SLOW DAYS IS A FEATURE FILM MADE IN BLACK AND WHITE VIDEO AND LONG PLAY. OBVIOUSLY THOSE ARE NOT THE RULES OF COMMERCIAL CIRCUIT.
We just don’t care about commercial circuit. I don’t want to talk about the money. I fantasized about making films when I didn’t know what money even means. I want to stay in that frame of mind concerning the money. The story was black and white before I started to write a script. In Slow Days we deal with people’s basics and there’s more than twenty characters in the film, and I thought that color in this particular picture would create a complete mess. This way the whole mess is very clear to me.

WHAT’S THE IDEA OF MAKING THIS FILM? COULD WE CONSIDER SLOW DAYS AS AN UNDERGROUND MOVIE?
I can’t say I go by ideas as much as I go with feelings and people I want to portray. The only idea behind Slow Days was to put all the people in it on the same level no matter how different they are, no matter what their age is. They all have the same basics and I’ve learned during the period of working with all the actors and non-actors a great paradox that seems to trouble them (and me for that matter)- older people wants to be young again, while younger people can’t wait to grow old. That’s why young people plan so much and older ones keep on reminiscing about the opportunities they’ve lost. On the other hand, I’ve met 75 year old people that are much younger than some of my twenty-something friends. And I know some of the old people that can not wait to die. We all must live for the present without rushing and looking back. Everything that is happening to us, no matter how good or bad is an experience. I don’t deal with the limits of happiness or sadness- I’m learning to enjoy the experience as it is. The only goal is to love life because it is the best thing there is. Like George Clinton says- Free your mind and your ass will follow. Life is more important than films- films go within life, not the other way around. Characters in Slow Days are passive and they deal with indifference while the whole world is in front of them- they can’t see it. I believe that every person has a new face- therefore, everybody is original and all that you can do is stay true to yourself and put that on the screen. Underground, art, commercial, whatever the etiquette is- only tries to limit the individual so that somebody can put the frame around you and to cage you into their knowing. We make individual films- you can love’em, hate’em, feel them or don’t feel absolutely nothing about them. Just like girls and boys.

TELL US ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF SHOOTING WITH A LOW BUDGET AND A YOUNG CREW
It’s comical in many ways how naive we were. First, we thought that we can shoot entire film in a few weeks period with 2 000 euros. In the end it was more than 3 years of shooting and rehearsing, budget climbed up to 40 000 euros and now we are in deep depts. But, there’s no fear. We made our film the way we wanted and the way we knew. Only professionals were people from the sound department- we pay them. Everybody else volunteered- including the actors, cinematographer, producer and the rest of the crew. We are all young and we had certain energy to go through all of this experience without thinking about the future. We just worked every day and lived for it- for free. We have so many anecdotes about our shooting that I doubt you have time or space for all the listing of all the fuck ups we made along the way, but every time something bad happened we turned that experience to a valid inspiration to make it better than we planned.

WE GUESS SOME CINEMATOGRAPHIC REFERENCES IN YOUR MOVIE: CASSAVETTES, GODARD AND MAYBE WOODY ALLEN. HAVE YOU BEEN CONCISELY INFLUENCED BY SOME SPECIFIC DIRECTOR OR A FILM?
I love all the directors mentioned above and there’s probably thousand more directors that I love. But I try very hard that none of them influence my films. I seek for motivation and inspiration from them, but I try to kill all of my influences while making the picture. Some of them survived in the end, I guess, but it was completely unintentional.

TELL US ABOUT THE MUSIC IN THE MOVIE.
We have a leading song by Charles Mingus- Duet Solo Dancers. I just love the title and a feeling that that song gives you. When we put it in the opening sequence it gave a certain strength to our film. Plus, it reminds me of the old films from Zagreb. We have a dancing song by Blamaz Electroniq- Densplans, and the original score by Darko Markovic. It’s jazz, it’s that feeling of improvisation that leads you to personal unknown, but I think that 80 % of our film is without any music. To me, music can also be traffic and a hubbub and all the sound that you can hear when you open your window if you live in the town. Sound design is very important to me, because very often I prefer hearing things instead of seeing them. Blind people have stronger senses and they can feel the soul greater than all of us. So, I like to think that our sound design is like a soul of Slow Days. Maybe I’m just talking nonsense, but I’m searching for my inspiration everywhere I look.

