QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW:

1.What are media consumption habits of young people? Of your students? What
do they read, watch?
Well, that would be a question about my experience, what I have been noticed
that children read. Beside the regular high-school reading of domestic, Slavic and
international epics and classics, many children are reading different books. Some
of them read self help books, both male and female, about how to success in the
world of yesterday, because that is just what it is and I don’t think that that is
good education. I am quite borred with that kind of literature. On the other side
there are cheep love novels in soft or hard cover, it doesn’t matter, and
international bestsellers from recent history. So, as you see, the best books
should be read in school by the program, but such a program shouldn’t be
thought together with mother language in order to reach the peaks from all sides
of the world, because culture is every man’s heritage and art should bring people
together and not indulge in further division of people and breeding nationalistic
schizophrenia of s tribe. You will agree with me that politics doesn’t reach
beyond tribal affections. Any way, reading is good for young people specially in
the era of internet and Youtube and already made movies about almost every
topic, so instead of purely watching and putting seeds of somebody else’s
thoughts about a certain theme or idea, we have been trying to write essays
about lots of kinds of movies or write our own screenplay for a movie or just
practicing acting through staging a theatre play. As kids in second grade learn
semantics of film language, film language interpunctions and stylistic figures in
movies, they are obliged to use the professional terms in a way they understand
them. So, I have been appreciated even the wrong or impossible answer if it has
been passionately defended when is attacked with doubt. Doubt is like a dog on a
leash, most of the time close to a leg, but from time to time it has to be let to run
and fly without it. Of course, when dog is back on a short leash, doubt emerges
out.
On the other hand, I was mostly worried about what children listen and sing and
not only what they watch or read. When I filmed maturity party called “Generation
2012”, I have noticed that there was no rock and roll or barely here and there, but
songs are mostly folk or pop from contemporary artist if kitsch should be
mentioned in same sentence as art.
PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
Teaching takes a lot of energy in order to motivate a student in a right
direction which ever he/she chooses or as it is become out of the process of
teaching and working.
 Work is based on various forms of acting and directing. When students
constantly perform short plays, sketches, jokes or drama in front of the class or
wider school audience, and with that they write their own material or essays for a
watched film or theatre play, I've noticed that they became full of selfconfidence,
arguing based on facts and elevated emotional level for every aspect of life we
live.
It also brings out critical view on media and art, as it brings ideas on which
student can work on further with a help and incouraging from a pedagogue.
Teacher needs to be a kind of an excellent philosopher (there is no quality art
without philosophy), psychologist, actor, extrovert, but that is not necessary for
students which are in a very fragile and formative years. Also, they doesn't have
to be geniuses, but they need to be opened for a new things to learn.
There are 4 arts.
1. is the art of listening. I don't mean listening while waiting for your turn to
speak or listening of a person who doesn't really listen. It also means that you're
obliged to think while listening, but you shouldn't speak unless it is time for it or
if your observations are not based on facts. I think listening is a half of learning
process and if students are ready to listen, they can finish their class when ring
bells and not taking it home for reading, learning and working on it.
2. art is the art of watching. Again, it is not watching with chatty mind, that
never sees what is in front of his eyes. It means watching until the end of process
without breaking up to comment, laugh or advertising yourself instead of the
process which is being watched. Also, it is not well if someone draws
conclusions based not on facts and in that case undermines understanding. The
approach is highly scientific.
3. art is the art of learning. Today’s situation with a computers made
obvious that learning a lot of facts can never equalize human with a computer
which learns and combines facts faster than human and it has memory that man
can only dream of. There are many mnemotechnic tools and ways to memorize a
lot of facts, but it is for best if student can understand what is she/he talks about
so they can use it or reproduce it, even going further in learning about certain
subject.
4. art is the art of living and that my friend is a virtue. Although it is most
important art it cannot be understood before or combined with other 3 arts.
This is the base teaching for all young students with serious notion that
this is most important job on Earth, just because they will create the world after
we, the teachers, die.
This is a knowledge from Krishnamurti, which teachings I have been using in
preparation to speak with students on a common ground of acceptable
philosophy, because there is no art work that is not founded in some kind of
philosophy because art represents lots of thinking about certain issues which we
as artist try to address and share with the others around us. That kind of division
brought by society is also nasty and hilarious, so we have sportsman and
doctors who will earn a lot, but there are also engineers, lawyers, politicians,
economists an in some hidden corner of universe governed by evil man we have
left place for education and art. I think that says a lot about evil man, but what
does it say to children? Some of them are thought by a bad example and they
make all mistakes thinking that talent or passion or dissatisfaction are not
important and that there is only animal senses for money and power. Trust me, if
you do what you love to do, which is your talent, which you do with passion and
focus and as a discipline, you will have enough or even you will be a star, but the
process of becoming something cannot start before we understand who we are.
You cannot change unless you know thyself, which was written on entrance of
On the other side in our classes we have had great young fresh minds of very
intelligent students which became doctors, engineers, lawyers, world champions
of various marshal arts and also acclaimed dancers, directors, producers, actors,
editors. We offered craftsmanship to a classical Gymnasium in order to refresh
studying from books which in these days they can do from home and alone. I can
say that we have achieved excellent results, but thee important thing to bather us
all is that we are not recognized as must included content of today’s young
people education. I feel that closing of such subjects in high school is taking
away freedom to watch valuable art and understand the world around us, as well
the our place in it.
2. What is your opinion on the media content for young people in BiH? Are there
any good shows, online portals? Could you give examples?
