Photo:Bosnia-Serbian director Emir Nemanja Kusturica, one of the most acclaimed figures in world cinema, was born in 1954 in Sarajevo, the former Yugoslavian city which is now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.......Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy.The Ottoman Empire began to attack the region in 1383, eventually incorporating Bosnia as a Turkish province. During the almost four hundred years in which the Ottomans dominated the area, Bosnians adopted many elements of Turkish culture, including religion; the majority of the people converted from Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity to Islam.......The Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica and darling of European cinema is best known for making surreal and darkly comedic films about the Balkans. He is also among the few filmmakers to have won the Palme d'Or twice at Cannes: for "When Father Was Away on Business," a delicate film on life in communist Yugoslavia, and "Underground," an ultimately antiwar film that reminisces about the trials of the former Yugoslavia.Kusturica has said that when his mother was on deathbed, he wanted to find out his ancestry; he found out from books that the origin of the Kusturica family stem from two Orthodox Christian lines."I am a living illustration of Bosnian mixing and converting," he said. "My grandparents lived in eastern Herzegovina. Very poor. The Turks came and brought Islam. There were three brothers in the family. One was Orthodox Christian. The other two took Islam to survive.My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb.Maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."On Ðurdevdan (St. George's Day) in 2005 Emir Kusturica was baptised into the Serb Orthodox Church as Nemanja Kusturica. Bosnia is, according to him, a failed enterprise. I never wanted an independent Bosnia," he said of his homeland, the breakaway Yugoslav republic now engulfed by war. "I wanted Yugoslavia. That is my country.''This tragedy started once the West began to recognize separatist countries, and did not take care of those, predominantly Serbs, who did not want to leave Yugoslavia. You cannot have Serbs participate in Bosnia when Muslims and Croats didn't want to participate in Yugoslavia; the Serbs didn't feel secure.After the Dayton agreement, the Bosnians destroyed our two houses in Sarajevo.They did it to people who were not following President Izetbegovic's way of doing things. Soon afterward, my father died. It was too much on my shoulders. I thought the best thing for me would be not to make movies.They will forget me, and that will be that.I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.'' Today, Kusturica identifies completely as a Serb, splitting his time for the last eight years between Paris and Kustendorf, the village inside Mokra Gora that he was inspired to build after filming "Life Is a Miracle" in the area.In addition to eight fiction features, Kusturica has also directed the documentares Super 8 Stories (2001) and Maradona (2008), and he has also acted in a number of movies, such as Patrice Leconte's The Widow of St. Pierre and Neil Jordan's The Good Thief. Beyond film, Kusturica performs with the Balkan gypsy punk rock band The No Smoking Orchestra. ...http://www.balkanstudies.org/articles/holocaust-revisionism-canada-ircg-case
During the annual film festival, Kustendorf, Johnny Depp had a statue in his image unveiled to him by Serbian director Emir Kusturica, that’s also a good friend of him. The festival was held in “Mokra Gora”, a mountain village in southwestern Serbia......http://www.mecavnik.info/wsw/index.php?p=197
SERBIA : Mokra Gora- Küstendorf village, built as a set by film director Emir Kusturica, now a major turist attraction and the residence of Kusturica..The village is packed with set photos of the director in various intimidating guises: posing with an assault rifle, commandeering a four-wheeler, kissing a brown bear on the mouth. In addition to managing Šargan-Mokra Gora, the region's nature park, he owns two hotels on the property and is building a third....http://www.kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2012/news/
....."Prokleta avlija" :: Mećavnik :: Mokra Gora
One hundred years after... Alive!The oldtimer railway still in function on several kilometers in West Serbia connecting two villages of Kremna and Mokra Gora.Railroad stations, beleive or not, in the same condition as before. You come come inside railway ticket office and buy a ticket. Ticket price: 0,4 - 0,5 EUR! You sit in the waiting-room and have a drink until you hear a spout of steam-locomotive... strictly on timetable! Attraction! For tourists of course!
....Serbian director Emir Kusturica have announced plans to build a new mini-city within the Bosnian city of Visegrad.The new city, which will be called Andric Grad, will include some fifty mainly stone buildings and will be located at the mouth of the Drina River, the setting for the Nobel prize winning book The Bridge On the Drina by Ivo Andric.Kusturica last year said Andricgrad will feature stone streets, gates and towers and include a cinema, theatre, marina, gymnasium, craft workshops, hotels, sports facilities, a new building for the Visegrad municipality, galleries, churches and a han. Andric Grad will be made up of 50 buildings symbolizing various periods in history and will be constructed in Visegrad, the city where the 16th-century Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasa was born, in the south of Bosnia and Herzegovina.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QJjduWbyByQ
Ivo Andric{considered himself a Serb} – the only local Nobel Prize winning author, but also a man whose nationality is a matter of dispute among three countries.He was a world renowned writer and the best connoisseur of the Balkans and the character of the local people. As a diplomat he was the representative of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Germany at the beginning of the World War II, and he presented the credentials to the then Chancellor of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler.He refused the suggestion of the Nazi government to leave for Switzerland, instead he returned to his homeland where the War had just begun.Published in 1945 by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina tells the violent story of Bosnia through events on and around Visegrad's magnificent 16th-century Ottoman bridge. The Bridge on the Drina/A Bridge on Drina”/ is a vivid depiction of the suffering history has imposed upon the people of Bosnia from the late 16th century to the beginning of World War I. ......A Bridge on Drina
The Višegrad Bridge-UNESCO World- was commissioned by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolovic (1505-1579). It is located across the Drina River in Republic of Srpska (Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina). The bridge was built at the end of the 16th century by the Ottoman court architect Sinan on the order of the Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolovic.He is one of the great Osmanli war generals by origin from Bosnia. He was born in the village of Sokoloviæi near Rudo in 1505. or 1506, and was a child of Orthodox parents. At that time there was a tradition known as Divširma, or „The contribution in blood”. Serbian children would be taken away by force to Turkey where they would be converted in Islam and taught in their military schools to become Janjièari, the elite soldiers of the Turkish Empire.Located in a position of geostrategic importance, the bridge bears witness to important cultural exchanges between the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean world, between Christianity and Islam, through the long course of history. The bridge itself was created as a result of many sufferings of the people of this region, the painful memories of the Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolovic....http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76456
Emir Kusturica - The No Smoking Orchestra -1]http://www.thenosmokingorchestra.com/wsw3/.....2]http://worldmusicsblog.blogspot.nl/2011/
...Made in 1995 by Emir Kusturica, a Sarajevo-born film director, the movie Underground was awarded by the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival in 1995 and has become a classic. Emir Kusturica is known for his director’s skills, although he is also an actor and musician and appears in his movie for a brief moment. As a mix of an acted movie and authentic news footages, the film presents an interesting point of view on the history of Yugoslavia. However, a spectator looking forward to see a movie documenting the war of Yugoslavia would probably be disappointed. Filled with passion, love, fights and dance, this movie is too spontaneous, free-spirited and maybe even a little bit crazy to be considered as a documentary. Yet, it combines all the charms and all the wounds needed to get closer to the Balkans.....Black Cat, White Cat 
NOVAK DJOKOVIC-http://www.timeofthegypsies.com/site/
NOVAK DJOKOVIC-http://www.timeofthegypsies.com/site/ 