14/08/2024 - The Yugoslavian-born director recalls the collapse of her native country in her newest film

Iva Radivojevic was born in Belgrade and spent her early years in Yugoslavia, Cyprus and New York City. She’s an artist and writer currently residing in Greece. Her films have screened at the New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, IFFR, CPH:DOX, the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) and the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, and have been commissioned by ARTE La Lucarne and Field of Vision.

In her newest effort, When the Phone Rang [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Iva Radivojević
film profile], she delves deep into her memories of leaving the country. We sat down to talk to her at the premiere of the movie in Locarno’s Cineasti del Presente section.

Cineuropa: What motivated you to go back to the past, particularly to the wartime period?
Iva Radivojević: All of my films revolve around dislocation and migration. Leaving a country at war at a young age – an event that none of us are prepared for – obviously left a deep mark. I call that kind of uprooting a “small death”. Whenever I was asked to remember my childhood, the same images would always surface, like ghosts, haunting the present. Most times, the memories sat in that room by the window [which we see in the film]. I became very curious about that room and those memories, and wanted to give them a container.

The war started in 1991, but for your protagonist, it is 1992 when the phone rang. How come?
Very simply, 1992 was the year my mother, my sister and I left Yugoslavia.

You deal with fading memories. Are those memories in the film yours?
The film is essentially a collection of my personal memories. These are actual events, and involve my family and friends. The phone call is the most vivid memory I have, and I can describe it in perfect detail so many years later. While we were filming in the block of buildings where I grew up, some neighbours came out to the communal yard. These were the same neighbours from 30 years ago. It became very clear that those memories were not only my own, but also those of the entire community and, in a larger context, the country.

You like to mix different types of film. How would you define this one?
I define my films as “dislocated cinema”. I define this one as the documentation of a heartache – the heartache of dislocation. If we are talking specifically about the binary between fiction and non-fiction, perhaps it is appropriate here to use the word “composite”.

Voice-over narration can sometimes be seen as a fairly blunt device. Did you find it necessary for your film, in line with your vision?
The film is a memoir, of sorts, and as such, it’s told by a first-person narrator. I wrote it as a story long before I wrote the script, initially intending it as a book. However, a film forced its way through. Narration also guides all of my films. I see it almost as an autobiography. The same narrator shape-shifting, changing identities, languages and appearance, and reappearing from film to film – like a migrant, who travels from country to country, from one reality to another.

What was it like to shoot such a complex film with such a small crew?
We had a tiny budget and had to be imaginative with whatever was possible. One flat was used for almost all of the scenes. I really enjoy production design, so I’d redesign the sets according to the scene with the help of the crew. The film is quite minimalistic. The crew took on multiple roles. When you have a fantastic and dedicated crew, anything is possible.

16 mm film, with its natural warmth, is usually associated with more pleasant memories. Why did you decide to shoot your film, dealing with largely negative sentiments, on 16 mm?
I wouldn’t necessarily categorise 16 mm that way. The texture and quality of 16 mm correspond to the texture of memory – grainy, lacking in [digital] sharpness, a texture from another time. It’s also imbued with reflective nostalgia. I couldn’t imagine this film in a digital format.