Macedonia - Certain Regard

by Ronald Holloway

On the Via Egnatia

Cicero walked into exile on the Via Egnatia. Today you can trace the origin of Italian Renaissance painting along this same route. Forget that myth about humanism and personality in medieval painting originating in the works of Cimabue and Giotto at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries. Rather, it can be found along that Balkan highway built by the Romans in ancient times to link the Adriatic coast with the Aegean Sea (later with Constantinople) by way of Dyrrachium (Durres), Ochrida (Ohrid), Heraclea Linkestis (Bitola), and Thessalonica (Salonika).

You should begin your journey into the Renaissance by following the Via Egnatia north from Salonika to Bitola, then take a left turn at Bitola and go west to Ohrid - and stop at the Church of St. Sophia, dating from 1037-1056. This is the same route followed by an unknown Byzantine master, who (just before 1056) painted the Dormition (or Assumption) of the Virgin, a great fresco composition on the western wall, in the grand tradition of mid-Byzantine monumental painting practiced in Constantinople during the period of the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056). That period, also known as the First Byzantine Renaissance, predates the frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto by two centuries.

Ohrid, already the cradle of Slavonic Christianity, was experiencing at this time the same artistic revival that was flooding the Greek cultural capital in the wake of the Iconoclast ban - namely, a return to Hellenistic models for inspiration. Thus, the figure drawing for the Dormition of the Virgin and the sense of balance in the painting's composition are both dignified and admirable down to the folds on an attending angel's garments. From this Ohrid painting art historians can readily deduce the magnificence of lost frescoes in Constantinople churches dating from the Great Schism (1054) to the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks (1453).

Greek Byzantine artists traveling from Salonika in the middle of the 12th century also departed from the road at Bitola to head northeast to Nerezi, near present-day Skopje. Here the key link between the Second Byzantine Renaissance during the period of the Comneni Dynasty (1081-1185) and the Italian Renaissance to follow a century and a half later can be found in the Monastery of St. Pantelejmon. The monumental fresco of the Deposition (or Lamentation) of Christ, painted in 1164, contains the same note of profound feeling that was later to characterize the work of Giotto in Italy.
The Deposition of Christ, essentially humanist in character, emphasizes pure emotion and human feeling - all this, in contrast to the sublime approach to the unworldly characteristic of Byzantine art during the middle period. Again, the unknown artist who painted the Deposition did not stand alone, for Byzantine art in Constantinople was experiencing a revival during the 12th century. In fact, art historians today are still trying to measure the full breath of this burst of artistic creativity during the Second Byzantine Renaissance that lasted until the ruinous Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204. In any case, the long held assumption that humanism and personality in art began with the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century was proven dramatically false once the paint and whitewash were removed from the Nerezi frescoes shortly after the Second World War.

Yet another discovery important for the art historian was made at Kurbinovo, midway between Bitola and Ohrid, where the Church of St. George had once been used for storage. Its restored frescoes, dating from 1191, stress individualization of the face and accent beauty in color and texture. The unknown artist, whose humanist figures of Christ and the Archangel Gabriel are singular in expression and composition, was a Byzantine master schooled at Constantinople, for the Kurbinovo wall paintings provide a bridge to the Third Byzantine Renaissance under the Palaeologi Emperors (1258-1453), the last flowering in the East that in its essentials paralleled the Renaissance in Italy. Indeed, the figure of the Archangel Gabriel finds its creative echo in the mosaics uncovered at the Church of the Chora in Constantinople, dating from 1310-1320.

What about the Via Egnatia itself? On your next visit to the Film Camera Festival "Manaki Brothers" in Bitola - Monastir to the Turks - stroll down the Main Street to the ruins of Heraclea Linkestis, the ancient Roman town with a history going back to the 4th century B.C. and once a thriving metropolis until devastated by an earthquake. The most important artifacts found on the site have been removed to museums, but a taste of the life style practiced in this metropolis can be had by viewing a pair of documentaries: Ljubisha Georgievski's Sic Transit Gloria Mundi - Heraclea (1974) and Kocho Nedkov's Archaeology and Architecture (1980).

