08 Jun BOOGIE & DEMONS

Posted at 12:45h in Regional selection by

BOOGIE & DEMONS

Serbia/ 2023 / 58′

DIRECTED BY: Ivan Šijak
SCREENPLAY BY: Ivan Šijak
PRODUCERS: Milan Kilibarda
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ivan Šijak
MUSIC: BELLA TECHNIKA, Bojan Bambi Drobac, Milorad Miki Ristić
EDITED BY: Srđan Radmilović
NARRATION: Vladimir Milivojević Bugi
SOUND:  Dejan Pejović

 

Boogie is switching from street photography to a series of portraits using the antique collodion wet plate process at his Belgrade studio. Only to find out that the most unusual manifestations of human nature can be found in photographing people with this technique. He refers to this series as “Demons”. This procedure is exclusively related to Belgrade. Unlike other cities where dark content is found in the everyday life of people from the margins, in Belgrade, this content is found among acquaintances and friends. Boogie is able to capture something profoundly, demonically, and in the character of the “ordinary people” represented thanks to this unusual technique of the long exposure photographing procedure. Boogie describes this procedure as an alchemical one that can capture something “from the other side”.

 

Ivan Šijak is a full-time professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade teaching Camera. He started his work as a photographer for the well-known “Youth newspaper” during his high school years and was later accepted into the Camera Department of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at Belgrade University. As an early adopter of digital tools for altering photography and video during the early nineties, he did a number of advertisements and music videos. Directing and experimenting with music videos for Serbian bands like Darkwood Dub and Sunshine had a huge impact on the urban landscape of the ’90 in Serbia. This experience made it possible for him to work in the following years as a special effects supervisor on many big film productions for authors such as Nikita Mihalkov and Emir Kusturica. As a result of his personal affinity for visual explorations, he made a number of solo Art exhibitions. The documentary film “Boogie & Demons” is a part of these visual explorations.