The exam for the Academy, in downtown Beograd, Knez Mihajlova (prince Michael's street), beatifuly early autumn morning, all fresh... Bosa was trying to pass into acting, I into direction (fuck English - not into directorship, directorate, writing directions or taking them or anything such, I wanted to make movies, to be a režiser). Saw, IIRC, Sonja Knežević who played Ophelia that summer at Dubrovnik Summer Games, at the proper age of sixteen. As Bosa told me, someone asked her about which monologue did she prepare, "well Ofika, of course".
I failed. The task was to cook up a scenario on a ferry crossing the river, with a few cars and a tractor just being loaded on it, with an appropriate number of colorful passengers, with all sorts of dramatic potential ready to spark between them. I defused it in my writing, turned it into a cheap comedy, and understood that I'm not an artist of dramatic proportions. I avoid drama, most of the time. Theatrical and dramatic are exaggerations, in my mind, and, besides, I liked the technology and all it could do, not as much what was being done with it. So I didn't mind much that I failed - I had a ready seat at maths on PMF in Novi. And this also solved the hanging dilemma - what would we do if we don't study in the same town?
I hitched M.T., whom I knew from all these young technicians' competitions and amateur moviemakers' festivals, but too late I realized that they'd be visiting an aunt halfway to Novi. Sat with them for a while (interesting, the Slovaks), then caught a bus.
This was the end of my moviemaking career. I'll attempt it once more, but halfheartedly, because I already realized that mathematics is much crazier than this, and to make something there you don't have to drink wrong drinks in wrong places with wrong people just because they can get you money to make your movie. Which then turns out all wrong, not how you wanted it.
These days the Dom was extinguished, literally, after the big fire. And instead of one decent reconstruction, it was a venerable building, about 80 years old, they tore it down and started building a new one. Sleš moved his show to the amphitheatre of the museum for the rest of the summer. The bartender was the same guy as before. She appeared with miniwave, all curly, and he just said "I'll tell that [girl of] yours that I saw you with another chick". He didn't recognize her or made a joke, who'd know.
That evening the big era of rockenroll was over. We heard "Una paloma blanca" by George Baker Selection several times, which is a stupid little ditty with fake spanish refrain, and the gates were now open. Rapidly the rockenroll was shoved out and disco music in - one, another, third, some hustle, kung fu and whatever. We came a few more times while Sleš held evenings in some hall near the church, but it simply wasn't it anymore. We became tavern folks, without any other good place to go. We pick, of course, taverns without music.
Around this time I had a spare few meters of 8mm color tape from DC-99, I'd say it was Agfa (yeah, the Agfa), and I made it into a simple short film of perhaps 30 seconds. It was called „sedam puta meri“ (measure seven times - the other half of the proverb is „cut once“). It features a section of a paper sheet, where it says “direktor“ and there's a dotted line where the guy is to sign. And there comes a pencil in hand, which takes aim, practices the moves, takes position, prepares several times before actually committing ink to paper. And then there it draws a cross.
It was shown once on some amateur festival (year unknown, could have well been the one before) as „Sedam puta Meri“ - seven times Mary. Yeah, they only retype what they see, without much thinking. Sometimes they'd include the author's name as part of the title. Various ingenious clerical errors were a regular occurrence.