Ohrid - A Cradle of Civilization

Ohrid - both the magnificent city with its 35 churches and the lovely lake with its natural springs and unique flora - has been selected by UNESCO for preservation as a national historical monument of major importance to the international community.One Ohrid church in particular is world famous: St. John Bogoslav-Caneo (St. John the Evangelist, or the Theologian, at Caneo). The motif of this church serves as the key visual image in Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain, awarded a Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice film festival.Ohrid is renown in Orthodox Christianity as the cradle of Slavonic liturgy, culture, and literature. When the disciples of Cyril and Methodius were expelled from Moravia in 885, and the use of the Slavonic in Christian liturgy condemned in the same year by Pope Stephen VI, their disciples from Salonika were invited by the newly christened Tsar Boris I of Bulgaria to convert the Slav population and establish schools at Ohrid and Preslav, the capital of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. Old Church Slavonic was nourished and developed at Ohrid under St. Clement (d. 916) and St. Naum (d. 910).

Clement of Ohrid, the first Slav and Macedonian poet, wrote numerous hymns, sermons, and liturgical texts, in addition to translating the Bible from the Greek into the Slavonic. When the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon requested Clement's presence elsewhere, Naum took his place and founded a monastery for study and meditation at the other end of Lake Ohrid. There he and his disciples perfected the original Slavonic alphabet used by Cyril and Methodius for the conversion of the Slav peoples into the Glagolitic script, which later formed the basis for the modern Cyrillic alphabet. Meanwhile, St Constantine, who had studied under Naum and was consecrated a bishop in 906, did the same at the Bulgarian court in Preslav.

Ohrid's importance as "Europe's first university" developed rapidly under the enlightened Bulgarian Tsar Simeon (893-927). The Slavonic alphabet gradually replaced Greek as the official liturgical language. It also played an important role in combatting the Bogomil heresy, an outgrowth of pagan resentment to Christianity and Orthodox hierarchy; the heresy, well established in the region by 950, was to spread across the Balkans over the next four centuries. More importantly, the Cyrillic alphabet proved to be an indispensable instrument in the conversion of the Russians to the Orthodox faith at the bequest of Vladimir, Grand Duke of Kiev, in 988.

The fall of the First Bulgarian Kingdom in 1018 coincided with the rise and fall of the first Macedonian state under Tsar Samuel, 976-1014. Based first at Prespa and later at Ohrid, Samuel's empire included the whole of Macedonia (excepting Salonika), all of Albania, a large share of Bulgaria, and regions to the north as far as Bosnia. In defiance of the Byzantine emperor, Basil II, Samuel also re-established the Bulgarian patriarchate, with Ohrid as its ecclesiastical center and a commanding fortress to protect the city. Thus, when Samuel proclaimed himself tsar in 993, apparently with the consent of Pope Gregory V, Ohrid's position as a cradle of civilization was further enhanced. For the next millennium, it was to formulate its own language and culture, which, in turn, determined the fate of the Macedonian state down to the present day.

In this regard, Trajche Popov's documentary, Cyril and Methodius (1970), offers a Macedonian version of events in the lives of the two saints - from the time of their invention of the Slavonic alphabet at a monastery in Salonika, to be used for translations of Greek theological texts in the conversion of the Slavs, up until their deaths in Rome.

Iconography

It's not a problem of where to start - but where to finish! Few countries in the world can fall back on such a rich tradition of art and culture as the Republic of Macedonia. And despite the ravages to Orthodox Christianity under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks over five centuries, the Macedonian heritage of icons and frescoes remained fairly intact due to a general policy of allowing isolated monasteries to protect and safeguard precious artistic treasures.

Let's begin with Kocho Nedkov's pair of documentaries: Medieval Frescoes in Macedonia (1957) and Frescoes and Icons (1980). Although Medieval Frescoes in Macedonia does little more than offer a passing glance at the beauty of frescoes and wall paintings under restoration in six churches - St. Sophia and St. Clement (formerly St. Bogorodica Perivleptos, or Holy Mother of God, Most Glorious) in Ohrid, St. Pantelejmon Monastery and St. Nikola Church near Skopje, and the two St. George Churches in Kurbinovo and Staro Nagorichani - it underscores a rich cultural heritage of over a hundred churches and monasteries in Macedonia, each with a history of its own and some with treasures to match. For safe keeping, as Frescoes and Icons confirms, the most valuable of over 22,000 recorded icons and Old Slavonic manuscripts famous for their page illuminations are housed today in 22 national museums and galleries.

