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De Niro Might Film in Serbia
Balkan Insight ^

Posted on 09/27/2008 4:16:12 PM PDT by BabaYaga

26 September 2008 Belgrade _ Movie star Robert de Niro said he might invest in Serbia’s film industry.

De Niro met Serbia’s President Boris Tadic who is in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, gathering support for Belgrade’s bid to seek the World Court’s opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s independence.

“We’ve met and talked about making movies in Serbia, in studios they have there. We generally talked about a possible future cooperation, because you never know,” de Niro said.

Tadic also met representatives of Sallyport, DreamWorks and Coppola movie companies.

De Niro added he remembered hitch-hiking through Serbia and recalled Belgrade as an “excellent city”.

“I’m sure it is the same now, if not better. I remember being in Belgrade. It was great,” he said.

De Niro also recalled being a guest at the Belgrade International Film Festival, FEST. He named his daughter Drina, the same name as the river running along the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He reiterated he was a great fan of Serbia’s most successful best tennis player Novak Djokovic.

“Maybe I’m partly a Serb… some of my ancestors,” de Niro, who is of Italian origin, said jokingly, adding “Djokovic is a great kid”.

De Niro has often been seen in Djokovic’s VIP box supporting the world’s third best ranked tennis player during his US Open tournament matches.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: movies; serbia
Serbian president Boris Tadic and famous movie Robert de Niro

De Niro, while he was younger, also spent some time in Serbia travelling by hitchhike and met serbian way of life, I suppose, more then average tourist would do.

1 posted on 09/27/2008 4:16:12 PM PDT by BabaYaga
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To: BabaYaga

Drina the river I think is quite polluted now. Kudos if he can do a movie in Serbia. Nice things can happen in nice places.


2 posted on 09/27/2008 4:19:04 PM PDT by rovenstinez
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To: BabaYaga

I’ve heard it’s going to be a radical departure from the work he usually does. De Niro is planning a gritty crime drama where he plays either a gangster or a cop.


3 posted on 09/27/2008 4:27:59 PM PDT by james500
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To: BabaYaga

Cool .... and he can open an eastern European version of Tribeca Grill there or a Nobu.


4 posted on 09/27/2008 4:29:46 PM PDT by Daffynition (Follow the dots: Davis, Ayers, Dohrn, Malley, SorosÂ… use a RED crayon.)
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To: rovenstinez
Thanks for nice words :-)...

Drina the river I think is quite polluted now

hmm, not quite...it sure is not like some half a century ago, but it is not so much poluted neither. There are a lot of activities on the river in spring and summer like some fishing, sport, art camps or rafting races organized from both sides of the river - in Republika Srpska and Serbia also. Some images:

My favourite :-).

You can get wider picture maybe here

5 posted on 09/27/2008 4:40:41 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: BabaYaga
He endorses the Marxist!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akApqZPnyf4&eurl=http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article4130-robert-de-niro-praises-obamas-inexperience.aspx

6 posted on 09/27/2008 4:40:48 PM PDT by Cheetahcat (Osamabama the Wright kind of Racist!)
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To: james500

LOL


7 posted on 09/27/2008 4:42:49 PM PDT by headstamp 2 (Been here before)
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To: BabaYaga

DeNiro is in the tank for Hussien. Be wary of his work.


8 posted on 09/27/2008 4:59:51 PM PDT by GeeMoney (Hey Obama, it's God BLESS America!)
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To: BabaYaga
I take it that last one is a shot of your hut, although I can't quite make out the fowl's legs.

≤}B^)

9 posted on 09/27/2008 5:01:30 PM PDT by Erasmus (Zwischen des Teufels und des tiefen, blauen, Meers.)
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To: james500; Bokababe; kronos77; Honorary Serb; DTA; montyspython; FormerLib

:-)


10 posted on 09/27/2008 5:05:22 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: GeeMoney; Cheetahcat

I didn`t know that...


11 posted on 09/27/2008 5:07:05 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: Erasmus

lol...unfortunately it`s not mine, but belongs to the kayak club - the second one - first one was taken by the river some years ago...


12 posted on 09/27/2008 5:13:54 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: BabaYaga
Remember way back in the war against Serbia when it was decided that the Television Broadcast Tower should be bombed?

