Goran

"In 2012, I was invited by Per.Art to lead a personal film workshop for its members. The workshop provided participants with a comprehensive knowledge of the mechanics involved in producing a personal documentary. During the workshop, we tried to find the cinematic equivalent for their ideas and topics with which they are concerned.  When given a chance, the group candidly discussed the inner workings of their community, revealing the enduringly fundamental concerns, passions and rituals. This is where I met one of the group's artists, Goran Gostojić.  

Goran is intellectually disabled. I started to meet him every week, always with a tape recorder. When I asked him to tell me about what made him feel alive, if only in glimpses, he offered me a window into his intimate life, the myriad struggles of his everyday. We explored friendships, dreams, heroes, and the greater hope of living as a regular citizen despite his differences. By inviting viewers into the details of his daily existence, Goran showed us that he is no different from anyone else. The documentary, which began as an audio recording, soon became a depiction of what is required for a person to survive in our modern world.

With the piece, I wished to re-evaluate the traditions of the documentary form by making an experimental film that attempts to overcome the distinction between subject and producer. Through both the disjunction of the narrative and the integration of maker and participant, I strove to create a sense of immediacy and intimacy. The desired effect was the elimination of the feeling of anticipation and expectation upon which the tension of a documentary depends by crafting a form in which the filmmaker and participant's will and imagination were inseparably linked. 

I believe that, through the act of listening, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us. This world molds us, but it can also be affected by us. Establishing a balance between these two spheres is one of the central dilemmas of my filmmaking."

Roberto Santaguida in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (July 2015)