The drawer

Emir Kusturica, all along his great careern, started many projects he has given up after having worked on it, sometimes for a long time. Here are some of them…

The San Marinese Vladimir Gruska has announced in March 2008 to Italian press that he was going to produce an animation film on the history of his small republic. Emir Kusturica is said to have agreed for supervising the film direction. The other collaborators of this project would be Anders Thomas Jensen, oscarized Danish scenarist, Zoran Janjetov (Serbian cartoon author who has already collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky) and Rajko Milošević-Gera (drawer and animator at Warners Bross). It will be the first film produced by the republic of San-Marino.

Emir has declared in june 2007, in an interview in “Russian Gazzeta”, that he would love to make a film on Pancho Villa, the famous gangster that became general during the mexican revolution. He explained that he admired his fight for freedom and that it would fit his cinematographic style…

Here are the known information about this project :

• The title would be “Mexico”
• It would be based on the life of the gangster, who became general, Pancho Villa.
• The shooting will take place in Russia in march-april 2008
• Emir Kusturica has asked “his friend” Guillermo Arriaga (scenarist of “Babel”, “Amores perros”, “21 grams” and “the three burrials of Melquiades Estrada”) to write the scenario.
• Rumours say Javier Bardem will be the main actor

During the rehearsals of the Opera "Time of the Gypsies" in Paris, in may 2007, Emir Kusturica has declared to journalists that he loved this kind of directing, and that he would set one day anotherone of his films Black Cat, White Cat in opera, but in New York…

When he was working on the adaptation of the Opera "Time of the Gypsies", Gordan Mihić declared to Blic (Serbian newspaper) that he was also working with Emir Kusturica to start the adaptation of the novel “Autumn of the Patriarch” by Cuban writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Emir Kusturica had even personnaly been to Cuba on 28 November 2005 to meet Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and to talk about his vision of the book.

He never mentionned this project anymore.

During a masterclass at a FNAC in Paris in may 2004, Emir promised one of his next films will be shot in France, in french. He even already has a scenario : the story would take place in the Middle-Age (a time - these are his own words - he's familiar with), and it's about a man and a forest.

We haven't heard from this project anymore.

Edouard Limonov is a Franco-Russian political writer who participated in the dissident movements of the last years of SSSR. This led to his exile to the USA, then to France where he collaborated to communist (L'Humanité) and nationalist (Le Choc du mois) newspapers. Back in Russia, the writer created under the direction of Alexandre Douguine the national-bolchevic party (PNB). After he ceased this association, he had a provocative bahaviour which led him to make four years in jail. Limonov was freed under the pression of an international campaign.

Emir had not yet finished filming of Life is a miracle that an article published in Serb magazine NIN spoke about his next project : a musical film on the life of Eduard Limonov, controversial Russian writer, author of best-sellers written from jail.

We haven't heard from this project anymore.

Several times, The bridge over the Drina, the masterpiece of Ivo Andrić has worked in the imagination of Emir Kusturica. Thus, in 1985 already, after his first victory in Cannes for When father was away on business, then again after Arizona Dream, he wished to tell the story of his country through this cult book.

The adaptation work was made during an long time, because Emir Kusturica has talked about it at several occasions to journalists with much enthousiasm.

”It will be the biggest yugoslav film ever made” was he saying in 1993.

Unfortunately, he had to renounce. The story happened to be to complex to adapt. Too many characters, story too widely spread in time, and most of all : no producer accepting such a big project in Serbian language… Today, Emir Kusturica seems to have definitively renounced to the idea.

After Super 8 Stories, one of the first projects Emir Kusturica talked about was The Nose, the amazing story of a theatre actor who, just before entering on the stage for the character of Cyrano de Bergerac, has his nose broken by Russian mafiosi. Emir has often talked of this project with much enthusiasm before finally making Life is a miracle. In an interview of 2001, Emir Kusturica says even it's already one year and a half he's working on this project, that Dušan Kovačević has written a satisfying script, and that Miki Manojlović is already booked in the casting…

We haven't heard from this project anymore.