CNN got wind of the idea and warned their people to get out of the tower and go elsewhere.

They didn't warn any of the non-CNN affiliated civilians working there.

The result was that all those civilians got killed.

I've always felt that was an outcome that was just wrong ~

Can DeNiro be counted on to deal harshly with his little friends in CNN or is he going to make more Leftwingtard Pro-Islamofascist propaganda.

13 posted on 09/27/2008 6:33:14 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: BabaYaga
That whole region is gorgeous- most areas of ex-Yugoslavia have breath-taking scenic areas... It's too bad there's still so much hate there...

Slovenia and Croatia are doing really well with tourism, Serbia is on it's way, and when Bosnia and Albania enter the 20th (forget about the 21st) century, there's lots of promise there too.

14 posted on 09/27/2008 6:43:30 PM PDT by NYC Republican (Infuriate the MSM- vote for Palin/McCain)
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To: Cheetahcat

That’s nearly all of H’wood scum


15 posted on 09/27/2008 6:44:22 PM PDT by NYC Republican (Infuriate the MSM- vote for Palin/McCain)
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To: BabaYaga

Not a big surprise. The old Yugoslavia was always a major filming location back in the 1960’s-early 1980’s. The films, Kelly’s Heroes, Fiddler on the Roof, Sophie’s Choice, Murder on the Orient Express were all made there, among many others.


16 posted on 09/28/2008 12:05:30 AM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: joan; Smartass; zagor-te-nej; Lion in Winter; Honorary Serb; jb6; Incorrigible; DTA; ma bell; ...
Thanks for ping, BabaYaga:)
17 posted on 09/28/2008 3:18:40 AM PDT by kronos77 (Kosovo is Serbian Jerusalem. No Serbia without Kosovo.)
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To: BabaYaga; Bokababe

I’m going to start working on a new documentary in Belgrade near the later part of October. I don’t want to meet Tadic though :-)


18 posted on 09/28/2008 7:17:22 AM PDT by getoffmylawn (McCain or Biden? I'd rather drink a stranger's vomit than vote for either of these jerks.)
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To: Daffynition; Bokababe
:-) There`s already Tribeka restaurant in Belgrade, but not Nobu.
As for the movie-business, they discussed about privatisation of Avala film studios in the Film town in Belgrade, one of the bigest movie production studios in former Yugoslavia, which is now closed or devided into some obscure companies (I`m not into the details exactly).
I didn`t find official presentation but here are some pics of Cinecitta and Avala film (italian - filmtown) restaurant situated in the complex of Avala film.
19 posted on 09/28/2008 10:23:58 AM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: NYC Republican
Thanks it was...and stil is, divided in 6 parts or more +- some quasistates...it is unbeliveble how can people so easily distroy something that beautiful and promissing, that so many hundreds of thousands of children, women and men died for!
Yugoslavia was created in wars two times and ended in blood two times. This year is 90 years of the creation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians .
I suppose ideological transition went from socialism to democracy through the wrong road - nationalistic extremisms. Something like initiation into the civil societies through catharsic blood bathing /sarcasm.
"One way back" to the national countries, a missing link that costed us so much (Serbia did have national state before yugo-union, but not more then 50 years effectively).
You know Yugoslavs were very much proud and arogant people (in many aspects, right or wrong and moderate south-slavic ethnocentrics) and they lost their homeland. People just should not have something that cannot take care of.

most areas of ex-Yugoslavia have breath-taking scenic areas

Yes, and literally also, for the thousands of unfortunates. Some weeks ago I read one of the comments on YT that goes like:
We Yugoslavs are good people from the beautiful country; of course we love each other. The only flaw we have is that we use to kill each other from time to time.

So, this is love (???):
a) true,
b) untrue.

