Filip David (1940, Kragujevac), writer and dramatist, graduated from the Faculty of Philology (Yugoslavian and World Literature) and the Academy of Theatre, Film, Radio and TV (Dramaturgy group). Book writer, long-time editor of the Drama program of Television Belgrade and professor of dramaturgy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. One of the founders of "Nezavisnih pisac", an association founded in 1989 in Sarajevo that gathered the most important writers from all parts of the former Yugoslavia, founder of "Belgrade Circle" (1990), an association of independent intellectuals, "Writers' Forum" and a member of the international literary association "Group 99" founded at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt.
He has written several TV dramas and film scripts. Published books of short stories: "Well in the Dark Forest", "Records of Real and Unreal", "Prince of Fire", "Collected and New Stories"; novels: "Pilgrims of Heaven and Earth", "Dream of Love and Death" and "House of Memory and Forgetting"; books of essays: "Fragments from Dark Times", "Are We Monsters", "Worlds in Chaos". Together with Mirko Kovač published the "Book of Letters 1992-1995." He is the winner of Nino's award for the novel "House of Memory and Forgetting" in 2014, and for his works he also received awards: Mladost, "Milan Rakić", BIGZ's and Prosveta's award for the book of the year, as well as Andrić's award. His books have been translated into Swedish, French, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Albanian, Esperanto, Macedonian, Slovenian, published in Croatia, and his short stories are included in twenty anthologies. As a playwright, co-screenwriter or screenwriter, he worked, among other things, on the films: "Occupation in 26 Pictures", "The Fall of Italy", "Who's Singing There", "Powder Kegs" (Critic's Award in Venice, Felix Award for Best European Film of the Year), "Special Treatment" (Award in Cannes), "Pavilion 6", "A Winter's Night's Dream" (Grand Prix at the San Sebastián Film Festival), "Optimists" (Grand Prix in Valladolid and Geneva).
For the jubilee issue of ART, Filip David was happy to respond and spoke from Belgrade, where he lives.
It has been twenty years since ART, a sub-sheet of the Podgorica News for Culture and Art, has been published. This achieved continuity, which is a significant success of Montenegrin journalism in today's working conditions of print media. How do you see it?
- I highly appreciate what ART represented in the cultural space of our former common homeland and later on. Congratulations on that. I had the pleasure of collaborating.
What kind of waters can a ship steered mostly by those who live on the divide take us?
- Our time of many divisions, including cultural ones, led to great bigotry and intolerance that poisoned not only the political but also the cultural space. As far as I'm concerned, it's more important to me whether someone is a good writer, and less to what culture they belong to. Affiliation is not without importance, but it does not constitute the value of a literary work. Here in our country, in the Balkans, the situation is, one can freely say, catastrophic, battles are being waged in culture that are the least cultural, the criteria are often completely perverted, so it is more important which political and national flock you belong to, and not what you write. I especially respect those who did not succumb to pressure and preserved their dignity and the dignity of their profession. It is with regret and disapproval that I comment on the political pressure from Serbia on the political and cultural identities of Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia.
In our region, more people are engaged in literature today than ever before. Many books are being published, and that's probably a good thing. However, there are conflicting views. How would you comment on this?
- The appearance of computers, the Internet, the spread of so-called social networks led to an incredible increase in literary production. It was never written more, much less read. Anyone can publish what they have written, and the speed of writing has increased. Some call it the democratization of art, and this "democratization" has greatly lowered the criteria of what is published. In Serbia alone, close to two hundred novels compete for the Nino Prize every year. In the entire former Yugoslavia, that number did not exceed fifty novels, but the competition for quality works was incomparably greater. This is absurd, different criteria apply in art that have nothing to do with populism and democratization, which promises an ideal time when everyone will write poetry, everyone will paint and sing to the general satisfaction. However, there are some human activities that require special talents.
You once said that Serbia had lost its way among its own delusions. I believe that you are well aware of the social and political situation in Montenegro as well, so perhaps you could say what are the most common misconceptions that the leaders of this country are subject to?
