MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Bloody Life still creates its own stories without any self respect. I mean, if I had a few millions years of trying with such poor results as Mr. Life's I would give up and change professions. Even one or two hundred years would be enough to me to make that kind of evaluation. OK, I can't expect everybody to be so self-critical, but Life could refrain from mass production from time to time and take a look on what it had done.
What Life would see?
I received an E-mail yesterday from Dushan Ninkov, one of the best directors of photography in the former Yugoslavia. It seems that the message had been forwarded many times and its origin is in some country where whites and Christians are in the majority. Let us quote only a part of it:
Such levels of misery wasn't ever seen in literature! Not in Karl May's "Ghost from the Forest", neither in Victor Hugo¥s or Emile Zola¥s works, even not in writing in Russia in Stalin's times when fellows were describing the troubles of working class from Adam & Eve & Neanderthal man to Red October.
What kind of story could anybody start with such misery? What kind of plot should be expected with a situation which began like that? What kind of sensuous experience or contemplative dainty? The hungry hero in such a story wouldn't care about aesthetics but how to fill his stomach.
Some critics will say that I can't assail the story created by Life because it might contain some kind of method, some preparation by which beginning this way provides for a dramatic wriggle which makes the road to a happy-end more tense.
Bullshit!
What model beginning are we discussing, what kind of introductory exposition it is when it lasts a few thousand of years? How long should the reader wait for this innovative glimmer of the happy-end?
By the way, Life never makes happy-endings in his story. Even fiction writers have problem with creating happy endings. Snow-white for example: she went to live with her prince in the royal palace, but the dwarfs were left out in the cold.
As I know Life, it will irresponsibly leave the story about 100 person village underdone and go off to create some other bullshit, such as the kindness of Mr. Milosevic¥s regime in congratulating the Independent Television of Nis (Yugoslavia) for winning the Grand-Prix of the International Festival of Local TV Broadcasters (Slovakia) by assigning the television station a huge penalty. (NATO failed to support Mr. Milosevic's penalty on the opposition station by bombarding NTV Nis on the same day it won its award for independent broadcasting --- which only proves once more how Mr. Life is inconsistent in his works!)
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This year, at the closing ceremony, I felt that something was wrong.
Something about the awards seemed so unfair. I was starting to wonder what brought this bitter taste to my mouth (it was not the beer at the celebration closing the festival).
Was it the Judging Criteria? Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad - we have no illusion that we can create a universal system which will cover every small production of Local TV Broadcasters from villages with 500 inhibitions and also those of productions of Italian Broadcasters whose local areas cover an audience of a few million audience in Bari and the region. But I think the Judging Criteria were fair.
Was it the Jury itself? No jury in the world could satisfy all tastes (especially the tastes of the losers), but I know that they did their best to make a fair decision....
Then I got it! It was that damnable Mr. Life and his obtrusive ambition to create stories!
Most of the prizes included cash. The biggest amount for the best programme, smaller for second, symbolic for the last among best. But, the winner whose programme placed second at this year's Festival received less money than the winner of the programme placed fourth place.
Not in the exact amount, you see, but in the value of the money.
Why do I say this? Because one hundred US$ are not the same one hundred US$ in every country whichparticipated in the Festival.
And this is to say nothing about the fact that all those fellows are doing basically the same job, requiring the same skills and know-how, or that they have to pay the same prices for cameras, recorders, and the tape.
Of course, nobody could expect the organizers of the Festival to give the prizes in the way reflecting this cruel devaluation irony of Life. What a nightmare it would be if you had showed the best programme here and considering that you are from Moldavia (for example) and you received the 90 US$ that is equal to three average salaries in your country; but if you didn't make the best piece, but under the consideration that you are from Slovakia, you received US$ 400, only the value of two months of your work...
It would be foolery, nonsense...
"Why?" asks Mr. Life now. "It seems to be OK to me..."
It is. In the same way as the stories created by Mr. Life are.
Attending the International Festival of Local TV Broadcasters here in Slovakia this year, I was made very angry by Mr. Life. I will tell you about this Festival in a moment, but first indulge me as I have a few words for Mr. Life that I believe he needs to see!
" If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like something like the following. There would be:
The International Festival of Local TV Broadcasters in Kosice, Slovakia, (we had the fifth one last week) is a place where the TV programmes submitted in nomination are not necessarily the most interesting events at the place. Five years ago, for example, in the time of the Serbo-Croat martial episode, fellows from Serbia and Croatia, in spite of mass expectations, didn't take out their daggers to discuss the question of where new borders between their warring countries should be, instead they were sharing their time and their bottles. To soothe hurt feelings of the disappointed journalists in attendance who had been spoiling for a brawl, two boys - one from Croatia, another from Serbia - were found dancing a waltz at the opening party and the problem - what sensational headline to run - was solved.
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Event #189: Toward All Saints Day
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