I recently found some nice photos of the country that I was born in, although I don`t remember much (and I lived in four countries without leaving my hometown for longer); with the hardest period in the last decade of XX century, especially for the people from the mixed marriages.
Of course the political indoctrination of poster`s avatar (Tito) should be ignored, because it is very dangerous and manipulative simbol for the future relations - for the "political" Yugoslavs it is ideological symbol and for the "emotional" Yugoslavs it`s "south-Slavs union" and also "good old days of peace" symbol.
Among the several "New Yugoslavia" movements, which are mostley non-political and ideological non- and anti-communistic groups, I found some communistic coloured that again (!) claim partisan resistance as their own which is again historical revisionism.
Like the liberal and NGO extremism ("left wing" that is painted with many colours, but under cover is purely fascistic - my opinion) and nationalistic extremisms they have many things in common then not - two faces of the same coin; they are using one another`s existance while their actions against each others makes the living almost unbearable in newly formend democracies like under some low-grade psychological war
that creates the new houses for the new schizophrenic nations torn between EU non-national and non-religious "standards" (which Yugoslavia, paradoxally, was, with the effect of "brotherhood & unity" PTSD) and that missing link of national states.

Capisci? :-/

20 posted on 09/28/2008 10:53:52 AM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: kronos77

Nema problema :-).


21 posted on 09/28/2008 10:55:28 AM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: getoffmylawn

Great! Can we know something more about your “project” or...? If you need some information about some tv station or production companies feel free to ask and if I can help I will, although I mostley know some people from the show-business industry production (Big Brother and such cr*p :-).


22 posted on 09/28/2008 10:59:41 AM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: BabaYaga
"I recently found some nice photos of the country that I was born in,"

That song "Jugoslavio" on the video just gave me the chills, as (for obvious reasons) I haven't heard that in nearly twenty years.

23 posted on 09/28/2008 11:06:20 AM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: BabaYaga
"We Yugoslavs are good people from the beautiful country; of course we love each other. The only flaw we have is that we use to kill each other from time to time."

I've said this before and I will say it again:

The Slavs of the former Yugoslavia are a family of peoples -- a horribly dysfunctional and abusive family, but a family none the less. And what is the worse call that every police officer dreads? A "domestic dispute", because while you are trying to break up a fight between family members, you are just as likely as not to get all of them turning on you and hammering you for trying to help -- or lying to you to manipulate the situation.

It is for this reason, I never wanted to see a single American soldier put himself in the middle of this, nor the US government involved in this on ANY side. It's too complex, volatile and bizarre for outsiders to make good decisions about. And these people never make peace until they are ready to make peace. Until then, everything is just a "temporary truce" until they can start up again.

It's why most of our families got the hell out of there and came to America to get away from this madness -- then, thanks to Clinton, this madness was brought over here to the US. Pisses me off to no end.

24 posted on 09/28/2008 11:48:07 AM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: BabaYaga; Bokababe
I don't want to say too much about the movie until things get a little bit more concrete, but it won't be overtly political at all. I will say it has to do with the Begrade band, The Orthodox Celts. I'm very excited. As things get more solid, I'll give you folks updates.

I haven't been back to stari kraj since 1995. I feel like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning. I love this feeling :-)

25 posted on 09/28/2008 12:32:03 PM PDT by getoffmylawn (McCain or Biden? I'd rather drink a stranger's vomit than vote for either of these jerks.)
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To: getoffmylawn
These "Orthodox Celts"? Their music is really good! Once you get past the Serbian accent singing about "returning to Dublin", it's pretty cool!
26 posted on 09/28/2008 12:47:50 PM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: getoffmylawn
Hheeey great!!! I love them, used to be regular at the st. Patrik`s night in KST in 90`es. Fantastic!

My favourites: Star Of The County Down and Rocky Road To Dublin.
I remember them saying how they wanted to go to Ireland to make some concert there, but I`m not sure if they ever got the chance.

Some year ago my coleague worked with some american students in Viminacium archaeological site, one of them was American of irish background that was fascinated by this band (but stil didn`t know the lyrics of the songs like we did) :-).

It would be good for O.C. to have some promotion in the States too. Good luck.

27 posted on 09/28/2008 1:23:58 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: getoffmylawn; BabaYaga
Man, they even do "The Wearing of the Green"!

Years ago, there was a Serbian Orthodox priest in San Francisco, a convert who was full-blooded Irish. He used to joke that the Serbs and Irish had much in common. Both groups "loved music, sex, whiskey and cabbage as their favorite things, and not necessarily in that order!"

This group sure proves that point!

28 posted on 09/28/2008 3:00:12 PM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: Bokababe

When I was kid this song didn`t mean anything to me...and now, just like you, I god chills, some anger and dry tears...hard to explain. Duh..