- Awakened nationalism, led in many cases by disillusioned communists, accepted what could be called the ideology of nationalism, which Danilo Kish prophetically wrote about a totalitarian ideology, an ideology of banality and kitsch that contains intolerance, revanchism, ethnic divisions. National elites, lost in space and time, fueled ethnic intolerance, which was an inevitable prelude to bloody and criminal disintegration. The Yugoslav army moved into the Serbian army almost overnight. The generals took off their pentagrams and put on cockades. This is a simplified and simplistic picture of what has befallen us. One totalitarian ideology was replaced by another totalitarian ideology, communism by nationalism, that is the basis of what happened and continues to this day. And how dangerous is the strengthening of nationalism in a multinational and multi-ethnic state, that is what history warns us about. Any fanaticism, and especially that nationalist frenzy, easily sets people's heads on fire and causes the power of normal reasoning to be lost, turning once-intelligent people into raving fools. German essayist and poet Hans Magnus Enzerberger who was a guest of the Belgrade circle at the beginning of the nineties, he could not be surprised after visiting the Association of Writers in France 7, what happened to some of his once good friends. They were no longer the same people he knew, now it was impossible to talk to them anymore, they became exclusive, unrecognizable, intolerant. A kind of madness moved into them. Despite all the initial trials, Montenegro managed to build and preserve its civic program for a long time. I observe what is happening in Montenegro now with anxiety and confusing impressions of someone who is a friend of Montenegro. The strengthening of anti-European and pro-Russian attitudes and especially the great influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the influence of church liturgies on civil Montenegro is disturbing. The influence and mixing of religion with politics, experience confirms us, usually has unfortunate consequences. The SPC hides some dark places in its history, about which it has never publicly declared itself, and it should have. In 1935, an influential bishop and later a saint Nikolaj Velimirovic in a lecture at Kolarč University, he points out that he is a great leader of the German Reich Adolf Hitler the only one who properly understood the teaching Saint Sava. Two years later in the Official Gazette of the SPC patriarch Barnabas through a German journalist, he says "how the great Führer of the German people leads a struggle that serves the benefit of all humanity". The already mentioned Nikolay, who is today the spiritual vertical of the SPC, writes that culture is "zero below one... The Jews and their father the devil managed to separate the spirit and heart of European humanity from true worship by long-term gentle friction"... In the book "Through the Prison Window" he says that "inventions brought European humanity to the slope of destruction, brought it into spiritual darkness and into a dark quagmire the likes of which cannot be remembered in the history of mankind..." The SPC has never distanced itself from such of his saint. And these are just a few not particularly selected quotes from many similar ones from the holy bishop's book, published after the Second World War. With similar fervor, the Church today supports and celebrates Putin's Russia and the dark mystical theories of his former adviser. Aleksandra Dugin about Eurasia, the beginning of which is realized by the attack on Ukraine. The Eurasian Union, which is another name for the restoration of the Russian empire, should deal a death blow to the European Union. Such continuity of anti-civilization anti-European thinking shows, at the very least, a serious lack of political hearing, realistic insight into world politics and harmful politicking. The church, in my opinion, should take care of the spiritual health of its flock, and much less or not at all regulate the state, deal with the revision of history and cause inter-ethnic conflicts.
You are one of the founders of the Belgrade Circle and a great fighter against Greater Serbian nationalism. How do you view that era from today's perspective?
- The establishment of the Belgrade Circle was preceded by the establishment of Independent Writers in Sarajevo in the early nineties. About thirty respected writers from all parts of Yugoslavia founded their new Association as a response to the state of national associations and the state of society with the intention of stopping war propaganda and wartime swindle, to influence politicians on a peaceful agreement on what Yugoslavia will look like, whether they will reform or whether the nations united in Yugoslavia will disperse peacefully. One of the agreements at the founding meeting of Independent Writers was that independent writers in their communities oppose the great evil that was looming, by resisting such a situation, among other things, by establishing independent trade unions and non-governmental organizations, and also by organizing a general strike that would stop the irresponsible and dangerous policy of solving problems and disagreements with armed conflicts. It was on such foundations that independent trade unions were created and the Belgrade Circle, an association of independent intellectuals, was founded. Radomir Konstantinović clearly presented the program of the Belgrade Circle. "This is the Serbia that does not put up with crimes." Nearly 300 members of the Belgrade Circle participated almost every day in the work of the protest anti-war tribune and anti-war actions. Presentations from the forum were later published in two books "The Other Serbia" and "Intellectuals and War". Resistance Miloševićeva war policy existed, but it is true that the majority of Serbia followed and supported a dangerous policy of hatred, violence, demagoguery, lies and half-truths, led by its politicians and military leaders, the most important of whom were ultimately tried and convicted in The Hague as war criminals. It turned out, unfortunately, that the minority could not significantly influence the madness of nationalism that spread like an epidemic. That spirit of crime and villains that the official policy accepted and adopted convicted criminals as national heroes hangs over Serbia like a haunting from which there is no way to get rid of.
In the XNUMXs, you experienced many inconveniences because of your activities...
- I have no right to complain - it was my choice. I was one of the founders of Independent Writers, later the Belgrade Circle, the first Independent Trade Unions in Serbia, the Forum of Writers. I have nothing special to say about the "inconveniences". Daily threats of liquidation, disturbing phone calls at night, being fired from work, threats to family, being called a traitor. No, I was not afraid because I was convinced then as now that that small group of opponents of the regime, to which I belonged, preserved the image of that honorable, honest Serbia. Whether it was a lot or a little, but it was certainly not enough, will be judged by those who come after us.
