From krenar at juno.com Thu Aug 25 19:08:37 2005 From: krenar at juno.com (krenar at juno.com) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:08:37 -0400 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Reuters - Rare Kosovo film highlights province's problems Message-ID: <20050825.190853.25444.11.krenar@juno.com> Rare Kosovo film highlights province's problems Thu Aug 25, 2005 10:36 AM ET By Nedim Dervisbegovic SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Kosovo's first film since the 1999 war tells the story of three mental patients let loose from an asylum after the collapse of Serb rule. Kosovo Albanian director Isa Qosya, who has not made a film for 17 years, said "Kukumi" was his way of showing how years of ethnic conflict had dehumanised people in the region. The film, shot entirely in Kosovo, received its world premiere late on Wednesday at the Sarajevo Film Festival. "I felt uneasy during the first years of this whirlwind and felt a certain dehumanisation of people who did not understand and help each other," Qosya told a news conference. "The whole movie is a metaphor. Freedom is when you help someone and when you understand the other person too," he added. The three main characters are two men and a woman -- Kukumi, Hasan and Mara. Despite coming from a mental institution, they often appear to cope better than others with life in postwar Kosovo, with its ethnic tensions, U.N. bureaucrats and the foreign troops who occupied the province. But a misunderstanding with NATO forces raises the question of whether the characters were better off inside the asylum. "The role of NATO troops in Kosovo has had positive but also some negative consequences," Qosya said. "I can't understand their role now; it has become totally undefined." FUTURE UNCERTAIN Qosya said the province's problems stemmed partly from uncertainty over the future. Kosovo is still legally part of Serbia. The Serbian government and Kosovo's now-tiny Serbian minority hotly oppose the independence Kosovo Albanians want. Talks over the final status of the province are expected to start this year or next, depending on progress on issues including human rights and democracy in one of Europe's poorest corners. "Everything is undefined, and that is accompanied by a lack of character and principle among the people," Qosya said. Through a simple plot and sparing dialogue, the director portrays the tensions between those people who left Kosovo during Serb rule and the war and those who stayed on throughout. The main characters seem most at ease when left undisturbed in uninhabited settings, such as when they drive a railway car along deserted tracks, gaze at a lake in an abandoned quarry or convert a rundown stable into their home. Qosya said he had difficulty raising funds for the movie in a region struggling to provide the population with basic services like health care. But eventually Kosovo's authorities agreed to foot the 600,000 euro bill. Croatia's Jadran Film provided the equipment, and the all-Albanian cast and Qosya worked without pay. "Kukumi" is in the competition programme for the best regional movie award at the Sarajevo festival. This service is not intended to encourage spam. The details provided by your colleague have been used for the sole purpose of facilitating this email communication and have not been retained by Reuters. Your personal details have not been added to any database or mailing list. If you would like to receive news articles delivered to your email address, please subscribe at www.reuters.com ? Copyright Reuters 2005All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. Quotes and other data are provided for your personal information only, and are not intended for trading purposes. Reuters, the members of its Group and its data providers shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the quotes or other data, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. ? Reuters 2005. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: reuters.gif Type: image/gif Size: 2642 bytes Desc: not available URL: