Balkan - a multilingual poetry documentary
About the documentary:
The short multilingual poetry documentary "Balkan" is an experimental project created in the summer of 2024.
The concept was born cause of the following question: how can a general idea that can unite people, as a primordial thought, develop into content and acquire form, when it is transferred from mouth to mouth and transformed from individual to collective action?
Along with the first key phrases "Balkans, working class, no borders, women, arts from all for all, freedom", I turned to Olga, an artist and friend of mine from Serbia, who brought the poem "Балкан" to life. "Балкан" was translated from Serbian to English, Greek and, to honor the spoken nomadic language that crosses the borders between the Balkan states, Vlach (also known as Aromanian).
Through Olga (Serbia) and Toula (Greece), the spontaneous development of a human network was getting formed, recording with their smartphones unique videos, via which everyone connected their personal experience with their one-of-a-kind perspective on the Balkans, the amateur effort for directing and the goal of the collective visualization of the poem
The audio-visual material, the collection of which lasted a month, had a total duration of approximately 3 hours, involved 15 women and 6 men, 23-92 years old, and contained footage from 4 cities, 1 town and 3 villages (2 of them Vlach-speaking), in Greece and Serbia.
The union of all the elements in the form of one documentary was completed with the simultaneous female narration of the poem by Olga (Serbo-Croatian), Toula (Vlach) and Niki (Greek), thus wanting to highlight the dynamics of modern poetry, an art that is unfortunately sidelined, combined with the inspiration from the tradition of Balkan female polyphony and the empowerment of women.
George Tzimas
Balkan - by Olga Dragaš
we are
silent by the rattling of the night
horizons are
not new hopes
blue hands
hug our bosom
the forest
breathes so the sea could sing
all before
us
still are
ours
with eyes
gazing to green mountains
from olive
branches
to slender
pines
we give birth
to shade and balm
and we give
our hand
cause human
is a comrade one to another
and there is
no color that
our love
didn't bring to this life
all after us
you came
from our eyes
shall you
sing distant psalms with breath and fist
freedom
equality peace / peace equality freedom
red and
starry rivers of Balkan
spark
through our blood
heart of the
world
for the
world beats
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