a bit the publishing, I contributed to the “continuity” during the shooting, I became sub-editor. I appropriated each dialogue. They translated from Cyrillic to English and I translated from English to Italian and I then reached the editing stage while knowing each picture.

 

Sandro Verdecchi – Producer
It begun by chance. I have been invited to a film festival in Macedonia, in Skopje and I happened to meet this young Macedonian screenwriter, Darko Mitrevski. He told me his idea, he did not even handed over a script and I told him to write one. He did it in a few days time and I must say his originality and freshness convinced me. His script was different from those I usually get. I trusted him in the sense that I could not foresee what would have happened next but the script sounded to be a good project. As a director he was in the same wavelength than the script since the project is very original, it exactly reflects the script. It is grotesque, it reveals a historical and social period for Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and all the neighbouring countries involved in that war. It is a story which demystifies, a grotesque story as I already said, that strongly underlines the film originality.

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