APPEARANCES, PORTRAITS...YOUR CHARACTERS SEEMS TO BE PART OF A VERY BIG HUMAN PATCHWORK, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WATCHING PEOPLE AROUND? HOW ABOUT HUMAN BEHAVIOR?
The first version of the script was more defined and very much structured. Than I saw how that same structure is stealing freedom from all the actors expression. We realized that we are making films about ourselves as human beings. I have trouble seeing filmmakers who brag about how their primary goal is to film people as they are- and than they are defining them. I don’t know not one person in my entire life who’s defined. All of them are pure contradictions and they are not well shaped. I love to see a character, even for a second, and I feel very much depressed when I see a mass. I don’t like terms like “characterization”. It means that you must know all about them. I, to this day, don’t know what to expect from my mom or my closest friend, and I should make a clear character? I’m not a God. I just observe.

HOW DID YOU WORK WITH ACTORS?
Before the shooting began, we rehearsed for three months. After the first month of the shooting we rehearsed for another three moths and than we went on shooting and rehearsing for three years. I just let them be. I didn’t talk to them deeply about their characters. I just gave them plenty of time and space to free themselves so they can stand proudly in the end.

YOU PLAY A ROLE YOURSELF IN THE FILM. HOW COME?
After a year or so in the making and watching how actors behave, I was very curious to go through their experience. For my first film where I wanted to show who we are, I felt like a chicken shit standing behind the camera all the time. I’m in the film as well as my producer, and in the end I think that all the people that I knew are in the shot somewhere. When I look at our film twenty years from now I want to see us all. I don’t know if I’ll put myself in the next picture though.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO GET INTO THE STORY AND DIDN’T REST WATCHING IT OUTSIDE?
I had to go inside, I guess, because it would be fake now to tell you how we made our film without any fear and I had nightmares how will I look if I get in front of the cameras. It wasn’t an idea, or egomania, I just wanted to join people who became my friends and react to them in a place where all your reactions and expressions can be microscopic. It’s a scary thing to begin with, but it can free you and afterwards you can watch the story from the outside much more informed and equipped. I had a clearer vision how the story will end once I went inside it.

WHAT DO YOU FEEL ABOUT CINEMA NOWADAYS?
I feel like everybody makes cinema nowadays. But I keep on wondering why only few of them make films that matter.

I HAVE READ SOMEWHERE THAT YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTH FILMS AND UNTRUTHFULL FILMS. IN YOUR OPINION, WHICH IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CINEMA AND REALITY?
Godard said that every edit is a lie. You must know that all the artists don’t know what they’re saying in interviews and in their statements- that’s why we all deal with the images in the end- because images speaks more truth than we can put in any words. Honest cinema means that you don’t justify your actions. There are a lot of filmmakers who think that they are honest, but it’s not that simple. Their ideas are often uncertain and than they justify their actions with style and photography. One of my former mentors told me that every intentional mistake must be repeated so the audience can know it was on purpose. I spit in his mouth for that dumb rule. Artist can not think about the reception of their work- they must think of who they truly are. They’re not perfect and sometimes the more truth stands behind the mistakes that you’ve made. Off course, it is very human to have ambitions that everybody will love you and that you try to be all your best, but the truth is behind the masks. We all must try very hard to find the individual in each of us. We are all one, but the powerful weak people try to make us feel we are all the same. We are not and I’m very much in love with that chaos.

WHAT ABOUT FESTIVALS? WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY COULD DO FOR CINEMA TODAY?
Festivals became my free round trips to places I want to see. I like traveling, I feel freedom on the road and through the skies, but I hate festivals whose programmers are too scared to show some new films that haven’t had some success on previous festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, etc. On the other hand, festivals can put some new films on the map and encourage their makers to keep on working on their next personal films. There are million of festivals nowadays, so you can screen your babies somewhere, no matter how “uncommercial” they might be. Problem is that some of the filmmakers make “festival films”. That’s the same shit as films that are rushing for the money.