Emir Kusturica (Serbian Cyrillic: Емир Кустурица, born 24 November 1954 in Sarajevo) is a Serbian filmmaker, actor and musician. He has been recognized for several internationally acclaimed feature films, as well as his projects in town-building. He has twice won the Palme d'Or at Cannes (for When Father Was Away on Business and Underground), as well as being named Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.Since the mid-2000s, Kusturica's primary residence has been in Drvengrad, a town built for his film Life Is a Miracle, in the Mokra Gora region of Serbia. He had portions of the historic village reconstructed for the film. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republika Srpska since 9 November 2011.
Zabranjeno pušenje (Since 1987), Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra
Star Sign
Sagittarius
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Quote
1
Milosevic's fundamental mistake was that he thought there were 250 million Serbs, and that he didn't have a couple of nuclear bombs in his pocket.
2
My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?
3
I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.
4
What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. Why don't I see a Frank Capra today? Because people aren't like this anymore? People haven't changed that much in 60 years.
5
Everything must be sold! Everything must be for sale! Everyone must buy! Everyone must have a Jeep!
6
OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks.
7
In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie.
8
I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, 10 in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports. Cities are humiliating places to live, particularly in this part of the world.
9
Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.
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Fact
1
Fan of Portuguese football club FC Porto.
2
Filming in Serbia with the director Marie-Eve Signeyrole for the short film "Alice au pays s'émerveille" starring Caroline Frossard, Sophie Le Tellier and Christian Mullot until the end of the month. [March 2009]
In May of 2005, Kusturica was baptized in a Serbian Orthodox church, taking up the Serbian Christian name Nemanja. It was a very personal gesture to re-affirm his Serbian roots.
7
Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993.
8
Has two children, Stribor and Dunja.
9
Has not been to Sarajevo, his birthplace, since 1992.
10
President of the jury at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
Since 1986 he has played bass guitar in "Zabranjeno Pusenje" (meaning Smoking Forbidden, or no smoking) a rock band from his hometown Sarajevo. In 1992 the lead singer of the band, Nele Karajlic, moved to Belgrade. In 1997 Kusturica and Karajlic started a new "faction" of the band called "The No Smoking Orchestra". The rest of the original band members stayed in Sarajevo and continued their own faction of the band. Super 8 Stories (2001) is a documentary about "No Smoking".
15
During the 1995 Belgrade International Film Festival Kusturica knocked down Nebojsa Pajkic, the leader of the New Serbian Right movement. Symbolically enough, Mrs. Pajkic tried to protect her husband by hitting Kusturica with a small bag, a present from Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs.
16
In 1993, he challenged Vojislav Seselj, leader of Serbia's ultranationalist movement, to a duel. He suggested that it should be in the heart of Belgrade, at high noon (!), with any weapon Mr. Seselj chooses. Vojislav Seselj refused this offer saying that he "didn't want to be accused of a murder of an artist".
$400,000
