Punk’s Not Dead

Colour, 35 mm
Macedonia, Serbia, 2011, 104 min
IP – International premiere
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

Mirsa is the former singer in what was once the most popular punk band in Macedonia, but it broke up years ago. He’s now forty, still living with his mother, and he occasionally sells drugs for Albanian dealer Gzim, who in return supplies him with grass on the cheap. Then one day Gzim comes up with an idea: Mirsa ought to get his band back together so they can perform at a benefit concert in Debar, a Macedonian city with an Albanian majority population. Mirsa has an almost herculean task ahead of him: after a period of 17 years, to locate and convince all the band members, some of whom left Macedonia after the break-up of Yugoslavia, to perform together once again in concert. On a minimum budget, director and screenwriter Vladimir Blaževski has turned in a punchy independent road movie about people for whom punk isn’t just music, it’s their whole life. He also uses black humour and insight to touch upon more serious issues and, thanks to the documentary techniques he employs in the film, he manages to achieve a sense of absolute conviction.

About the director

Vladimir Blaževski (b. 1955, Skopje, Macedonia) studied film direction at the Academy of Film, Theatre, Television and Radio in Belgrade (1978). Since graduating he has worked as a filmmaker, turning out several documentaries, commercials and a series of TV programmes. He has also been teaching film at university level since 1994. He was involved as co-screenwriter on Ivo Trajkov’s The Great Water (Golemata voda, 2004), among others. He also directed the feature films Hi-Fi (Haj-Faj, 1987) and The Revolution Boulevard (Bulevar revolucije, 1992).