He is this year’s recipient of Serbia’s top award for lifetime achievement in film, the Pavle Vuisić Award, and a three-time winner of the country’s highest award for theatre performance, the Sterija Award. He spent 12 years as a very successful administrator of theatre Atelje 212, where he also spent much of his working life. Regardless of how negatively impacted he is by all the negatives of our society, when he watched the Biden-Trump debate he nonetheless declared loudly: “It’s great in our country!”
He had the good fortune of performing alongside the great Pavle Vuisić (1926-1988), after whom the award that he recently received at the Niš Festival of Acting Achievements in Feature Films is named. “When you’re 22, standing in front of such a man is a great challenge. I really saw him as some mountain towering in front of me, unsure about which side to approach it from, whether I should conquer it or what to do. Many years later, I was on the scene in Pula when Menahem Golan, who was then a promising film producer heading company Golan Globus Production, offered Pavle Vuisić carte blanche to do whatever he wanted in his film. The way Paja turned him down, by saying that he had absolutely no interest in that, left Golan in shock.
But that was the integrity of Pavle Vuisić that he’d acquired over the years, and that enabled him to say calmly “I couldn’t care less about your film; it doesn’t interest me. I’m interested in staying and working here”.”
Svetozar Cvetković (66), who’s referred to by everyone as simply Cvele, was born in a Belgrade neighbourhood that’s not spoken about much or even known. His childhood was marked by steam trains heading to the East.
“The better part of my past is my childhood in a part of the city that still looks the way I remember it from the first six or seven years of my life. I remember the Danube Station like a picture, a smell, a feeling. Trains departed that station in the lowest part of Palilula bound for Romania, beyond the Iron Curtain, while arriving trains carried broken women who came to work around the houses of Belgrade. Budding young intellectuals coming to visit Belgrade or to study and stay in the city didn’t arrive at that station, but rather some, essentially, deplorables needing to earn a few dinars just to survive. I remember the smell of those steam trains and recall very well that my mother could never dry clothes outside because of the soot. I remember that as the only place where snow immediately turned black. In Košutnjak it was always white.”
One interesting fact is that Cvetković had his first film/television role, and the first film shoot in his career generally, on the platform of that very same railway station. It was for the Eduard Galić TV film and series entitled Svetozar Marković, in which he played Russian anarcho-communist Sergey Nechayev.
Once during his student days, after having received a new camera, he went to his old neighbourhood to shoot photos and thus preserve the memory of his childhood, but he was detained by security guards because there was a police station nearby, and the boys in blue reacted immediately. They took him into custody, confiscated his camera and removed the film.
I always considered politics as the art of reaching compromise, while in our country it has for decades been led like a theory of exclusivity
The Cvetković family – his university professor father Stefan, economist mother Milunka and brother Dejan, nine years his junior, moved around Belgrade in the following years, finally settling in the Neimar neighbourhood. Dejan spent a good part of his life living and working in Canada and America, while Cvele remains in Neimar to this day.
“I think that what my brother and I had in the family was a rarity. Those were pretty fairytale-like conditions in which we grew up, regardless of them not being built on any particularly favourable economic foundations. My parents had come to Belgrade from the south of the country. My father enrolled in medical studies, and after I was born my mother enrolled to study economics. Such surroundings and the way we were brought up represent something that I can protect jealously not only compared to the perspectives of other people of my generation, but also the subsequent generations, not to mention these youngest generations whose parents are my age. They didn’t experience the way we were brought or the way our parents communicated with us.
“I tried in vain to pass that on to my children, and if I succeeded even just a little bit, then maybe it isn’t so bad. I tried to keep the best of what my parents had left me for myself, and to attempt to pass that on to my own children at some point.”
His children from two marriages are Dea (31), Klara (17) and Luka (12). Dea is an art history graduate who’s currently preparing her Ph.D. And Cvele is proud of what she knows and does.
When it comes to the legacy of his upbringing, Cvele most values and most cares about objectivity in relation to that which surrounds him. He was also raised to keep his dealings with those beyond his circle to an absolute minimum. And to not interfere with what is generally referred to as ‘fixing the world’. He boiled his ambitions down to relationships with those closest to him and with whom he communicates on a daily basis.
He arrived at Atelje 212 immediately after completing his studies, thanks to him being suggested for this theatre by Dara Džokić and Petar Božović, while Ljubiša Ristić took him to perform in the Heiner Müller play Cement. He received a role that no one had previously wanted to play. He interpreted the character of one of the two brothers that were the play’s main characters, with the other brother portrayed by Slovenian actor Radko Polič. During the break in the premiere performance, he was asked by administrator Mira Trailović to think about whether he wanted to stay at Atelje. Ristić told him not to be crazy, and he listened to himself and stayed. He experienced great success there and was ultimately selected as the theatre’s manager.
