Moderator: Ilindenka Petrusheva
Date: August 17, 2024
Time: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Venue: Laboratorium

In the film world, a director’s grandeur is achieved by his or her vision, innovation and the ability to take the viewers to new worlds. Stole Popov is a director who has shaped the greatness of the film with his artistic credo and creativity. His films change the way we see and understand the world around us. He, therefore, remains a leading figure of contemporary cinema, in the full sense of the word, inspiring the next generations of creatives, directors and film lovers. All of his film achievements remain engraved in the hearts and minds of the viewers, leaving lasting imprints in the culture and history of cinema.

Stole Popov was born in 1950 in Skopje, People’s Republic of Macedonia. In 1973, he graduated in film directing from the Academy of Theater, Film and Television in Belgrade. During his studies, he made 10 short student films. From 1978 to 1988, he worked as a film director at “Vardar Film”, and from 1985 to 1986, he was the managing director of this production company. Since 1989, he has teaching film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje and is the head of the Film Directing Studies.

He is one of the founders of the first private film production company “Triangle” in 1988. Since 1997, he has been a member of the European Film Academy.
He has won more than 50 prestigious European and world film awards and recognitions, the 8 grand prix at various festivals and most of the nominations for the “Oscar” of the American and for “Felix” of the European Film Academy being among the most distinguished ones.

Ever since Stole Popov made his first films (at the Film Academy in Belgrade) it was clear that his effective ability for so-called “filmic thinking” would bring him numerous creative challenges in the future. And so it was…!

He made his start in the film world with documentaries. And he did it remarkably. Counting the commissioned documentary ALKALOID (1974) as well, which was one of the most successful films of its kind in the Yugoslav space back then. In the same year (1974), Popov also made the documentary film FIRE (Ogan) which is an extraordinary poem of both labor and anonymous Promethean love, a film that won numerous national and foreign awards and was also a Yugoslav candidate for the Academy Awards. In 1976, he directed the documentary AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIA (Avstralija, Avstralija) and confirmed the splendor of his talent which in this film grows into an analyst and a storyteller about the world of our expatriates in Australia. This film, too, collected top world awards… and became a Yugo-candidate for the Oscar as well. In 1979 DAE (Dae) appeared. A triumph that brought him at the threshold of the Academy Awards (an Oscar nominee, one of the five best documentaries in the world) and paved the way for him to reach even greater heights in the feature film. In this film, the multifaceted iconography comes to the fore as a source of incarnation of the romantic and unfettered understanding of life.

In 1981 he directed the feature film THE RED HORSE (Crveniot konj), a debut feature film (that is a historical fact), but by no means a “debut” work due to its undoubted dramatic and visual qualities. It should be said that with this film the author carries on an important and well-known tradition in the Macedonian feature production, which focuses on contemporary Macedonian literature. Based on the eponymous novel by the famous novelist Tashko Georgievski, the film explores the life of the exiled members of the DAG (Democratic Army of Greece), offering an extraordinary visual reconstruction of both the time and the settings the protagonist passes through.

And of course, as usual – the public eagerly awaits the second film from an author who achieved considerable success with his first feature film… The second film is nothing but a test for the author. In 1986, Popov filmed HAPPY NEW YEAR ’49 (Srekjna Nova ‘49), the best Yugoslav achievement of the current production year. The numerous awards prove it beyond doubt. With this film, the director Stole Popov reaffirmed his own deep creative interest in the visual treatment of human destinies contained in the significant historical events in these spaces of ours. Milosh Forman will say for “Vjesnik”: “I am deeply moved by HAPPY NEW YEAR ‘49. The director masterfully leads excellent actors. This is an absolutely impressive achievement…”

In the middle of 1991, he made TATTOO (Tetoviranje). The director Popov has superiorly built, both in terms of content and form, this third feature film of his. It is important to quote Ronald Holloway: “Just as dramatic a controversy on the 1991 international festival scene was Stole Popov’s TATTOO, the first feature film to bear the banner of the newly constituted state of Macedonia”.

In 1997, he made the film GYPSY MAGIC (Džipsi Medžik) and through the vivid brilliance of colors and the photogenic characters, Stole Popov developed the story around the Roma people with their beautiful features. But his universal subject of interest is the downtrodden, forgotten heroes of the street that we learn about only from the news and obituaries… In 2014, he directed his last achievement for the time being, the feature film TO THE HILT (Do balchak). Written by Goran Stefanovski, it is a historical and spectacular love story. It is at the same time a cruel, romantic love story in which the eternal Macedonian cause for one’s own identity and independence is seen through the eyes of the individual living in the beginning of the twentieth century.

One of the fundamental tasks of the Cinematheque of Macedonia is to permanently protect the nationally produced films and to make them available to the wide public. This is why in 2011, the year when the Cinematheque celebrated its 35th anniversary, we have, for the first time, completed a project aiming at digitally restoring Macedonian films. The project included 7 films by director Stole Popov: the feature films RED HORSE, HAPPY NEW YEAR ‘49, TATTOO and GIPSY MAGIC, and the documentaries FIRE, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIA and DAE. All restored films were transferred to LTO4 tapes, for archiving purposes as well as for making new double negatives and new film copies.

Finally, I would like to emphasize that being born and living in Macedonia and not having seen Stole Popov’s films might as well be the same as being born and living in an ancient civilization such as Egypt without having seen the majestic pyramids. If nothing else, at least so that we could, for a moment, face our ignorance and at times even our intellectual arrogance, and at the same time be part of a huge cultural and world civilizational community.

Masterclass with Ineke Smits and Jeroen Stout