february 1975.

The winter break at universities is a whole month - from 15th january to 15th february. Which we spent mostly having fun. She may have been learning a lot, anatomy is a long exam, three or four semesters; I didn't have such trouble, first year is light.

Mom's sewing machine was placed into my room, this is where we had space, so she'd come to sew here. She never took orders no any money for sewing, she did it for herself, granma and me. This time it seems to have been something for granma, seeing how she observed the works. The light from the cask, luckily, fell just where I needed it, so I had enough of it for a shot like this.

On the vitrine in the hall there was always a bottle of komovica, not loza, which was a hair care recipe. A dozen cloves of garlic were inserted in the bottle, and it stayed so for several weeks. It seems to have been opened often, because I memorized the smell quite well. Which I didn't like at first, but then some chemistry must have happened, fermentation of sorts, and it came as nice. The tincture would be rubbed into hair, and then kept covered for a few hours, under a headscarf. I didn't take any shots of mom or granma with it, but did a few of Đuđa. And she didn't tie the headscarf right over it, she'd cover her hair with plain white cotton cloth, such as would be used for a pillowcase or to cover sour cabbage.

The old bus station was being gradually abandoned, because it wasn't a proper station at all. Some old house was adapted into a big waiting room, what with big bread furnace, made of pressed clay, as these were built a century ago, to heat the waiting room, which was practically the whole house with partition walls removed and replaced with a couple of supporting pillars. The ticketing was in a small sideroom partitioned with slats and glass. It was all rather dark, the only light coming from a few bulbs and the tiny pre-war windows. It always felt dirty, regardless of being cleaned a couple of times a day, the walls were whitewashed years ago, and were once white, then were exposed to smoke from that furnace and two hundred cigarettes per hour.

The concourses were right behind the corner, accepting about four buses at a time, and the sidestreet was paved with ancient cobblestones, worn smooth. Such cobbled streets were not exactly flat; the drainage was achieved by shaping the pavement like a wagon's roof. Now the concourse was just a zig-zag curb with not too much space between buses, so in winter the cobbles would get slippery and a bus trying to reverse out of its slot would often slide to the side of the next bus.

[that house was later assigned to the association of visual artists of Vojvodina - and there was no way it would be called Vojvodinian, because at the state level nothing was allowed to be called Serbian this or that, it had to be 'of Serbia'. Except the Serbian doctorly society, and the theatre in Novi. Instead, they multiplied this genitive construct, all the way to the Society for fight against, wait for it... cancer of Serbia]

There was a thin layer of mud everywhere, simply because there was never enough pavement, so vehicles would be parked with at least two wheels on soil (supposedly lawn, beaten into mud), which would then stick to the tyres and get transfered to the pavement and thence to sidewalks.

The new bus station would be open in the summer, so this was the last winter. So I decided to make a small movie for DC-99, titled "Busodrom" (I invented the word for the occasion). Just documenting the last winter of the old station.

Borrowed a tape recorder from someone, one of those reporter jobs, which I hung on my shoulder under the šinjel, and kept the microphone in the sleeve. These had an on-ond switch on the microphone, so I could start and stop recording without any visible movement. Too bad I don't have the tapes anymore, there were hilarious discussion behind the scenes, among the drivers, conductors and ticketing.

This shot for credits I invented in the laboratory - when exposing the print, I pressed (with a glass?) a length of empty film, on which I wrote the title, in black ink. The second such shot, with the same bus in profile, I signed myself as the author, and Tarča as the enlightener.

The tapes returned quickly from developing, there wasn't much of it, perhaps two spools of super eight. I didn't take it home for editing, but rather brought my old projector (and the praktika, with which this was shot), and did it in the club. The editing viewer is the same one from 1970. As far as I can see, whoever took this shot smoked F57.

The movie wasn't bad, for a documentary, but I don't think we even sent it anywhere. I don't know where it ended up, perhaps in the club's archive. But then I don't know where the archive ended.

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Mentions: 14-V-2025., Bosiljko Tarčul (Tarča), DC-99, Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), loza, Novi Sad, praktika, šinjel, in serbian

17-XI-2020 - 26-IX-2025