The future lies in normal human communication, not in either-or scenarios
There are and have been other actors engaged as administrators, but few have managed a theatre with the kind of success that Cvele achieved over his 12 years at Atelje 212. He talks about that time today.
“Director and previous Atelje manager Ljubimir ‘Muci’ Draškić, who I rated highly and loved a lot, told me that taking on the post of administrator, or director of the theatre, is a position that creates enemies. Those who supported you until yesterday will also turn against you quickly. That hurt me at that moment, but now I see it as part of life that I’ve passed. When I accepted the responsibility offered, I thought I knew it, but I realised when I started working that I didn’t know anything. And I learnt for the next 12 years, from 8am to 8pm. And then, after 8pm, I would perform in the plays that were on the repertoire. When I thought I knew something, I stopped being the manager.”
Prior to Cvele’s arrival at the helm of Atelje 212, this theatre had good contacts with the outside world thanks to Mira Trailović, Jovan Ćirilov and Borka Pavićević. We asked him how he managed to restore those contacts.
“That link with the world that they’d made many years prior couldn’t be revitalised, because the world hadn’t stood still, but rather had moved forward. It was necessary to seek a route to make new connections that would expose Atelje to the world. And I partially succeeded in that endeavour. I say partially because it wasn’t like it had been during the time of Mira and Jovan. We did take good plays to Mexico, Caracas, Austria and Canada, but there weren’t as many guest performances as I thought there could have been. However, people listened attentively to what we did perform, in a language that was completely unknown to them, with subtitles and headphones in their ears, and expressed their enthusiasm. That caused me to feel great satisfaction.”
Those plays that were seen around the world included some that were written by Biljana Srbljanović, undoubtedly Serbia’s most famous and highest sought-after playwright. Her presence as a playwright was very important in Cvele’s work, just as it is in his private life. They became godparents to one another.
It’s always exciting in our country and we’re constantly ‘privileged’ to have various sources of excitement
“There were many situations when we didn’t agree, but that proved useful. There’s something completely objective about her, and that’s the integrity of the stances she advocates. I often don’t agree with them, but I rarely emerge victorious.”
After the Yugoslav wars that our interlocutor believes lasted too long and had terrible consequences, there was a small group of people engaged in theatre that had a strong desire to know what was being done on the ‘other side’, because every neighbour became the ‘other side’. That desire ordinarily ended up in guest appearances that lasted five or six days, because audiences were eager to see the best performances from other environments.
“When the Slovenian National Theatre from Ljubljana would have a guest performance at Atelje 212 or the Yugoslav Drama Theatre, or when we would travel to Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo or Skopje, those people would wait for us with great excitement, just as we did for them here. That excitement carried over to post-performance socialising, which was dignified and intimate.
“Nowadays, in contrast to that time, we live in total disinterest over what exists on the other side. Even when some show from Zagreb or Ljubljana comes here, tickets don’t sell unless there’s some crazy advertising. We are a little privileged in Belgrade. I remember one press conference about a guest performance of the Slovenian National Theatre in Belgrade, when Slovenian actors Jernej Šugman and Igor Samobor were asked why it was so important for them to perform in Belgrade, to which they responded: because it’s the capital city!
“We still have the privilege, when we go to Zagreb, Sarajevo, Banja Luka, whichever, that we are very quickly contacted and told: ‘there’s great interest. Would you perform two shows instead of one?’ That’s precisely what happened to us recently with the scheduled guest appearance of the Heartefact House play How I Learned to Drive. That’s something we can be proud of, and is more evident in theatre than on film.
Just as none of us can be proud that someone did various things in my name, in our name, that isn’t in keeping with the relations of one nation towards another, from any side, in everything that was produced by the war. To this day, if there’s something that causes me to shudder and that I fear, that’s war.”
