Bruce Dickinson

Back to topic: Last week I attended the London screening of Scream for me Sarajevo at Vue West End.

Before the screening it was bizarre to order a beer at the bar with Rod Smallwood sitting right behind me and Bruce's sons and daughter chatting with their friends, not to mention Bruce walking past.

As I have said before, the film is really moving, telling the story of the siege from the perspective of the people who experienced that as teenagers. For them music meant so much that they would even rehearse without electricity. The fact that Bruce and his band were going to play in Sarajevo meant a lot to all of them (and it shows). There is a detailed description of how the concert was organised and even some footage from the gig. The music, mostly from Bruce's solo career with a Maiden song added too, is really well chosen and the lyrics fit perfectly the narrative of the film.

Following the screening, there was a Q&A with Bruce, conducted by Dom Lawson (Metal Hammer). It was more a conversation than a Q&A, but Bruce was in great form, quite reflective about the whole thing and providing some insightful comments about aspects of the visit that did not make it to the film. There were some funny anecdotes, but it was mostly about the vile nature of war and how music can lift your spirit in those circumstances. Some of the people involved in the film were in the audience (Major Martin Morris, Chris Dale, Trevor Gibson...) and joked with Bruce too.

At the end of the Q&A, Bruce was escorted out of the screen, only to bump into me on his way out. I thanked him for the music and the film and he answered "Thank you mate!". Surreal! :lol:

All in all, a great documentary. Thankfully it will be released later in the year, as also will be the soundtrack.
 
I went there in early 1996 first time after dissolution of Yugoslavia. Sarajevo was a beautiful and vibrant big city prior to that. As a small kid, it impressed me so much in 1990. In 1996 it was effectively destroyed. I went to a concert in the youth hall venue, a mid sized amphitheatre, there was about 1000 people inside. I wanted to smoke but no-one was smoking. They had no money for cigarettes. I circled around for 15 minutes until I found two guys dressed like typical 90s douchebags in overlong shirts and baggy pants. They gave me a cigarette. It was a horrible one called Drina.

This city hosted olympics in 1984. It was a showcase European multi-religious multi-cultural centre. In 1992, mortars were falling on downtown, indiscriminately killing people.
 
The physical damage has been restored, but the city is now more or less divided between three ethnic groups and there's no more Bosnians. Bosnians aren't Bosniaks, Bosniak is a mid 1990s invention used to describe people of Bosnian Muslim origin. Prior to war there was a sense what Bosnia stands for, as a whole, and majority of people described themselves as Bosnians, regardless of faith or origin. So today in Sarajevo you have Croat coffee bars, Muslim coffee bars, Serbian coffee bars, etc. In that way the city has profoundly changed. Poverty is far greater than in Yugoslavia, crime has skyrocketed. My cousin was sitting in a bar few years ago and some guy just performed a drive-by on a racing bike, helmet, and Uzi, emptied it through the glass. He was aiming high and didn't shoot anyone.
 
One of the main characters of the film, the artist who designed the original poster for the film, was the result of an inter-ethnic marriage. He mentions that the first time he heard about inter-ethnic marriages (i.e. as something strange) was when the war started.
 
And the pharse isn't "medjuetnicki"...

Mijesano meso = minced meat
Mijesani brak = minced marriage
 
The translation is funny but the phrasing isn't malicious. Mjesati means to mix or shuffle. So we actually don't call our minced meat after the fact it was minced, it's about mixing several types of meat in the process. Hope this explains it :)

However the term predates the war and originates in the Socialist Yugoslavia period, if not before. It wasn't common in Sarajevo, because there were seldom "pure" marriages there. In other places where there's a distinct national majority you could hear the words. They carried positive connotations too, although people looking to differentiate used them to differentiate.

Is just Balkan affairs really. Nowadays the sport is called "counting the blood cells". The summary of it would be excluding someone from something due to their origin. Not Croat/Serb thing but actually village X, tribe Y, etc.
 
Zare said:
The translation is funny but the phrasing isn't malicious. Mjesati means to mix or shuffle. So we actually don't call our minced meat after the fact it was minced, it's about mixing several types of meat in the process. Hope this explains it :)

However the term predates the war and originates in the Socialist Yugoslavia period, if not before. It wasn't common in Sarajevo, because there were seldom "pure" marriages there. In other places where there's a distinct national majority you could hear the words. They carried positive connotations too, although people looking to differentiate used them to differentiate.

Is just Balkan affairs really. Nowadays the sport is called "counting the blood cells". The summary of it would be excluding someone from something due to their origin. Not Croat/Serb thing but actually village X, tribe Y, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. :)
 
My local cinema where I was supposed to be seeing Scream for me Sarajevo tonight is closed due to unforeseen circumstances. I phoned up customer service and the lady on the phone organized a full refund, which is nice, but I now have to get the train to Maidenhead (again, an appropriately named place) instead. This showing starts an hour-and-a-half later than the one in Reading was supposed to which really screws up my day. Sad!
 
This paragraph...

How did the family react to its success? In the book, from a certain point on, he no longer talks about it, as if his parents had disappeared.
"Which is exactly what happened. You think when I got sick with cancer they did not even call me (laughs). And they knew it by force because the news was in all the newspapers. I asked myself: should I call them? And I replied: fuck it, no! Then one day I was in Germany and I went to see my mother. She told me: "I'm happy you're better". To which I replied: "Well, I expected you would have called me to get news". And do you know what she answered? "We did not want to bother you" (laughs even louder) ".
 
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