07-V-1972.
On 7th we all worked a lot in the club. Took the editor home and did the Portrait most of the afternoon, though most of the inspiration has already evaporated. When I ran it in the end, it didn't look as I imagined it would, but it may be actually alright.
I wanted to watch "The show of Hamlet in Mrduša Donja, Blatište municipality" but to somehow evade paying the ticket. And then I remembered how many folks do all kinds of weird things just to get into the scene, to be recorded for a bit of glory (didn't know of McLuhan's "fifteen minutes of fame" yet, but was thinking along the same line**), so I figured that the gadget which has a lens in front may open many doors. So I attached the club's flash to regula and took the ticket money along. And it worked. Not that I went in smoothly, but the theatre's director (ie manager - the top guy in any enterprise is a director here) called me to keep coming to shoot the following shows. It was the festival of theatres of Vojvodina, an he was this year's host.
Made friends with a wonderful girl who works there, as an usher, but she's a student and at least three years older, which means a lot at "this age, which, for a guy of my age, isn't much of an age" (Moma Kapor).
The show was excellent. Considering that the dialect is that of somewhere between Knin and Lika, and the theatre was probably of Sombor or Bačka Topola, they got everything right, didn't use any cheap tricks, perfect.
On 8th I was already under some strain. The festival in Kula isn't far, and now this theatre festival, and end of school year coming near, I'm losing some nerve. Then D.M. said she can't give me the tapes, her mom got her recorder locked. Then Tejka had a fight with Bajče, the crazy vintage '56. In the afternoon my folks went to buy some better suit for dad, he's off to USSR tomorrow. In the evening Tejka came to help me in the lab. She had some digestion problems, ate green ringlov (kind of plum, often yellow and rounder than the regular, slightly different taste and texture). I had trouble with the new tape recorder from the club, couldn't manage a proper jack to hear the sound through the radio, and when I did it didn't sound right. (I guess the input was for phonograph, with preamp to decompress the bass - which I didn't know then), heard just some of "Variola ekspres" by Korni grupa, which was later published as "Divlje jagode" (wild strawberries), with a completely different text, and was a great hit.
I wrote down „The pictures turned out quite bad, the regula, even after being fixed, has trouble focusing. I'll manage with something from Dimče.“... but then how and when did I shoot this series? Did I snatch the crazy Kijev from Zova, the one where the winder lever was on bottom left and rewinder on bottom right, the rest on top? I did borrow it for the ekskurzija next month, did I begin now already? But nope, the edges between the shots are wavy, that's regula's signature. And judging by the amount of light sweaters and jackets, this must be partly april.
On some it's april, on some it's may. Which was no obstacle for the girls, they wore mini skirts, differing only by thickness of stockings, which was something I couldn't possibly judge.
This is Slavka, I guess in her best edition. Or who knows, she may have been even better later, but she failed this year, had to repeat it, and since we weren in the same class anymore, she completely vanished from my view.
Bosa is in the door, guess working out a snag in her skirt or belt.
Eventually now I notice that Slavka is actually wearing the scholar uniform, which was an empty formality by then. The uniforms were mandatory since kindergarten throughout the elementary. On one hand it was an additional cost to the parents, but on the other it saved a lot, because under it they could wear just anything, and this upper piece was always the same, and often served two years. It would begin as a bit too large and end up a bit short. It also covered the social differences, as we were a market economy and not everybody could earn the same. The social differences weren't too big (compared to today they were negligible), and that little would easily become too obvious, so the uniform would hide any garment that was too expensive or too far out in fashion.
In the gimnazija the regulation required only girls to wear them, and the definition was relaxed - it had to be a black dress, and should hide the cleavage. The length remained undefined, and by midterm of second grade less than half of the girls bothered to wear them anyway. See the pictures.
Don't know for which pretty [dick] I brought the Quartz to the school, maybe I was shooting additional scenes for „Portrait“... so, from left to right: me, Dragana, Višnja, D.M. The Third One. The girl facing right I don't recognize. Look, I'm wearing the knit shirt from Trieste, the lemonish yellow, which met some accident soon after this. The other one, brown, served for at least 40 years.
What luck befell me, one prettier than the other and me on good terms with all of them, and not one is with me. Apart from D.M., the otehr three were with older guys...
On the rest of the shots I see many known faces, there's Linka, Milica with Žuca, both thin and in minis, with brukserice (aka martinke, the boots)... then Bilja, the Čestić brothers with their gang, Slavka with Sarča, and ah there's one with Višnja walking with a book and me following her with the camera, so I was adding scenes indeed. There's even Furcula, don't know who needed that.
There's also tensome shots, which I may have shot myself but then maybe I just got the negative to develop (but then why ten, where's the 36) with Tejka with Ivka's daughter, stroller and all, among the buildings behind Lesnina. The child becomes her...
----
* it's not McLuhan, but that Russine, Vorhola.
Mentions: Biljana Lajković (Bilja), Borko Bošković (Furcula), Bosiljka Šain (Bosa), Branislav Bačikin (Bajče), Čestić, Dimitrije Josin (Dimče), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), ekskurzija, gimnazija, Gradivoj Sarčević (Sarča), Ivanka Tomašić /Čardić/ (Ivka), Korni grupa, Lesnina, Milica Zubatović, Mira Dengin (Linka), regula, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Slavka Vinković, Višnja Lazin, Zdravko Smetovački (Zova), Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian
9-VII-2025 - 10-XI-2025