About the great and extraordinary film career of the first BiH Oscar winner we talked to prof. Bajtal
This time prof. Bajtal spoke about the underappreciated Bosnia and Herzegovina director and the first BiH Oscar winner Dušan Vukotić who, like many BiH greatest names, experienced an impressive rise in life, but also an inglorious end.
In the sea of proposed topics wrapped in the Bosnia and Herzegovina context, for the above mentioned, prof. Bajtal found inspiration in the book of the esteemed Vladimir Stanojević "Tragedy of Genius", who in this work dealt with the lives of great names such as Napoleon, Shakespeare, Goethe and others.
About Dušan Vukotić
Born in 1927 in Bileća, the director, screenwriter, animator, cartoonist and caricaturist is best known for the cartoon "Surrogate", for which he won an Oscar in 1962. However, according to numerous experts, "Surrogate" is not Vukotić's best film at all. Apart from "Surrogate", Vukotić is widely known for his numerous other films and will be awarded twice at the Pula Film Festival in his lifetime, he will win three awards for the gangster film "Machine Gun Concert" and as many as six awards for the film “Cow on the Moon”. The film "Piccolo" secured him awards in London, but also in other cities around the world, and thanks to his work, this director from Bileća will gain world fame. "He jumped from festival to festival, received award after award, but he is still the most awarded in the former Yugoslavia," said Professor Bajtal.
In total, he won over 60 awards, and was a true icon of the Zagreb School of Cartoon Film. This film giant, the first winner of the prestigious Oscar outside the United States, died in Zagreb in 1998.
What is "Surrogate" talking about?
First animated film outside the United States to win an Oscar in 1962, as the best cartoon, is also known as Der Ersatz. "Surrogate" is a ten-minute cartoon for adults, in which the main character plays a strange fat man who comes to the beach, and simply inflates everything he needs. So he intoxicates his own partner, but in the end, just as he easily got to everything, it disappears. He blew himself out. "The film seems to have foreseen a present in which the line between reality and a virtual surrogate for reality is slowly disappearing," Bajtal points out. But what is especially interesting is that Vukotić even beat Walt Disney in the fight for the Oscar.
Which thread of the historical course connects Yuri Gagarin, Ivo Andrić and Dušan Vukotić?
Apart from the fact that Vukotić and Gagarin, according to Bajtal, are rural children, they are also united by the infamous collapse of life. In 1991, Vukotić paid the price for fame and success, and in the same year he was banned from coming and entering his workplace. But this visionary, who certainly entered film encyclopedias and lexicons, did not talk much about it. He complained about everything, very dignifiedly, exclusively to his wife and house friend.
A similar fate befell Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin, who died in a routine flight in 1968. Although he does not claim, Professor Bajtal points out that Gagarin, thanks to his historical success and thus very dangerous competition, was executed, and unfortunately, he will pay the price of his success with his life.
In the end, our Nobel laureate, Ivo Andrić, "went too far" with his work, and all three greats will end up the way they did - "Icarus-like".
"After all, these greats are now, unfortunately, resting in their graves," concludes the esteemed Professor Bajtal.
This, the second in a row, two-hour "virtual coffee" ended with a discussion between the professor and his admirers, and thanks to the great interest, i-platform is already actively working on the organization of the next one. Join us in December, at the next coffee session!