- Occupation
Director - Country
Slovenia
Virc Ziga
War Tourists
The main topic is battle reenactment groups in Europe and the insight perspective of their activities. We have special interests in German participants. In Germany they are not allowed to wear nazi uniforms and nazi insignia. Even only possesing this kind of artifacts can be an offense and it’s considering Neonazism. So they exercise this somehow bizarre hobby in other countries. They participate in reenacted battles in Slovenia, Czech republic and other non-German locations. Besides historical aspect there is a big fascination of military and militant values, maybe also ideological and political. It’s hard to tell where praising of Neonazism begins and boundary is thin. We follow Slovenian group Triglav who organize and host annual battles with guests from Germany, Italy and other countries. Battles are made as real as possible with training ammunition, flame throwers, tanks and jeeps. The group is preparing for the next big battle with other European fellow groups, dressing up as “partisans and Germans”. All of them consider the battle very seriously, meeting in advance at militaria fair in Belgium, contacting by e-mail and phones, buying uniforms on ebay, receiving guns by DHL and driving their army jeeps to annual repair service. A boundary between reality and fiction might be blurred and do we really know what is happening in participants minds and how will this end?
Houston, we have a problem!
In March 1961, Yugoslavia sold its secret space programme to the US. Two months later, Kennedy announced that the USA would go to the Moon. This is an urban myth that millions of people want to believe in. In January 2012 the film makers visualised this urban myth in a short video that was published on Youtube. A week later, almost a million people had watched it and an enormous media buzz was generated. Most of the viewers actually believed that Yugoslav president Tito had saved the USA's reputation in the space race. This myth is explored in the film through the fictional character of Ivan Pavić, a senior engineer in the alleged Yugoslav space programme. The story of the film is based and inspired by numerous real events and facts. The space programme and the documentary discourse are the narrative tools that tell a symbolic story about the Cold War. In that way, it is a real story of a manipulation, lies, dirty political games and media construction. But the greatest message is how similar events still happen today in a modern society and how terribly easy it is to manipulate an audience.
The main topic is battle reenactment groups in Europe and the insight perspective of their activities. We have special interests in German participants. In Germany they are not allowed to wear nazi uniforms and nazi insignia. Even only possesing this kind of artifacts can be an offense and it’s considering Neonazism. So they exercise this somehow bizarre hobby in other countries. They participate in reenacted battles in Slovenia, Czech republic and other non-German locations. Besides historical aspect there is a big fascination of military and militant values, maybe also ideological and political. It’s hard to tell where praising of Neonazism begins and boundary is thin. We follow Slovenian group Triglav who organize and host annual battles with guests from Germany, Italy and other countries. Battles are made as real as possible with training ammunition, flame throwers, tanks and jeeps. The group is preparing for the next big battle with other European fellow groups, dressing up as “partisans and Germans”. All of them consider the battle very seriously, meeting in advance at militaria fair in Belgium, contacting by e-mail and phones, buying uniforms on ebay, receiving guns by DHL and driving their army jeeps to annual repair service. A boundary between reality and fiction might be blurred and do we really know what is happening in participants minds and how will this end?
Houston, we have a problem!
In March 1961, Yugoslavia sold its secret space programme to the US. Two months later, Kennedy announced that the USA would go to the Moon. This is an urban myth that millions of people want to believe in. In January 2012 the film makers visualised this urban myth in a short video that was published on Youtube. A week later, almost a million people had watched it and an enormous media buzz was generated. Most of the viewers actually believed that Yugoslav president Tito had saved the USA's reputation in the space race. This myth is explored in the film through the fictional character of Ivan Pavić, a senior engineer in the alleged Yugoslav space programme. The story of the film is based and inspired by numerous real events and facts. The space programme and the documentary discourse are the narrative tools that tell a symbolic story about the Cold War. In that way, it is a real story of a manipulation, lies, dirty political games and media construction. But the greatest message is how similar events still happen today in a modern society and how terribly easy it is to manipulate an audience.
Ziga is an Academy Award nominated film & television director (“The Oscars”) for his short film “Trieste is ours” in 2010. He graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. He has directed numerous commercials, documentary films and fiction works, for which he received many awards. He is experienced in a cross-platform approach, with some of his previous works going viral both nationally and internationally. His works are notable for their dramatic visual style, the use of music to build tension, incorporating a detailed approach to a narrative structure and making it appealing to a broad audience.
Selected list: Tine Strela trilogy (short fiction, 2004, 2005, 2006, director, co-writer). Love is the greatest teacher (short documentary, 2007, director). Pig-Destroyer news (short fiction, 2008, director), Sky above the town (short fiction, 2008, director, writer). The Communist man (TV-drama, 2008, director, writer), Our democracy (feature TV-comedy, 2009, director, writer), Trieste is ours! (short fiction, 2009, director, writer), Call from the mountains (feature documentary, 2011, director), War games (feature documentary, 2012, director, writer), The tale of the water man (feature documentary, 2012, director, in postproduction), Mira Marko Debelak portrait (feature documentary, 2013, director, in preproduction), A Crescent above the Edelweiss (feature documentary, 2013, director, in preproduction), Houston, we have a problem! (feature film, exp. 2014, director, in preproduction)