Posted on 09/27/2008 4:16:12 PM PDT by BabaYaga
26 September 2008 Belgrade _ Movie star Robert de Niro said he might invest in Serbia’s film industry.
De Niro met Serbia’s President Boris Tadic who is in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, gathering support for Belgrade’s bid to seek the World Court’s opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s independence.
“We’ve met and talked about making movies in Serbia, in studios they have there. We generally talked about a possible future cooperation, because you never know,” de Niro said.
Tadic also met representatives of Sallyport, DreamWorks and Coppola movie companies.
De Niro added he remembered hitch-hiking through Serbia and recalled Belgrade as an “excellent city”.
“I’m sure it is the same now, if not better. I remember being in Belgrade. It was great,” he said.
De Niro also recalled being a guest at the Belgrade International Film Festival, FEST. He named his daughter Drina, the same name as the river running along the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He reiterated he was a great fan of Serbia’s most successful best tennis player Novak Djokovic.
“Maybe I’m partly a Serb… some of my ancestors,” de Niro, who is of Italian origin, said jokingly, adding “Djokovic is a great kid”.
De Niro has often been seen in Djokovic’s VIP box supporting the world’s third best ranked tennis player during his US Open tournament matches.
Nema problema :-).
Great! Can we know something more about your “project” or...? If you need some information about some tv station or production companies feel free to ask and if I can help I will, although I mostley know some people from the show-business industry production (Big Brother and such cr*p :-).
That song "Jugoslavio" on the video just gave me the chills, as (for obvious reasons) I haven't heard that in nearly twenty years.
I've said this before and I will say it again:
The Slavs of the former Yugoslavia are a family of peoples -- a horribly dysfunctional and abusive family, but a family none the less. And what is the worse call that every police officer dreads? A "domestic dispute", because while you are trying to break up a fight between family members, you are just as likely as not to get all of them turning on you and hammering you for trying to help -- or lying to you to manipulate the situation.
It is for this reason, I never wanted to see a single American soldier put himself in the middle of this, nor the US government involved in this on ANY side. It's too complex, volatile and bizarre for outsiders to make good decisions about. And these people never make peace until they are ready to make peace. Until then, everything is just a "temporary truce" until they can start up again.
It's why most of our families got the hell out of there and came to America to get away from this madness -- then, thanks to Clinton, this madness was brought over here to the US. Pisses me off to no end.
I haven't been back to stari kraj since 1995. I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning. I love this feeling :-)
My favourites: Star Of The County Down and Rocky Road To Dublin.
I remember them saying how they wanted to go to Ireland to make some concert there, but I`m not sure if they ever got the chance.
Some year ago my coleague worked with some american students in Viminacium archaeological site, one of them was American of irish background that was fascinated by this band (but stil didn`t know the lyrics of the songs like we did) :-).
It would be good for O.C. to have some promotion in the States too. Good luck.
Years ago, there was a Serbian Orthodox priest in San Francisco, a convert who was full-blooded Irish. He used to joke that the Serbs and Irish had much in common. Both groups "loved music, sex, whiskey and cabbage as their favorite things, and not necessarily in that order!"
This group sure proves that point!
When I was kid this song didn`t mean anything to me...and now, just like you, I god chills, some anger and dry tears...hard to explain. Duh..
You are right of course about mixing into domestic argue from outside. With a “little help from our friends” from outside things got bloodier and the worse is that it is not over yet as I can notice. Especially in Bosnia.
:-) Interesting story. I would add “defiant” on the list of epithets.
Also, in Serbia there`s some “myth” (for kids anyway) that Serbs actually come from Celts (or at least have “important” mixture of slavic and celtic blood), what was especially actuated by some dna research (I cannot provide the link for that for now) that compare some blood markers conecting Irish, Celts and Serbs.
Celts founded Singidunum (ancient Belgrade) of course as well as the other settlements in northern Serbia, but I just can not understand why all this “blood connection” stuff (like Albanians and Illyrians that is even more funny). Those tribes (I don`t use term “nation” purposely) just merged by the time with Romans and other newcommers.
There`s also band Irish Stew that plays irish music of course :-), but I like Celts more.
HE couldn’t do any better.
Let’s hope that the vibes he gets from being in such a great country helps him to make his upcoming film a notch above the garbage he’s been making in recent years.
In the late 70s when they were filiming the Deer Hunter in the Steubenville Mingo area of SE Ohio, Robert DeNiro heard there was a Serbian wedding taking place in town...remember in the movie it was a Russian Orthodox wedding being filmed...so they showed up with some cards with monetary gifts and a few of them ‘crashed’ the wedding. They had a great time drinking slivo and doing the kolo and stayed late. DeNiro did the bridal dance with the bride and she said ‘who the hell are you?’. True story. The bride is a friend of mine
I met a great priest in San Fransisco when were out there raising money for "Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War". He was originally from the old country, then he was in East Chicago, Indiana, then he moved out to San Fransisco in 1966, I believe. Of course I had to ask him about the "Summer of Love". Like a good Orthodox priest, he said, "Oh it was wonderful. All those kids wanted was Love and that's wonderful. Besides that, they really liked me because of my beard!" He was a really nice guy.
Fingers crossed...if all works out the way I want it to, The Celts are going to get one of their big wishes to come true. No promises, but I'm working on some things... we shall see.
I never met this Irish SO priest, because I was living in Los Angeles at the time. A friend of mine from his parish told me what he had said about the Serbs and the Irish.
Father Bunjevic was the regular priest in SF for almost 40 years. This Irish priest must have just been an adjunct for a period of time. I'll check around and see if I can get a name.
He's missing a shot if he doesn't tell the story of the Serbian rescue of hundreds of American airmen from the Nazis during WWII.
Mr DiNiro is getting a little old to keep portraying a doorkicking cop, but he could pull off the role of a senior military officer or OSS spook quite nicely. And he might even manage a passable Serbian accent with a little coaching- he's supposed to be quite good at that sort of thing.
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