This actor who’s also been a producer of some excellent films, such as Goran Marković’s The Tour, is among the rare Serbian artists who can boast of having good cooperation with colleagues and people from the world of culture in Kosovo. He is one of the lead actors in the outstanding play Balkan Bordello (written by Jeton Neziraj and directed by Blerta Neziraj) that was staged as a joint production of Atelje 212, New York’s La MaMa theatre and Pristina’s Qendra Multimedia. The play’s executive producer is Beka Vučo:
“When someone invites you to work on this kind of project that also includes people from the ‘other side of the gun’, which is a constant situation between Belgrade and Pristina that doesn’t change in any way, you have to have the good will to do something like that. I have that built in good will to communicate with people, even those who think differently to what ‘our side’ wants. We performed our Balkan Bordello play in Pristina, Belgrade, Montenegro and Albania, and put on 15 shows in New York at La MaMa theatre. We have completed that mission, but it is only for the narrow circle of people who would come to the realisation that normal communication exists between people who don’t understand the language spoken by the other side; and who have historical misinformation about the origins of their peoplethe rare Serbian artists who can boast of having good cooperation with colleagues and people from the world of culture in Kosovo. He is one of the lead actors in the outstanding play Balkan Bordello (written by Jeton Neziraj and directed by Blerta Neziraj) that was staged as a joint production of Atelje 212, New York’s La MaMa theatre and Pristina’s Qendra Multimedia.
To this day, if there’s something that causes me to shudder and that I fear, that’s war
The play’s executive producer is Beka Vučo: “When someone invites you to work on this kind of project that also includes people from the ‘other side of the gun’, which is a constant situation between Belgrade and Pristina that doesn’t change in any way, you have to have the good will to do something like that. I have that built in good will to communicate with people, even those who think differently to what ‘our side’ wants. We performed our Balkan Bordello play in Pristina, Belgrade, Montenegro and Albania, and put on 15 shows in New York at La MaMa theatre. We have completed that mission, but it is only for the narrow circle of people who would come to the realisation that normal communication exists between people who don’t understand the language spoken by the other side; and who have historical misinformation about the origins of their people and their country, which is linked exclusively to the current situation. And that situation is constant conflict. With that small example, we showed that it is possible to work together. I think it would be significant and sobering if as many people as possible went from here to Kosovo to come face to face with the reality in which those people live. We don’t know that, just as they don’t know, but rather have a terrifying image of us. They think there are werewolves walking on Terazije, waiting to slice the throats of every Albanian. And, of course, that is also mirrored here. That bad practice is developing progressively, with the wrong moves being made on both sides. The future lies in normal human communication, not in either-or scenarios. I always considered politics as the art of reaching compromise, while in our country it has for decades been led like a theory of exclusivity.”
CorD’s interlocutor finds himself disappointed with the picture of the world that surrounds us, but strives to devote as little time as possible to “solving global issues”. Regardless of how much that sounds like his inherent irony, which he knows how to use well, he explains in all seriousness.
“We have all learnt that every person living in their own country has the inalienable right to have a solution for every situation. Well, I don’t have a solution for the situation that surrounds me, while at the same time I’m terribly disappointed by the position the world is in. When I watched the debate between Biden and Trump, I said loudly: It’s great in our country! Goran Marković, Dušan Kovačević and I agreed long ago that we wouldn’t know what we would do if we lived in a peaceful country like Switzerland. What would we write about; what kinds of films would be made… It’s always exciting in our country and we’re constantly ‘privileged’ to have various sources of excitement. On the other hand, regardless of how privileged we are, I would never recommend that anyone endure what we went through from the end of the ‘80s until today. I think that we, as a generation, had the most wonderful time living in something that still lives on today, and that’s the music that emerged in the early ‘80s, that new wave, and the perspective we had that nothing bad would happen to us.”
It might not be the norm, but Cvele dedicated his Pavle Vuisić Award to Dr Nada Basara. Giving thanks, he said: “This is a unique opportunity to dedicate the award to someone you don’t know, who couldn’t possibly impact your lives, but who influenced the fact that I’m alive today; that I’m standing here in front of you and that I’ve also done something that I might not otherwise have been able to do for the last ten years. Around seven or eight years ago, plenty of people said their goodbyes to me, more or less teary-eyed in the expectation that it might be our last meeting. I had to stop shooting some films because the circumstances were such. But in one hour, somewhere in the north of our planet, I met a doctor who put my life back in my own hands, who extended my life and made it possible for me to be with you tonight. I dedicate this award to her and her name is Nada Basara. I thank her for the life she gave me and thank her for this award.”
It was one of the most touching and life-affirming moments in the 30-year history of this award.
“When I visited Dr Basara, she said to me: ‘You’re sick, but you’re not seriously ill. And we will resolve it.’ The moment I entered into what people call a disease, without even being aware of it, that was the moment I experienced the first berating from my father, who was a doctor and professor at the medical school. He pushed me into getting treatment. As did my brother, who is younger, more handsome and smarter than me, and who had a free mind to decide on some things I wouldn’t have been able to decide on my own. Doctor Basara told me recently: ‘If you didn’t have your brother by your side, who knows what would have been of you!’ And that’s correct: my brother was the one who pulled me through it all, who leapt in and resolved things whenever I couldn’t.”