My Friend Darko...

 

My friend Darko...

 

strangely we've never met face-to-face, only via the net, via Facebook. As you probably know I don't care much for Facebook, I’m glad to be outa there, but I must admit I did meet some very fine people in that brief time. And Darko is one of the best!

He lives in Croatia, the city of Split.

Darko’s hunkered down in that place and from what he tells me it is a closed-down sort of place these days. The population of his entire country is smaller than the population of Melbourne or Sydney. Like many people from smaller countries in the EU Darko carries a burden of intense anger for the EU.

I’ll let him say it in his own words:

Hi Peter,

When you ask about the conditions in which I live, I can tell you for a start that I just received a fake facebook warning about freezing my profile for three months due to the abuse of the character and work of Adolf Hitler. The protocol from which the intrusion was made is registered locally and the address could be reached but I have no money to install a private server, and besides it is probably a state administration directed/coordinated attack from Brussels, European (EU) center for the practice of so called "lite" political Neo-Nazism.

I spend most of my time sipping coffee in local cafes and wondering whether the psychological reactions present in most of the people around here will lead the chaotic social scenario in the direction (as my fb friend Kent Tate suggested to me in an conversation) of Richard Fleischer's cult sf "Soylent Green" (1973) or in the direction of "Planet of the Apes" franchise (not just because of this stupid masks that we used to wear). And, of course, I am still doing small cheap movies, taking some photos, writing a bit and meditating a lot.

The weather is nice, ideal for duck hunting but I live in the south of the country populated by seagulls hunted only by lunatics.

As you can see Darko has a quiet sense of humour. We speak the same language, him and me. Of course he is fluent in English, but I don’t mean ‘language' literally, I mean we understand each other even when expressing views which are opposed. We have a similar feeling for 'manner of speech' and for many items of culture which we share from films, photography, artworks, and literature.

One day we had a discussion about a great piece of writing by Henry  Miller, “The Colossus of Maroussi”. Well it’s hard to say who loves that book more than the other, it was just wonderful to find another person in the world who not only had read it, but who knew it very well, who valued it as greatly as I  do, and who obviously enjoys the 'manner of speech' you find in all of Miller’s works: plain speaking elevated to high art! So we have that in common, and I  don’t find it all that often. 

In Split Darko ran KKS a film club or society for about 20 years dedicated to which for want of better words I would call 'non-mainstream' cinema. His programmes covered a large selection of “avant garde” or experimental films, but also feature length works from all over the world from every genre. Once more I'll let Darko fill you in on that contribution he made to Croatian cultural life.

OVER TO YOU DARKO

It was very sad for many of us, like my friend David King who introduced us, to see Darko closed down by “them”… the nameless faceless people who can be found everywhere, who do not value culture unless it conforms to their own narrow definition of what is “good” or “worthwhile” art, and who dismiss and censor works which do not fit the bill from their own perspective. These people are lethal. They can be found everywhere, in every town, city or country and they think they are always right, they think that the works of which they approve are “right” or “acceptable” and they hate all those works which are in any way opposed to their values. And they always find ways to close down any works of which they do not approve, and to close down those rare people like Darko who dare to showcase such challenging works.

So meeting Darko on Facebook was like meeting some of my best friends  from the old film society days in Melbourne and Sydney, viewing an enormous range of films at the Melbourne Film Festival which suffered a lot from state censorship until the seventies, and also the many fine people I met during the heady days of the Melbourne Film Co-op, which included meeting visitors  from overseas such as Pier Farri and Mike Kuchar. Those were wonderful times for me and my fellow independent filmmakers, some of whom, Fred  Harden, Tom Cowan, Kit Guyatt and David King, are members of this little  group of ours.  

So, that may explain why meeting Darko from so far away was so important for me. I met a friend with whom I can have a big discussion about everything, just as if I happened to bump into Henry Miller in Maroussi or Paris or Big Sur. We could talk about anything and everything, and disagree, yes, even disagree vehemently, and still enjoy each other’s company.

It’s great to have found you Darko. 

pt