PAGLIACCIO BLUES

Director's explication

This is a story about us, our neighbors and our acquaintances. We all somehow thought that we would be living better and that we will be earning more. I have no intention of making a political, engaged and bitter film, although I'd know how to do just that.
This will be a warm film, with no negative heroes, although there might have been some. This will be a film whose main heroes are time, society and the situation in which the characters end up in, only to rely on unjustified optimism, so characteristic of the mentality of the people living in this part of the world, to curiously rise to the surface and grab on to the straw of salvation, which is often just one big nothing. This is what is comical in the movie.
What will be politically and humanely involved in this story, is the hero's sensation - and consequently and hopefully that of the viewers too - that many of our lives have failed. That unrequited illusions will just have to wait - not only for better times, but for another life. This feeling of sadness that I will try to inspire in the hearts of the viewers is the precious essence of this story. Sadness is caused by failed lives. The heroes of this story are not unhappy, but rather downcast. Not tragic, but rather lost.
Criticism of the society - inherent to this story - can not be avoided. Still, it will come as an echo of recent years and events, a the group of workers on strike, trailing lazily like a snake between the scenes and the heroes of the story, will act as a permanent connection to reality. And reality might be called "Beggar's Opera 2010".
Maybe this will be the real title of the film.

However, at the end - two young people express their love and the lead character Bela, tells her boyfriend Gruja that she's pregnant. A new life with new people might bring a better future for all. We just were not good enough.
A group of dissatisfied workers marches-by carrying signs. One of them ends the scene and the film.

IN THIS LIFE WE WERE HAPPY, IN SOME OTHER WE WILL BE RICH

Anyhow, this will be a comedy and not a social drama. Firstly, because I have had enough of social, engaged drama with moral preaching and false political involvement, and secondly because people prefer to laugh than to see themselves in a distorting mirror of false truth told by others that hardly know them.

The picture will be shot using 35mm technology. Why? Because a "robust" camera, with the type of image it can provide, secures a serious visual framework, that will be insisted upon. Warm colors will provide a shade of sentiment to the characters and the situations. This will not be a bitter story about the working class and dissatisfied intellectuals - one that could be filmed using a small DV camera, hand-held, in color, without the gamma of warm colors. It will be a warm story about us and our acquaintances, who wanted more and got less. Frequent use of steadycam will give the picture additional life. The picture will thus breathe with the internal rhythm of the heroes - providing additional restlessness this story.
After watching this film, the viewer should walk out in a good mood, because he has seen a true story about himself and his acquaintances, told by a well-meaning storyteller who has no intention of jazzing-up but neither of disfiguring the picture for personal interests.
The film might be a bit sad, because it is distressed by the realization that in this world, or better yet, in this society, all the chances have been wasted.

Lazar Ristovski