Examples of the Macedonian tradition of woodcarved iconostases can take the breath away. The popular art of carving for houses of worship, particularly for monasteries far off the beaten path, began as early as the 14th century and was then perfected over the course of centuries. Famous woodcarved iconostases can be found in the Churches of St. Saviour at Skopje, St. Pantelejmon at Nerezi, St. Naum near Ohrid, St. Dimitrie at Bitola, and in the Monasteries at Treskovec, Selce, and Marko. But the most famous of all, a place of pilgrimage for artists and intellectuals in addition to serving the general population on religious feastdays, is the Monastery of St. Jovan Bigorski in western Macedonia near Debar on the Albanian border.

The woodcarved iconostasis at St. Jovan Bigorski, dating from the Macedonian revival of the 19th century, is renown for the richness of its spiritual expression. Its artists belong to the Mijachi family, whose craftsmen have continued the tradition up to the present in Gari, Galichnik, and other villages in the surrounding area. For nearly two hundred years craftsmen from the Radika Valley have carved not only wonderfully decorated iconostases reflecting lively natural scenes and rural peasant life, but they also carved doors, staircases, ceilings, crosses, altars, and thrones. The tradition goes back at least as far as the 12th-century door to St. Nicholas Church in Ohrid, decorated with carved images of fantastic beasts and warrior saints.

Indeed, spirituality and meditation was raised to a way of life over the centuries at the Macedonian monasteries, the more so under Turkish rule. Since the iconostasis in Orthodox Christianity serves the same purpose as the altar triptych in Latin Christianity, with the icon on the iconostasis functioning like the cross on an altar, its importance to a national identity cannot be minimized. One historic icon, now hanging in the Gallery of Icons at Ohrid, is known to every visitor to this corner of the Balkans: the "Annunciation," painted on lacquered wood in the 11th or 12th century by an unknown artist for St. Clement Church in Ohrid.

Kiril Cenevski's feature film Anguish (1975), set in the 11th century, contains scenes shot in St. Clement Church at Ohrid. Although its theme is the spread of the Bogomil heresy in the 11th century, the historical epic came as close to being a national film monument as anything else produced at Vardar Film. The preservation and restoration of the frescoes and the iconostasis in this church inspire awe and reverence.

Struga - Poetry in the Balkans

The 20th Struga Poetry Evenings, held on the banks of Lake Ohrid in late August of 1981, was a very special occasion: Blazhe Koneski (1921-1993), Macedonia's poet laureate, was awarded the festival's prestigious Golden Wreath. In previous years the wreath had been bestowed on W.H. Auden (USA), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Eugenio Montale (Italy), Leopold Sedar Senghor (Senegal), Rafael Alberti (Spain), and Hans Magnus Enzenberger (Germany), among others. And Struga could rightly boast of having bestowed its wreath on Eugenio Montale two years before the Italian poet received the Noble Prize for Literature in 1975.

Blazhe Koneski's status as a poet cannot be minimized. For not only was this modest academic the finest poet of his generation, but he was also an internationally recognized linguist who had composed the first official grammar of modern Macedonian, supervised the publication of a standard Macedonian dictionary, wrote a history of the Macedonian language, published numerous studies on medieval and contemporary Macedonian writings, and, as President of the Macedonian Academy, edited scholarly editions of old Macedonian texts. His contemporaries, at home and abroad, referred to him as the "Father of Modern Macedonian."

Struga embraces its poets in grand style. A bridge serves as a platform for the evening readings, with the audience seated on the banks of the Drim River as it flows northward from Lake Ohrid. Writers from around the globe mingle in cafes and restaurants. Poetry is the main subject of conversation on boat trips across the lake to the Monastery of St. Naum. An exhibition of books pays mute witness to Macedonian literature via translations into several foreign languages. Indeed, against the backdrop of "Europe's first university" - Ohrid as a cultural and religious center dates from the ninth century - there's no other festival in the world quite like it.

The Struga Poetry Evenings as an international event was founded to honor the Miladinov Brothers, Dimitrija (1810-1862) and Konstantin (1830-1862), who, born in Struga, wrote romantic poetry in their native language from exile in Moscow and later died in an Istanbul prison. As forerunners of the Macedonian Literary Revival, the teacher-poets relied chiefly on folk-songs and handed-down heroic legends and fairy tales to free the Macedonian language from influences imposed by occupying rulers: the Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Turks. Two Macedonian monks, Joakim Krchovski (d. 1820) and Kiril Pejchinovik-Tetoec (d. 1845), also published under Turkish rule the first books to appear in native Macedonian, but generally speaking the language spoken in intellectual circles up to the First World War was an artificial Macedonian, more a Slav mixture of Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian than a true native language.

