Life in Bosnia: Documentary Film – Graffiti Street (Ulica Grafita)

Life in Bosnia: Documentary Film – Graffiti Street (Ulica Grafita)

Update: Some facts are corrected. Thanks to La Banda’s pianist Misko!

At the end of the 1980s, La Banda was one of the best-known bands on Sarajevo’s alternative rock scene. The musicians were just about to complete their debut album when their plans were dramatically changed by war. This personal documentary by the journalist and director Sergej Kreso, La Banda’s bass guitarist, records a reunion of members of the group after more than 15 years. The old friends return to Sarajevo from five different countries to complete two last songs and therefore finish the album they began before the war. However, Graffiti Street is not just a documentary about a meeting of musicians after a separation caused by war.

Kreso, who has come back to Sarajevo from his new home in the Netherlands, attempts to find out how much the war affected the city and its burgeoning music scene. The spellbinding final concert of the reformed La Banda in a small Sarajevo club allows the happy years before the war to be remembered for one night at least.

This film is not easy to digest. You probably need to know a thing or two about the band or the background of the region to enjoy it. I chose it over more famous films simply for its connection to Sarajevo. There is a few hilarious moments though.

I have left Sarajevo long ago, but I seem to have brought away with me its sense of division, for example figuring out Bosnian names to discover their identities. A neutral, objective observer would have cared less whether the people in the movie are Serbs, Croats or Muslims; he would have directed his attention to the music-making and the reunion of the band. But for me no! I had to: “This guy is a Croat because he rather does nothing in Split than in Doboj.” “This must be a Serb band because the backup singer’s name is Ceca.” “This is a Croat band because the Croats have the best taste among the three ethnic groups. So this type of jazzy, blue underground music has to be them.” “Oh no, this band is popular in Sarajevo, a city populated by Muslims and Serbs, so they have to Serbs.” The words of a friend’s sister once again ring truth: “Before the war, people didn’t pay attention to the name. Tanja or Ermina, it did not matter.”

One of my favorite scenes was a band member commented about expecting a bus from hell from the direction of Poland as he was nervously prepared for the band’s first public performance in Sarajevo after a 15-year hiatus. I didn’t understand the connection right away and kept turning to my boyfriend, “Do you know why he brought up Poland?” Then finally it dawned on me. At a Turkish coffee shop in Sarajevo, Merima and I were talking about the up-and-down of the former Yugoslavia. “You know we were very rich. Our Tito Communism was different. We could travel freely. The other Eastern Europeans, for example, the Poles, whenever they traveled here, they carried with them bags of food on the buses. They used to be way poorer.”

Could this be the explanation for “the bus from hell” that scares the people from richer Yugoslavia?

Graffiti Street’s Trailer

Resources:

• The Website of Misko, the pianist from Sweden. He started a website to connect with people who had any connection with the band, and eventually everybody did.
• The production company: www.proopelerfilm.com
• Jeden Svet Documentary Film Festival in Prague.