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The Balkan Cowboy
Sat
17
Sat 17 Oct 12:30 PM
Palace Nova Eastend: ExiMax
General Admission
Unclassified 15+
93 MinsThey say history is written by the victors, but some stories have a life of their own, refusing to die in the darkness that follows cataclysmic war. So it is with Hari Džekson, the photographer who worshipped the American Western, especially George Stevens’ Alan Ladd-led Shane. A folk figure of near-mythic proportions, his homespun entries into the genre are a source of fascination for fellow photographer-turned-filmmaker Dragana Jurišić. The Dublin-based artist and academic’s family shares a connection to the elusive Džekson that predates the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and the murderous waves of ethnic cleansing that followed, for which so few have been held accountable. As she’s drawn back to a land that no longer exists, simultaneously troubled by the worrying rise of nationalist xenophobia in Ireland, Jurišić sets out to shoot a Western of her own using locals from across the splintered Balkan divides. It’s through these big-hearted auditions that some small semblance of the truth is uncovered in Jurišić’s form-expanding wonder that rode into competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival.