'Monument to Michael Jackson' ...Serbian film (fiction)

myosotis

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Monument to Michael Jackson: a touching tragi-comedy for all audiences

by Vladan Petkovic

08/07/2014 - Formally classical, Darko Lungulov’s second film features a strong cast and dynamic storytelling

Serbian writer-director Darko Lungulov has returned to Karlovy Vary, where his debut feature film,
(Here and There), screened in 2009 as part of the Variety Critics' Choice after winning the Best New York Narrative Award at Tribeca. His new film, Monument to Michael Jackson, expertly employs a similar, traditional narrative technique in a touching story of an everyman hero who does not give up on his dreams.

Marko (Boris Milivojević, returning to the big screen after a five-year hiatus) is a barber in his late 30s or early 40s in a small Serbian town. At the very beginning of the film, he is watching a communist-era monument being removed from the square. The town is dying, young people have mostly gone to Belgrade to look for work, and Marko wants to revive the place, not only because of his romantic altruism, but also to show Ljubinka (Nataša Tapušković), his wife who has left him and wants a divorce, that he is capable of more and that he can provide a better future for her.

Hearing news of Michael Jackson’s new tour, Marko comes up with the idea of putting up a monument to the King of Pop and making the town a desirable tourist destination. He teams up with Dušan (Dragan Bjelogrlić, from Pretty Village Pretty Flame), a former air force pilot who is managing a small military airport that the authorities are planning to turn into a building site, a Gypsy scrap collector (Toni Mihajlovski, from Punk's Not Dead) who is tasked with making the monument in bronze, and a local priest (Ljubomir Bandović) whose physically challenged daughter is a huge Michael Jackson fan.

The mayor, Dragan (Branislav Trifunović, seen last year in KV title Withering, has his own shady deals that would be ruined if the town came back to life and if it was proven that there was a need for an airport. However, when Marko convinces him that Jackson himself will attend the unveiling of the monument, and hope rises among the citizens, he allows the "crazy idea", while keeping in reserve a right-wing group of hooligans ready to provoke violent incidents upon request.

The old-fashioned storytelling that Lungulov uses is the right choice for this touching and genuinely funny dark comedy. The cast functions perfectly as a whole, and there is a strong chemistry between the several main characters that is impossible to predict, even for the most experienced casting director, so it seems as though the actors built it right there on the set. Milivojević is perfect as the flawed hero whom anyone can relate to, and shows a huge capacity for displaying a wide variety of emotions with remarkable control, never slipping into sentimentality.

The final act of the film, involving a large number of extras, a police squad, a helicopter and stunts, required sure-handed production work, impressively executed in all departments. German DoP Mathias Schoeningh, working with Lungulov for the second time, lovingly captures the decrepit town, providing it with a charm not dissimilar to some of the better-looking Wild West sets in the golden age of the Western.

Monument to Michael Jackson is a top-quality, heartwarming film that should play equally well at festivals and at the box office. Co-produced by Serbia's Papa Films and This and That, Germany's AV Medien Penrose and Penrose Film, Macedonia's Dream Factory and Aka Film, and Croatia's Propeler Film, it is handled internationally by Films Boutique.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SnVsFkwjHs

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9SnVsFkwjHs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=259663
 
LOL, What!? :D Haha, okay, might give it a watch, hahah. Serbians have some weird film ideas, I'm telling you
 
Wow! A film named and about Michael- that's just incredible. It looks like one of those great indie movies. I have to see this!
 
Ah, Michael would love this movie &#8230;

It would be nice IMO if Michael for fun could appear in the movie like this instead of Miss cast away.
 
GRAND PRIX for Monument To Michael Jackson- prize for best film, at Montenegro Film Festival Herceg Novi.


Congratulations ! :)
 
UK Premiere this weekend at the Raindance Film Festival, London

The 2014 Raindance Film Festival will take place from the 24th September &#8211; 5th October 2014 in central London (Nr Piccadilly Circus), screening 100 feature films and over 150 short films.

Screening 1: Friday 26 September 06:20 PM, Vue Piccadilly, 19 Lower Regent St,
On Friday 6.20pm Director Darko Lungulov will be present for a Q&A.

Screening 2: Saturday 27 September 01:00 PM, Vue Piccadilly, 19 Lower Regent St,

Screening Status: UK Premiere
Book Online: Purchase Tickets Online
Box Office Number: 08712 240 242 (For London)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Monument-to-Michael-Jackson-The-Movie/144101358998912

http://[URL=https://imageshack.com/i/iq7sBjKXj][/URL]

Helsinki 20 & 23.9.
London Raindance 26 & 27.9.
Hamburg 30.9.& 1.10 & 3.10.
Be&#269; / Vienna: 8.10 & 9.10


http://raindancefestival.org/about/
http://calendar.raindancefestival.org/features-2014/
http://calendar.raindancefestival.org/films/monument-to-michael-jackson


http://[URL=https://imageshack.com/i/eyqVMMCNj][/URL]
 
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Monument to Michael Jackson will have its US premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival Saturday, Jan. 31.

