sashacd's blog

Vreme, Friday, 02. October, 2009 Director Sasha Damjanovski presented his new film at 'Brothers Manaki' "DANCE WITH ME DELIGHTS THE AUDIENCE" by Ivana Vaseva The thin line between sanity and madness and its effect on the lives of a couple is the theme of the feature film "Dance With Me", live action debut of the Mace-donian director Sasha Damjan-ovski who has been living in London for 19 years. The Macedonian premier of the film took place at the IFFC 'Manaki Brothers', in Bitola, and the echoes of the screening are more than complimentary. This typically British drama is multilayered, emotionally inten-se and lyrical, with impressive photography and dance interludes for the married couple who are on a summer vacation in gorgeous country surroundings. The couple are in the middle of a strange psychological vortex: Neil is, for some time now, examining the nature of his changing moods and his wife, Alice, is fighting her own inner conflicts. They are both running away from themselves and from each other. Their relationship is based on articulate debates over most trivial things. After a while, it becomes clear that the dancers and their wonderful choreography, who are constantly present in the film, are just an illusion in Alice's head. Some of the most interesting moments in Damjanovski's film are the shots in which the dancers are dancing tango, emotionally and dramatically reflecting every change of emotion in the British couple, through the music of ‘Foltin’ and Nikola Kodjabashia. Damjanovski says that a love relationship is like a dance, which can only function if both sides are in the mood for it. For the story itself, he says he was most inspired by personal experience. "I've been married for 18 years. Happily married. So, the story is very personal, but obviously, it's not based on my life" - says Damjanovski. The film is based on a screenplay by Damjanovski who is also the Director of Photography. 'Dance With Me' was premiered at the Portobello Film Festival in London. The budget was 700.000 denars and was entirely shot in London. Damjanovski is an author of several short films, his short film 'Green Pages' won the Best Director Award at the Portobello Film Festival as well as the Best Cinematography Award at the Chicago Short Film Festival. To the question would he shoot in Macedonia, he replies that this has long been his desire. Utrinski Vesnik, Friday, 2 October, 2009 "THE FILM DANCE WITH ME ATTRACTS GREAT ATTENTION" by Sunchica Unevska Bitola – This year the festival 'Manaki Brothers' introduced 'Macedonian Panorama', a programme for which ten shorts, documentaries and animated films have been selected. The opening film of the programme was 'Dance With Me' by Sasha Damjanovski, a seemingly typical British film by a Macedonian director and music by Nikola Kodjabashia and the band 'Foltin'. In this programme we also saw the documentaries 'Water and Fire' by Kiro Urdin and 'Child' by Aljosha Simjanovski, whilst in the main competition also screened the short Macedonian film 'One' by Vardan Tozija, the only film from Macedonia, competing for the newly set up award 'Small Golden Camera 300'. But we have written about these three films after their premieres in Skopje and at the festival 'Asterfest' in Strumica. Here we will look at the film "Dance With Me" which attracted a great deal of attention at the festival. Sasha Damjanovski creates a very interesting mix of psychological drama and exceptional artistic expression through the choreography of the two dancers, through whose play he manages to capture all of the emotional tension and crisis happening between his two main characters. It is a story of a, on a first glance, typical British couple, but this is actually a universal story about our fears, our attempts to escape reality, but also about our communication which, instead of bringing us closer, distances us more and more. Damjanovski manages to describe the situations and capture the intimate problems in such a way that everyone can recognise themselves in them. The film provoked lots of discussions and his press conference was, definitely, the most attended. He revealed that this low-budget film has only cost him ten thousand pounds. As he said, the characters in this interesting film are based on our everyday lives and, of course, on personal experience. The film was premiered at the Portobello Festival in London. The only film in competition at the festival that was a Macedonian co-production was the Albanian film East-West-East by Gerg Dzuvani…. (text continues)