You are right of course about mixing into domestic argue from outside. With a “little help from our friends” from outside things got bloodier and the worse is that it is not over yet as I can notice. Especially in Bosnia.


29 posted on 09/28/2008 3:57:50 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: Bokababe

:-) Interesting story. I would add “defiant” on the list of epithets.

Also, in Serbia there`s some “myth” (for kids anyway) that Serbs actually come from Celts (or at least have “important” mixture of slavic and celtic blood), what was especially actuated by some dna research (I cannot provide the link for that for now) that compare some blood markers conecting Irish, Celts and Serbs.
Celts founded Singidunum (ancient Belgrade) of course as well as the other settlements in northern Serbia, but I just can not understand why all this “blood connection” stuff (like Albanians and Illyrians that is even more funny). Those tribes (I don`t use term “nation” purposely) just merged by the time with Romans and other newcommers.

There`s also band Irish Stew that plays irish music of course :-), but I like Celts more.


30 posted on 09/28/2008 4:17:14 PM PDT by BabaYaga (BRE!)
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To: BabaYaga

HE couldn’t do any better.

Let’s hope that the vibes he gets from being in such a great country helps him to make his upcoming film a notch above the garbage he’s been making in recent years.


31 posted on 09/28/2008 5:10:08 PM PDT by eleni121 (EN TOUTO NIKA!! +)
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To: BabaYaga

In the late 70s when they were filiming the Deer Hunter in the Steubenville Mingo area of SE Ohio, Robert DeNiro heard there was a Serbian wedding taking place in town...remember in the movie it was a Russian Orthodox wedding being filmed...so they showed up with some cards with monetary gifts and a few of them ‘crashed’ the wedding. They had a great time drinking slivo and doing the kolo and stayed late. DeNiro did the bridal dance with the bride and she said ‘who the hell are you?’. True story. The bride is a friend of mine


32 posted on 09/28/2008 7:53:15 PM PDT by MadelineZapeezda ( MUST SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkgHkxIfgBc)
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To: Bokababe
If this priest is still above ground, I'd LOVE to get him on film. Do you happen to know if he's still around?

I met a great priest in San Fransisco when were out there raising money for "Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War". He was originally from the old country, then he was in East Chicago, Indiana, then he moved out to San Fransisco in 1966, I believe. Of course I had to ask him about the "Summer of Love". Like a good Orthodox priest, he said, "Oh it was wonderful. All those kids wanted was Love and that's wonderful. Besides that, they really liked me because of my beard!" He was a really nice guy.

33 posted on 09/28/2008 9:56:36 PM PDT by getoffmylawn (McCain or Biden? I'd rather drink a stranger's vomit than vote for either of these jerks.)
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To: BabaYaga
Thanks for the good luck wishes.

Fingers crossed...if all works out the way I want it to, The Celts are going to get one of their big wishes to come true. No promises, but I'm working on some things... we shall see.

34 posted on 09/28/2008 10:19:13 PM PDT by getoffmylawn (McCain or Biden? I'd rather drink a stranger's vomit than vote for either of these jerks.)
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To: getoffmylawn
The priest that you are talking about in SF is Proto Dusan Bunjevic. He's retired now. (Father Bunjevic was also in the film, "Zivili: Medicine for the Heart" back in the early 1980's.)

I never met this Irish SO priest, because I was living in Los Angeles at the time. A friend of mine from his parish told me what he had said about the Serbs and the Irish.

Father Bunjevic was the regular priest in SF for almost 40 years. This Irish priest must have just been an adjunct for a period of time. I'll check around and see if I can get a name.

35 posted on 09/28/2008 10:30:34 PM PDT by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: james500
I’ve heard it’s going to be a radical departure from the work he usually does. De Niro is planning a gritty crime drama where he plays either a gangster or a cop

He's missing a shot if he doesn't tell the story of the Serbian rescue of hundreds of American airmen from the Nazis during WWII.

Mr DiNiro is getting a little old to keep portraying a doorkicking cop, but he could pull off the role of a senior military officer or OSS spook quite nicely. And he might even manage a passable Serbian accent with a little coaching- he's supposed to be quite good at that sort of thing.

36 posted on 09/30/2008 9:26:55 AM PDT by archy (Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. [from Virgil's *Aeneid*.])
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