Here is an interview with the Director, for the Santa Barbara Independent:

Monument to Michael Jackson

Director Darko Lungulov
Monday, January 26, 2015
By Matt Kettmann


Set in post-Balkan War Serbia, this inspiringly quirky and often hilarious film follows one man&#8217;s quest to revitalize tourism, the airport, and the economy of a small town by erecting a monument to pop star Michael Jackson (who&#8217;s still alive back then) in the center of town.

What inspired you to tell this story?

This comedy is inspired by a bizarre trend happening recently in small towns of Serbia and the Balkans: people are building monuments to Hollywood and pop-icons (Rocky, Tarzan, Bruce Lee&#8230;). In the last 20 years Serbia has repeatedly lost wars, changed its name, borders, flags, and anthems. The World War II heroes of socialist Yugoslavia are not politically correct anymore and therefore, their monuments are being removed. Ironically, the recent bloody civil wars have left no new heroes, and so it is not surprising that in this hero-less word people would resort to the crazy idea of building monuments to safe, lifeless heroes, such as Hollywood movie characters.

In my film, Marko, an optimistic daydreamer, has a simple plan: he wants to breathe life into his dying Serbian hometown by building a monument to Michael Jackson. The seemingly innocent monument unexpectedly proves to be very controversial, bringing the undercurrent of ever-present demons in Serbian society up to the surface. Paradoxically, this process will help create a new hero, a tragic-comic Don Quixote-like character that sticks to his idealism to the very end. Both the character and the idea become transcendent, and in the end, they become something much bigger than initially intended, something historic and monumental.

In the course of the film the monument to the King Of Pop transcends into something larger than the idea of Michael Jackson, it becomes a quirky but powerful symbol of tolerance and dignity.

Is Michael Jackson big in Serbia?

Yes, like everywhere else, Michael Jackson is huge in Serbia. But what was more interesting to me, and what informed my script emotionally, pushing onto different directions, was the reaction to his sudden death all over former Yugoslavia. At the time of his death I was still writing the script, I was a week away from finishing it for a deadline. I woke up late that morning and found many messages on my phone, such as &#8220;Your monument just died&#8221; and other similar messages from friends and colleagues who knew I was finishing this script titled &#8220;Monument To Michael Jackson.&#8221;

Because of this real-life fact, Michael Jackson&#8217;s death, I was forced to stop writing and rethink the whole story. I stopped writing and started researching the reactions to Michael Jackson&#8217;s death in former Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia etc.) and learned that people took it very tragically, very personally. To me it seemed as though people were not only mourning Michael&#8217;s death, but also their lost years during the unfortunate times of the civil wars that have torn Yugoslavia apart in the early &#8216;90s.

For them, Michael Jackson&#8217;s &#8216;80s music was the soundtrack of their better past, and someone even wrote on an Internet forum &#8220;Now that Michael is dead I know that Yugoslavia is really dead.&#8221; So I discovered this invisible connection between Michael Jackson and the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia, which I wasn&#8217;t aware of before, and this greatly influenced the tone of my script.

Where did you film this? Any specific challenges with making a film there?

We filmed in Serbia, mainly in a small town called Lozovik. My DP, Mathias Schöningh, and I agreed early on that this film would be, in a way, a &#8216;Balkan Western.&#8217; We watched a lot of Western films of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah while discussing the style; so we went for a look that we called &#8216;nostalgic-Western Balkan.&#8217; We decided to shoot it with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the widest possible, and the most &#8220;Western&#8221; aspect ratio.

We were successful in finding a place that perfectly fit what we were looking for; this town had the charm of a small town; run-down but full of earthy colors.

The biggest challenge was shooting for three weeks in a small town and therefore disrupting the every day lives of the people who live there. We often joked about being covered in tar and feathers while being chased out by the locals when things with them got pretty hairy. Once they sawed off the hand of our monument to stop our filming, but after a somewhat tricky negotiation we got the hand back. Recently we had a great pre-premiere there in their local theater and it was very touching, the whole town came and old animosities were forgotten.

http://www.independent.com/news/2015/jan/26/monument-michael-jackson/
 
Monument To Michael Jackson To Open Rouen Festival

BELGRADE &#8211; The film Monument to Michael Jackson will ceremonially open the 10th anniversary A l&#8221;Est, du Nouveau festival of central and Eastern European film in Rouen, France, on Friday, April 17.

Screenwriter and director Darko Lungulov&#8217;s creation will be featured in the main, competitive section, with Lungulov to make a guest appearance at the opening ceremony, the producers have announced.

While in Rouen, Lungulov will take part in a panel discussion on the significance of the distribution of European films as one of the best ways of communication and the presence of central and eastern European films in France.

Meanwhile, Monument to Michael Jackson is continuing its US festival tour in April, and will be screened in the main competitive section of the Nashville international festival, the Minneapolis international festival and the Newport Beach international festival in California.

http://www.tanjug.rs/news/173898/monument-to-michael-jackson-to-open-rouen-festival.htm
 
This is very cool. I would love to see this movie. Very interesting idea from the movie-makers.
 
Monument To Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch Gate
February 2


10945564_10152787803268922_789411692936449762_n.jpg



Saturday, April 25


3 Awards! >Grand Jury Prize + Best Actor Award for Boris Milivojevic at Nashville Film Festival!! + Grand Jury Prize at A l'Est du Nouveau France!
 
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