Sonja Savić and I

It was at Metlika cinema some
time in the eighties that I saw two Yugoslav films from Belgrade. I remember
how both of them filled me with enthusiasm. I can't remember the stories, but
the titles still linger in my memory: Sugar Water and Living Like the Rest of
us. Sonja Savić acted the lead roles. She was so beautiful and exquisite, so
cinematic, as if the camera had literally fallen in love with her fragile and
erotic figure. She was different - both feminine and child-like. Her beauty was
modern and classic, like the beauty of Garbo. In her beauty, too, there is
something sad, vulnerable, and unforgettable.
She was and remains the one and
only Sonja Savić, a cult star of the eighties. To me, she and the rock group
Ekatarina Velika were the two best things to come out of Belgrade.
Naturally, Sonja has not become a
cult figure merely on the basis of her beauty and her acting accomplishments.
She has played the roles of modern girls and women which real girls and women
of the time could identify with. We could see parts of ourselves as we were or
wanted to be in her characters and in her way of acting. What Sonja was
offering on the screen was real and realistic. But it was also glamorous
because of her radiant beauty.
Not only was her face
fascinating, but her whole figure: the way she moved, her voice and her
nakedness.
I am certain that boys and men
dreamt about her, playing the nude scenes from the films again and again in
their minds, wanting her and looking in their girlfriends and women for some of
what used to be Sonja Savić the star.
She was without doubt the film
star of the eighties, and from a generational point of view she became a cult
star because of her whole personality and the things she said. I saw a TV
documentary at the end of the eighties about her day-to-day life. She's sitting
in the park, with greasy hair and loose jeans, looking deserted as she talks
about her and our reality, the twilight zone.
People keep wondering, what's
happened to Sonja Savić? And not only people who feel the same wonder about
it  - those who know, who understand.
There are lots of them around the former Yugoslavia.
Like Sonja, they have found their
homes in the underground, the forbidden, in punk, in addictions, unadjustable,
sensitive, vulnerable, discontented. Some of them are dead; others have
survived, more or less. Sonja Savić is among the survivors.
In November 1998, when I was
roaming with my sister Ida through the republics of ex-Yugoslavia to shoot
Cesta bratstva in enotnosti  (The Road of
Brotherhood and Unity), a friend, Maria, said to me:   "Would you like to interview Sonja
Savić? She's a friend of mine, you know…"
Those of you who are reading this
and have seen 'The Road' already know the rest. Sonja appears in my film. She's
sitting in front of the camera, her head bent, and I ask her, "Sonja, how
are you getting on in the nineties?" She looks at me with a strange smile on her face, and bends her
head again as tears well up her eyes. I'm looking through the viewfinder as my
eyes too fill with tears. I can't see through the viewfinder anymore. Seized with cramp, I
clasp the camera even more tightly, dry the tears with my left-hand and go on
filming. Sonja is talking about her generation, the war, life in Belgrade …
About the death of Milan Mladenović, the singer in Ekatarina Velika, about
their last concert in Novi Sad; she speaks, in ears, of their song, 'The
Adriatic Sea': "Why don't you send word?… Why don't you write…? Where are
you, and who with…? Who are you making love to…? It's cold here, it's winter,
it's dark…I don't have a job, or anyone to sleep with… I've nowhere to
sleep…Take me to the Adriatic Sea…I love the Adriatic Sea…Mmm, where the waves
are calling…The white sails…"
I'm looking through the camera,
filming; I zoom in on her face until it's right there in front of me. A shudder
goes through me; it really is the face that I knew in my youth, that I cut out
from a magazine; it really is Sonja Savić, and she is still girlish and
beautiful. Sonja tells me later over a cup of tea that she isn't doing too well
now because there's no work, but she directed three underground films with her
friends during the war-years in the nineties, with no money, and she now has
the originals on only one Beta tape. The spirit of a systematic organiser
awakens in me as I say to her, "We must copy this, Sonja. Money isn't an
issue here. You must have a VHS copy of your films as well, and I'll be
flattered if you let me make my own tape with the copies of your films."
So Ida and I stayed in Belgrade
for another day and copied Sonja's films at 
B92 Radio. The films will be screened by Kinoteka, in Ljubljana. While
we were making copies, Sonja and I held hands, and it felt as though
we had known each other for a thousand years.
So now, Sonja, when the idea of
your coming to Ljubljana to show your films has become a reality, I can only
promise to take you to the Adriatic Sea.
Maja Weiss