Boris Malagurski – Never Underrate Your Capacities ^Featured

Born and growing up in Subotica, in the north of Vojvodina Province, he emigrated from Canada when he was 16, translating his departure from Serbia into his first documentary, The Canada Project. Malagurski finished primary school and a school of music in Subotica, and secondary school and university in Vancouver, where he studied film production at the University of British Columbia. 

The first time he took a camera into his hands he realised that it was a love that would never leave him, which he has confirmed by filming seven documentaries so far. His best-known films are Kosovo, Can You Imagine, The Weight of Chains, and Presumption of Justice.

Malagurski’s creations have been shown at numerous festivals, including the Raindance Festival in London, BELDOCS in Belgrade, the Moving Image Festival in Toronto, international festivals in Ann Arbor, Havana, Mexico City, and in cinemas throughout Canada, Australia and the United States.

He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, but he says modestly that none of them were ever as important as positive reactions by audiences. He has also tested his talents in the role of a journalist – in his programme Revolution aired on Belgrade’s Happy TV he researches and makes public in a very liberal way the problems encountered daily by the citizens of Serbia.
The script for his latest film was written in 2007, but due to a shortage of funds he failed to realise the project at the time. However, perseverance and a will to work have always urged Boris to succeed.

Belgrade with Malagurski

Belgrade with Malagurski is the first feature documentary about Belgrade directed by Boris Malagurski.

The film shows in an original, amusing and interesting way the Serbian capital through the eyes of its residents, presenting Belgrade as a new world tourist destination. It shows the rich history of the city, its cultural and natural heritage, its lively nightlife, its gastronomical offer and everything the city prides itself in. There is an interview with Novak Djoković, currently the best-known Belgrader worldwide. The film was shot in English, and its aim is to attract tourists to Belgrade and reveal to them the best features of the Serbian capital.

You shot your first film, It’s Time, when you we only 16. Where did you get the idea for the project? the House of Good News asked Malagurski.

It’s Time was a fun project I did with my friends in the secondary school we attended in Subotica. Several of us got together, thought up a script, and I used a still camera which can record video clips. At the time film was just a hobby for me.
My next project was a documentary named Canada Project which won a prize as the best film shown at the First Take international film festival in Toronto. Serbian viewers have seen parts of it in Mira Adanja-Polak’s show on Serbian state TV.
Both It’s Time and Canada Project were shown at the international film festival at Palić, and I believe that the relative success of what were after all two amateurish films inspired me to choose film production as a career.

You are very young, but have so far done seven films. What does the success you have achieved mean for you?

Quality is more important to me than quantity, and I shot many of my films while I was still very young - if I could make them again they would certainly be produced much better. I view my first film projects as a reflection of my thinking at a certain moment in time. Personal success does not mean as much to me as the success of a film, which depends on many factors and a number of people, my only role is to guide the story, and I think that story itself is the hero.

You are the author of the show Revolution on TV in which show your journalistic and investigative capacities. How much does it mean for you that you have the freedom in the show to process topical and somewhat delicate issues, trying to help and urge the people of Serbia to think more critically about problems and to have more courage to ask questions themselves and seek answers for them?

It means a lot to me that Happy TV grants me a relatively high degree of freedom in respect of topics I want to process and the way I want to do so. I think that there is a shortage in Serbia of reporters keen on tackling issues of importance for Serbia’s citizens in a creative and critical manner.

For example, in one episode I attended a news conference of Serbia’s Power Company (EPS) with a desire to highlight a problem many people have regarding their electricity bills, which they cannot understand. But I did not want to pose a boring question like “Why are electricity wills not clear enough?”, but I got up, took out my writing pad and began reading from it the most unclear question I could possibly imagine. Literally, I myself had no idea what I had asked them. They gazed at me with incomprehension and asked me to explain. I turned over the pad and read out an even less clear question. Then they laughed a little and, feeling the pressure, began to try and justify whey the bills were insufficiently clear.
It’s my style, and I think that only critical action in a different and entertaining manner can motivate people to change society. 

How did your career begin?

It’s difficult to say where my career began, and even more difficult where it will end. The decisive moment was when I picked up a camera for the first time at the age of eight, and that love remains in me to this day.

What do you regard as your greatest success?

I think my films are my greatest success, and the biggest success of my films is that, as far as I have had an opportunity to see and hear, they stimulate certain changes in viewers’ perceptions. A lot of people have told me so far that I have succeeded in informing them about things they had not known about, in an interesting and accessible way, and many have changed their opinions on various issues.

Belgrade with Boris Malagurski is your latest documentary. What was it like working on the film and what did you expect from it?

The film about Belgrade was almost not made at all. Back in 2007 I wrote a script for a feature documentary to present the Serbian capital to the world public in the best possible manner. I sent the script to all film producers in Serbia. I received a reply from only one of them, they were interested, but ultimately we failed to collect the necessary funds. I was disappointed and filed away the script.

In the meantime I shot three films - Kosovo, Can You Imagine, The Weight of Chains, and Presumption of Justice – while working on these I developed a technique of financing films which did not even exist when I first applied it.

Early in 2009 I opened an Internet site through which I was able to receive donations for the project. Interestingly, soon after posting the site I proposed to an investor that we create a website at which people could post their projects and collect funds by way of online donations, but the investor did not like my idea. A couple of months later a similar site named Kickstarter was formed in the United States, and its owners have earned millions.

For my films I collected far less, of course, around twenty thousand dollars, which was enough for making them. I took the script of the film on Belgrade out of the drawer and collected via the Internet the initial sum needed to begin producing the documentary. As time passed I met many talented people who joined in the project, I received support from the Ministry of Culture of Serbia, the City of Belgrade and many others, and the result? We shall see at the world premiere in the Sava Centre on 19 October.

The dailies Politika and Press have called you Serbia’s Michael Moore. How much do such complements mean to you?

Of course it means to me to be compared to the main who won the Golden Palm in Cannes for the best documentary, but with my film about Belgrade I am trying to show that I can make a different kind of documentary.

You are the winner of numerous prizes and awards, mostly for the Weight of Chains. Which awards the dearest to you and why?

Awards were never that important to me, I think the dearest is still the first one I won for Canada Project in Toronto way back in 2005, when I was 16, because it was that award that inspired me to make films as a career. If it weren’t for that, I would probably be a mathematician now. As far as the other awards are concerned, I am happy that many professionals liked my films, but the final say is that of the people, for whom I am making movies.

Is there some piece of advice you will remember all your life?

“Never underrate your capacities,” my former maths teacher Nebojša Gvozdenović once said.
Source: House of Good News