You are a man of rich life experience. You have experienced many modes. As a boy, you were miraculously saved and survived a war in which many members of your extended family perished... To be honest, when was the best time for you, and which period from the Second World War onwards was the best for an ordinary person?
- The end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies were the years when it seemed that we were maturing as a society, that significant things were happening in culture, especially in literature, film, and painting. And television was winning its place in culture, new possibilities that were only hinted at.
At that time, no one thought or imagined what this new medium would turn into. Such a possibility belonged to Orwell's negative utopia. Like my friends, I believed in the opening of Yugoslavia to the world, in the power of the literary word, in the "conquest of freedom" and a better future. I got a job as a dramatist at the Contemporary Theater, and then by invitation I moved to television in the founding as the editor of the Drama Program. I belonged to a literary "group" that included Kish, Pekić, Kovac. We met, read our texts, talked about literature. The literary evenings that were held then were full of energy, with a deep but naive belief that the world we lived in could be changed through books. There were serious publishers like Prosveta, Nolita, Bigz. Publishing a book with such publishers meant that you were seriously entering literature. In short, a stormy time, a time of hope for change.
Today, reality stars are role models for young people, everything has been reduced to the sludge of pornography and primitivism. Is it possible to return to true values and not slip into the traditionalism preached by the church?
- Today, Serbia is a "captured country" in which media with a national frequency, viewed throughout Serbia, under the patronage and control of the state and financially supported by the state, spread hatred towards neighbors and minorities in Serbia itself. The trademarks of modern Serbia are Pink and Happy with their reality shows. These programs full of violence, fights, insults in good taste, on the edge of the worst pornography and shameful primitivism, with selected participants who mostly belong to criminal circles from the street, individuals from brothels, send messages about desirable behavior through the media, and have become a metaphor for the entire political life. President Vucic he gives full support to the televisions that broadcast these programs and during the breaks of the reality shows he speaks from their studios. And then, some of his favorite ministers additionally "translate" his words, in which the Minister of the Interior stands out Seal, with rhetoric that is a continuation of the dangerous and criminal rhetoric from the wartime nineties. And the other ministers in general, elected for loyalty and not for special abilities, are wholeheartedly trying to contribute to the creation of the personality cult of Aleksandar Vučić.
We have done many interviews so far, but I never asked you how you actually met Danilo Kiš?
- We met back in 1960, when we won awards at the literary contest of the Union of Jewish Municipalities. A photo from that meeting has also been preserved. A year later, Danilo becomes the editor of the respected student magazine "Vidici" and in one issue publishes short stories by Mirko Kovač, Filip David and the mysterious Adam Petrović, which was the pseudonym of Borislav Pekić, who had just been released from prison for belonging to a banned group Grolov democratic youth. Our books also appear in Prosveta's edition of Yugoslav prose. We start to hang out, notice the closeness of our literary views and role models, and that's the beginning of our informal literary group. We remained friends until the end, even when Kiš went to France, Pekić to London, and Mirko Kovač, under threats of liquidation by the Milošević regime, left Serbia.
It is a tragic fact that both Kiš and Pekić died far from their homeland, and they represent the best in ex-Yugoslav literature.
From your group Kiš, Pekić, Kovač, you are the only one left in Belgrade. Have you ever had the dilemma of leaving, even when you lost your job?
- No, I'm not. Although I am convinced that sometimes it takes more courage to leave than to stay. Going into the uncertainty of another language and another environment is a great and dangerous adventure. My reasons for staying, however, were of a different nature. I didn't want someone to drive me away with their threats, I wanted to prove that this is my homeland after all and that everything I do is in the interest of defending the honor and freedom of that homeland. True, I occasionally wondered if I had the right to endanger my children and my wife, but I found understanding and support for my engagement and public critical views.
What is your attitude towards the formation of the Open Balkans?
- In principle, different forms of cooperation and opening of borders should be supported. But I don't know how much you can believe in the sincerity of that initiative, if you talk about the Open Balkans and the "Serbian world" at the same time, which is nothing more than a reformulated old story about Greater Serbia. Simply, one does not go with the other.
How do you interpret today's events on the political scene of the Western Balkans?
- As we speak, Russia's aggression against Ukraine continues. World peace is threatened. Bosnia does not manage to establish itself as a single country. Montenegro is in dangerous turmoil. Serbia does not want to recognize the independence of Kosovo, expecting some "better" times when they will return Kosovo to Serbia by force. There are many dangerous hotbeds of conflict, and too little common sense and good will to resolve disputes. Although I am an optimist by nature, sometimes it seems to me that only a miracle can save us from new conflicts and new disasters.
Bonus video:
