SYNCHRONICITIES,  OR  BEYOND  THE FEATURE   

“The Judge”, treated by the young director Vlad Freeborg primarily as a metaphor for Satan was the central motif that he used as the point of departure for the creation of  his first narrative feature. His film is an attempt to go beyond the dualism of the established social system of values, with all its qualities and deviations, more often than not also in the form of “political correctness”.    

Completely aware of the fact that the Un-Holy One, Diabolo, the Sheytan... are personifications of the human ego and its unconsciousness, he rushes into the vague adventure known as the ‘low-budget independent film’ with enormous enthusiasm, and that in one of the countries of the Western Balkans, where the control over entropy is very far from ambition, partly due to the deadening silence of inertia and conformism, partly due to the irrational, mystical absence of expressed own will...

This is one of the ways to sublimate the complex story about the multi-layered contemporary “portrait” of so-called evil. But for  several reasons, and one of them is the avoidance of tautologies, another approach is possible, which functions as a “negative” in relation to the story - “positive”.

The conclusion, that simulation is a dangerous game, simply nothing but playing with fire, is just one of the markers of postmodernism. But the quality of experience brings with it a special fascination from that newly created FACT, which can be simply categorized as synchronicity or accident, avoiding the falling into the trap of..., we already know what. The synchronicity between reality and fiction builds a new story, and  its hyper-dynamism, compression and especially interactivity, made it impossible to incorporate it fully into the fiction itself. From time to time fragments of reality try to point out that the fiction is not completely artificial, but partially “taken over”.  

Deconstruction, or the role of the ready-made


The “biography” of the movie is followed by an expansion, i.e. branching of the rhizome of the story. This is one of the most attractive characteristics of low-budget independent productions:  spontaneity in creation. Of course, it has its price, but it functions.   

Significant for the process of making this complex project shot on locations in Macedonia, Germany and USA is the ready-made principle, realized on several levels.

The first level can be designated as the “object” level. The low budget determined the use in the production, in most of the cases, of completely ready-made ambients or scenographies, ready-made costumes etc.

On the level of “synchronicity” several significant, impressive events were incorporated, which were not possible to ignore because of their dominant character, and which in the same time coincided with the interest of the director Vlad Freeborg in the “last times” of the Revelation of St. John. Those were the “Fourth” and the “Fifth Balkan War”, i.e. the ones in Yugoslavia 1999 and Macedonia 2001 - until than called the “Oasis of Peace”. They occurred synchronically with the process of post-production. Due to the fact that reality is always much faster and more efficient than any fiction, the project could never become absolutely “up-dated”.
“God is not the creator of death...” (1.1. Moses)

The third level of the ready-made principle practized in this experimental feature culminates on the “personality” level, which was realized through the direct engagement of over 20 individuals, who performed their real “roles”, i.e. they appeared as themselves. This pop-artistic approach enabled the evocation of maximal authenticity of the characters, and at the same time the portrayal of the underground scene, especially in Skopje.  
 

Zaneta Vangeli