Tuesday, 23 rd April, 2002

Today’s day was sunny and mild outside. Inside it was steamy and hectic. Because there were no workshops to be given, the conference started with a half-day listening session.

On the proramme:

• Croatia with the feature ‘I feel relaxed and breathing calmly’ by Vi_nja Biti.
• Denmark. ‘An immigrant in Freya’s house’ by Stephen Schwartz.
• Romania and ‘Transplantion.’ (Michaela Helmis)
• Belgium/The Netherlands and Stst….stuttering by Annemie Tweepenninckx.

Let’s start with Croatia, one can never be polite enough. Since Zagreb is our host, it’s more or less obligatory. The feature ends undoubtfully with it’s essence: I feel relaxed and I’m breathing calmly. The entry deals with stuttering, often being considered as a social disability: hard to live with, hardly to cure. That seems to be a misunderstanding, since Croatia happens to develop an efficient therapy with quite amazing results.
The critics on this programme were quite unanimous. A good example of a well-made educational and informative journalistic ‘product.’ Perhaps it lacked a bit of a creative approach.

Up to the Belgian-Dutch programme, St-st-stutter. Same topic, but worked out from a totally opposite angle. Here, no education, few information but lots of beats and rhyhtms. A kind of a rapping feature. The makers took the musicality of stuttering as their starting-point. So you get a kind of musical piece.
Most of the listeners appreciated this kind of different approach. They considered it to be fresh and funny. Stutters are not treated as disabled, someone remarked, but as a fascinating phenomonon. ‘It’s almost fashionable to be a stutter.’ Some others lacked some necessary information in it. Anyway, it was an inspiring discussion.

The Romanian entry, ‘Transplant’, has the ambition to explore the problem of cerebral death. In the older days a patient could not be declared dead as long as he continued to breath and to have heart beating. Today, science considers a patient to be biologic dead, if he or she is cerebral dead. Even if the heart for instance is still beating.
Interesting matter, sure, wonderful and explosive. But, most of the listeners agreed upon the fact that the maker of this feature was too ambitious. He/she was too greedy in persuading his or her audience.
One of the commentators summarised it as such: ‘If you donate your organs, You’re good and brave. If you don’t, you are stupid and selfish.’

The last feature to be critised is the intriguing ‘An immigrant in Freya’s Home’ by Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz himself is an American who migrated to Denmark some forty years ago. He made a kind of a testimony about the changes he percepted during his stay in Denmark. A beautiful, vulnerable portrait that, as someone said, ‘will be rememberd for a long time.’ A unique and very personal metaphor for‘changes in society.’

Later on, the godfather of European feature-making, Peter Leonard Braun, met a younger generation of Croation feature-makers. Inspring and confronting.

The evening went on in the well-known Feature Conference-tradition. The place: Kaptolska Klet, a nice restaurant.
The food: excellent and regional.
The people: amazing, joyful and drunk. (See photographs)

One would like to spend a lifetime in this divine city. Unfortunably enough in between dreams and deeds, stand practicle inconvieniences and melancholy.

Pat Donnez

Belgium