THE BEATLES OF BROKEN YUGOSLAVIA

By Hajat Avdovic

Film director Igor Stoimenov
(Photo Webpublicapress 2011)

The New York film screening of Bijelo Dugme documentary was held at Columbia University, with some 100 or so guests in attendance, mostly of Balkan origin. The film will also be played at the Bosnian Film Festival this May at Tribeca cinemas.

The movie focuses on Bijelo Dugme, the first modern Rock and Roll band of the Balkans and their influence and relationship to Yugoslavia. Bijelo Dugme is Yugoslavia. The film analyzes the final decade or so of Yugoslavia through the rising rock n roll culture which started with Goran Bregovic and Bijelo Dugme. 

Igor Stoimenov himself said, “I am not a fan of Bijelo Dugme, but I needed to tell my story of Yugoslavia through Bijelo Dugme.” Therefore, the movie transitioned from being one focusing on the actual rock and roll aspects of Dugmemania that characterized their time to a movie focusing more on what Bijelo Dugme represented, which was, multi-cultural connectedness, creative

genius, and basically Yugoslavia.

The movie showed how in one instance, Goran Bregovic was able to take a piece of every culture from Ljublanja to Sarajevo to Skopje to Kosovo and incorporate it in his songs and music intended for all of Yugoslavia as a multi-ethnic nation, not as one of multiple republics. 

The second part of the movie focuses with Bijelo Dugme’s inability to keep up in the changing times and how, even though whiskey soda and rock and roll played a key part in their demise, how the cultural atmosphere in Yugoslavia took a toll on each and every member of Bijelo Dugme. 

At one point, the band cut its tour short because it could not accept the shouting of Croatian and Serbian nationalist slogans in those respective concert places. This did not represent Yugoslavia and did not represent Bijelo Dugme. Igor Stoimenov was asked why his movie suddenly stopped at 1989, and he promptly answered, “because Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 1989, so my movie stops there, the story of Bijelo Dugme stops there.”

The film screening was held at the Harriman Institute and the International Affairs building at Columbia University, New York where there were 100 or so guests, mostly of Balkan origin taking interest in the film. The film will also be played at the Bosnian Film Festival this year.