Office for Kosovo and Metohija
Government of the Republic of Serbia

Cinematheque donated a DSP projector to the Gračanica Cultural Center

The Director of the Yugoslav Cinematheque Jugoslav Pantelić awarded a mobile DSP projector worth RSD 4.207.000, to the Director of the Gračanica Culture Center, Živojin Rakočević, provided by the Ministry of Culture and Information.

The handover was attended by the Minister of Culture and Information, Vladan Vukosavljević, and the Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Djurić.

Vukosavljević pointed out that with this act they have shown that they meet the acute needs of the Serbian culture wherever Serbian people live and have allowed a very active cultural factor – the Gračanica Cultural Center, to provide a presentation of significant domestic and foreign films to the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija.

He said that the projector will enable the screening of films not only in Gračanica, but in 15 towns populated by the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, which will improve the cultural life of our people in Kosovo and Metohija to a certain extent, emphasizing once again the integrity and indivisibility of the cultural space of the Serbian people.

Djurić stressed that Serbia has been an indisputable founder, main benefactor and patron of film in Kosovo and Metohija since the time when the Serbian army in 1912, after many centuries of slavery, had set foot on Kosovo and Metohija and the “first live photos of Gazimestan and our sanctities were made and have entered into history as an indelible trace of the struggle of our people for liberation”.

“That honorable role played by the Serbian camera during the Great War for the liberation of our people in Kosovo and Metohija, is also the first real film from that region. It is the same today. Even today, Serbia is one of the main benefactors and patrons of film in Kosovo and Metohija”, Djurić said.

He emphasized that the Ministry of Culture, the Office for Kosovo and Metohija and all institutions strive at “keeping film in our southern province alive, for the archive material to be preserved and accessible, and that our people in Kosovo and Metohija have an opportunity to enjoy contemporary film art”.

Djurić noticed that the cultural life in Kosovo and Metohija is surviving in very difficult and complex conditions.

“If a digital projector means only some additional content in some other part of our country, in Kosovo and Metohija that is another symbol of investing in the future, because everything we do there sends a message that we want to stay there, to subside, to improve our lives there and see our future there”, Djurić underlined.

The Director of the Gračanica Cultural Center, Rakočević, emphasized that the projector represents a “new window and light in the ghetto” and a possibility to make a cinema wherever they can dim the lights of the room.

He said that culture provides freedom in the ghetto where there are no choices, and he recalled an emotional scene when the movie team of the “Autumn of the Samurai” visited Serbian enclaves and organized projections.

“Danilo Bećković, Marko Paljić and Slaviša Čurović came and said they wish to be in the life of every Serbian enclave. I remember when in the village of Suvo Grlo in Srbica they began taking out blankets from the Red Cross and a villager said: Some actors are bringing blankets again, and we have enough blankets to cover fields. But when they saw that a movie screen was being set up, hundreds of kids gathered asking for autographs and it was the first time I heard it repeated so many times “I want to be an actor, an actress, a producer”. No one says “I want to be…” in the ghetto”, Rakočević said.

Along with the projector, the Gračanica Cultural Center received accompanying equipment consisting of a hard disk set, projector lens and a digital-analogue converter.

The Director of the distribution company “MegaCom Film”, Igor Stanković, said that the people in Kosovo and Metohija will now watch blockbusters, domestic movies, synchronized animated films on the same day as the audience in Belgrade, mentioning that in the movie theater in Priština only films with Albanian subtitles are shown.

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