After his role in The widow of Saint-Pierre, Emir Kusturica has several times talked about making a film with Daniel Auteuil which would be called The king of Sweden a sunday afternoon on his green bicycle. This project was given up when Black Cat, White Cat, which should have initially been a short documentary about the gypsy musician of Underground, transformed into a real film.

Just after Time of the Gypsies, when Emir Kusturica arrived in the USA, he wished to adapt the famous Dostoïevski book Crime and punishment transposing the story to the current times in Brighton Beach, near New York, an area where many Russian migrants live. Johnny Depp was supposed to be in the casting : Raskolnikov would have been a bass player in a rock band. But Emir finally decided to shoot Arizona Dream in the USA. Even when he started the work on Underground, he still said this project was his real big projcet that he would do after the “parenthesis” Underground.

Much adaptation work was made on this film, at such a point that Emir found it symptomatic of his numerous aborted projects. After The good thief, he said he would like to make a film called Why I didn't shoot crime and punishment, Nick Nolte was supposed to be the leading role…

We haven't heard from this project anymore.

For a long time, rumours circulated on the adaptation of The White Hotel, a psychoanalysis history. Many names of great actors had even been quoted (next to Johnny Depp was to play Nicole Kidman, Juliette Binoche, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Frances McDormand, Holly Hunter, Lena Olin, or even Irène Jacob). Dušan Kovačević had made an adaptation of Denis Potter's scenario transposing the action in Berlin instead of Viena and replacing Freud by a young psychanalist. Giuseppe Rotunno, Fellini's camera operator should have even been photography director. Anyway, the project had to face difficult financial problems, and it is today definitively given up by Kusturica.

Before Kusturica, the project had been proposed to Terence Mallick and David Lynch who had refused, and after him, it was proposed to David Cronenberg and Simon Monjack, but the film is still not made.

The author, DH Thomas, recently wrote a book on the incredible misadventures of this adaptation project. About the Kusturica episode, he says : ”I once again had a vision: of a white hotel springing up by magic beside a Serbian lake, with snowy mountains behind, and fir trees… Then, in March 1999, Nato forces bombed Serbia. Kusturica’s son almost died when a bomb fell just 40 yards from him in Belgrade. Exit Emir, understandably enraged with the West, especially America. ”.

More excerpts of the book can be read on times.co.uk

The Doukhobors is the name of a Christian religious movement, of slavic origins, settled in Canada.

Doukhobor means “spirit fighter”. The Doukhbobors rejected men's governement, the Russian orthodox priests, the icons, all the ecclesiastic rituals, the Bible except for the Gospel and the divine character of Jesus. They were real pacifists, which caused for religious and political reasons a strong repression from the Tsar and the Orthodox Church, enduring tortures, exile and freedom loss. At the end of the XIXth century, the Doukhobors left Russia massively. They chose Canada for the isolation andthe peaceful atmosphere. This country was ready to welcome them and they settled there in 1899.

After the Golden Palm of When father was away on business, Emir Kusturica has much worked on the Doukhobors, and he even went on the shores of the Saint Laurent to meet their children. He talked several times of this project, but he gave up to do Time of the Gypsies.

After Do you remember Dolly Bell ?, Emir Kusturica co-wrote a script called The thieving magpie strategy. It's fainlly Zlatko Lavanic (assistant director on When father was away on business) who did it in 1987, with the actor Davor Dujmović.

Since serval year, Emir Kusturica has started to write a book : The diary of a political idiot, which would talk in 12 chapiters children souvenirs, comic or absurd clichés of his own life, tragic funny moments of his life. The last news said he had finished to write it, but yet, no release is announced.

Student in Prague in 1977, Emir Kusturica wrote a script named The house of the dead-end street (Kuca u slijepoj ulici), but never directed it.