Unfortunately, if you want to know that, you should ask pupils, because they are
all thought to speak for themselves and to express how they feel about certain
topic. Young people from covid-19 pandemic decided to troll everything through
music and shows such as “Helem nejse radio show” or some new kind of slow
rap with outcasts, because majority of people in BiH feels that they live in ghetto
and not validly build state, so they listen to black berriz, Frankie, Cunami,
Belgrade syndicate or such familiar regional music which doesn’t have any value,
but materialistic. In that order we can say that young people see that everything
what’s happening in world is just that richer became richer and they invent the
rules so that poor can stay poorer. Unfortunately, many of them will suffocate
their light and give themselves permission to various pleasures which as a result
will have pain. Many people don’t connect that law of pleasure and pain and in
addition they don’t realize until is too late their natural state of discontent with a
world and with system with what ever prefix or name of the ideology that is
proclaimed. There was not any system from beginning of mankind that actually
suited to man, but man still doesn’t understand that he alone accepted his way of
perdition. If we mention recent arguing and accusations over the newspapers or
internet, we can see that humanity reached a situation of chaos, in which lye
becomes a truth if it is mentioned a few times, but that is what it is and it was
always like that. So, the only way for a revolution is inside ourselves, in our own
perception of our thoughts and insights which make us free from desire and time
and constant becoming which starts that psychological perception of time, not a
time by the watch.
School is very important place in which young people spend half of a day and
with a lot of homework in subjects that didn’t change curriculum for a long time,
which means they are old and boring to young people and they will instantly
forget majority of learned, because if knowledge hasn’t been proven in practice it
doesn’t have any value.
3. Do you use media content or discuss media content with your students in class? How? How do
media affect the education?
As I mentioned before, students in second grade through a teachings of movie
language interpunctions and stylistic figures in film had to approach a test in
which they watch movie scenes or sequences or short films and take notes for
one class and then they have one more class to shape the answers and deliver
the test to a grading. In third class they used to learn grammar and syntax of a
film language in order to apply what they learned in self created short films,
mostly love movies or comedies, but with exceptions of talented pupils who
persuaded experiment or genre. From that teachings we have created one year on
SFF one hour and a half of program which looked as omnibus of Sarajevo or next
time we won a first prize for a short film on a competition of all high schools in
France, although we have been invited there as a guests. Unfortunately, there is a
lack of communication between institutions in Sarajevo or BiH. Art academies
don’t have communication among themselves and specially they leave high-
schools apart from higher education and in that way education doesn’t follow the
demand and supply of knowledge and jobs in the devastated country. I don’t
think that people who vote for government which pushes children far away from
home in order to survive physically and mentally are realizing that it would be
much better to give their children knowledge at home, so they wouldn’t had to
leave the country for good, just because they still have freedom to choose
different.
Let us go back to the classes. We have certain periods of history of cinema like
Italian neo-realism or French new wave or Russian early 20th century flourishing
of cinema, or ex-Yugoslavian movies, or new Rumanian cinema, or rise of
northern European countries cinema through of Bergman until the Danish Dogme
95 and to stay in contact with modern world we have been also watching the
Oscar nominations every year or other Hollywood classics that survived the
passage of linear time. In order to keep the subjects opened to pupils, they could
also suggest movies to see, but most important for every artist is a choice of
subject. Pupils do have different talents and each of them has his on main topics
or traumas which she or he can deal with expressing it in any art form: writing,
singing, dancing, acting, painting, making movies of their dramas or address
their community with issues that bother them. I should say that learning through
creating movies and theatre plays gives children great sense of valuing and
knowing themselves and it affects their self confidence in speaking with their
peers and with the older generations that run the world. Elders should accept
their problems because children see better then majority of elders what are the
intelligent answers, not just formal education that is slowly killing the minds of
young people.
I am trying to pass the children knowledge of Marshall McLuhan considering the
optimistic approach towards new technologies and a fight between man and a
machine, although I am prone to give them insight in a facts that many people will
lose a job because of technology and development of artificial intelligence
through computers and I find a confirmation of it in novels such as “We” or
“1984”, “Brave New world” or “Animal farm” which we also analyzed through a
theatre plays and contemporary staging of it in theatres. There are only 4-5
theatre companies in a major city, but from time to time it seams there are none,
because of a “dead theatre” performances, a term by Peter Brook.
2. How can social media improve education?
3. Why there is limited number of high school media literacy?
4. Do you and how How do you incorporateincorporate media literacy in the classroom and what
is the interest and response of your students? Could you name some of the activities?
5. Why is it significant to have media literacy education in the 21st century?
6. In what way could media literacy education be incorporated in primary and secondary schools
in BiH?
I was addressing UN and ministry in order to teach in schools around the BiH
with only three movies which express basic and strong ideas: Don’t kill, Don’t
steal, Don’t lie in order to reach awareness of to many guns in households,
internet robbery and stealing, but also the importance of the fact that truth sets
you free. As we have been inviting directors, actors, photographers, dancers,
painters, musicians and various artists who thought us a lot through a
workshops, principals of the schools should send invitations to a art teachers to
introduce their program.They didn’t accept that or any other proposition
connected with opening film and theatre subjects in all art or high-schools, but I
did had a good experience in teaching the final grades of elementary school
basics of film, or speaking at the workshop inside of festival that we created, but
that was incidental in a country that is last in every form of literacy in Europe.
That’s why it is mandatory to include film and theatre educations in earlier stages
of education, otherwise it is bad education. We are surrounded by the portals and
we need to know how does it affects our lives, in what way it does harm, if it is.

5. How does media literacy facilitate learning?