Although Bulgaria achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century, Macedonia as a people had to wait for the Balkan Wars and two World Wars until true national independence was finally realized. In fact, it wasn't until the Macedonian Republic was founded as part of a new Yugoslavia in 1944 that the oldest literature among the Slavs became the youngest script. In 1947, the first postwar generation of Macedonian writers - Blazhe Koneski, Aco Shopov, Slavko Janevski, Vlado Maleski, and Kole Chashule - met in Skopje to form the Writers Association of Macedonia, at the time numbering only seven members (in contrast to today's 300).

The Macedonian Question - a political dilemma in regard to borders and spoken languages - was to plague this corner of the Balkans for yet another century after freedom had been won from the Turks. The claims and impositions of three neighbors - Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs - required an official language to resolve at least the fundamental dilemma without recourse to the more heated discussion on borders. Blazhe Koneski and his colleagues therefore sought to mold an independent tongue out of the dialects spoken in Central Macedonia - particularly in the towns of Bitola, Kichevo, Prilep, and Veles, where a "pure Macedonian" had been spoken over the centuries. For this reason, too, folk-songs and other traditional expressions of poetry were to play an important role in constructing a new grammar for a very young language.

Although the artistic life of Macedonia can be found in its capital Skopje, and the heartland of spoken Macedonian may be located in and around Bitola, its cultural center is still Lake Ohrid with its twin cities of Ohrid and Struga. The Ohrid Summer Festival, an international event scheduled annually from mid-July to mid-August, draws overflow crowds to concerts held at the Church of St. Sophia. And documentarists at Vardar Film and Macedonian Television continue to record those Golden Wreath highlights at the Struga Poetry Evenings when honor and respect were recently paid to Andrei Voznesensky, Allen Ginsberg, Tadeusz Rozewicz, and Joseph Brodsky, among other great names in poetry.

A Cultural Revival

Of course, the Macedonian Revival dates from the Miladinov Brothers writing in the middle of the 19th century, particularly from poet Konstantin Miladinov's Longing for the South and Dimitar Miladinov's collection of Macedonian folk-songs published in 1861 by Zagreb's Bishop Strossmayer. But a more authentic "cultural revival" can be traced to just fifty years ago. The poet Kosta Racin (1908-1943), whose White Dawns collection was published in 1939 in Zagreb, has often been referred to as the "father of modern Macedonian literature." And Vojdan Chernodrinski's popular folk-play, Bloody Macedonian Wedding, also written during the interregnum period, was the first authentic Macedonian drama. Their contemporaries were the poets Kole Nedelkovski, Anton Popov, Mite Bogoevski, and Nikola Jonkov Vapcarov.

The cultural revival of the postwar period was to find expression also in productions at Vardar Film. As was common in socialist cinematographies at that time, writers who had the ears of government leaders played a commanding role in Macedonian feature film production. Vlado Maleski (1919-1984), short story writer and literary editor, wrote the screenplay for Belgrade director Vojislav Nanovic's Frosina (1952), the first Macedonian feature film. Later, Maleski was to pen one of the classics of modern Macedonian fiction, the novel Loom (1969).

Slavko Janevski (1920-2000) - whose novel The Village behind the Seven Ash Trees (1952), a realist approach to everyday peasant life, was the first to be published in Macedonian - collaborated as screenwriter on Ljubljana director France Shtiglic's Wolf's Night (1955) and Visa of Evil (1959), both war stories that drew upon personal experiences as a partisan fighter. A prolific writer, Janevski adapted to the screen Vojdan Chernodrinski's classic historical drama, Bloody Macedonian Wedding (1967), directed by Trajche Popov; collaborated with Pande Tashkovski on a film adaptation of the latter's epic war novel, Faithful to the Oath, retitled Macedonian Part of Hell (1971) under the direction of Zagreb's Vatroslav Mimica; and adapted his own humanist war novel Two Women Named Maria to the screen as Knot (1985), directed by Kiril Cenevski.

Jovan Boshkovski (1920-1968), a short story writer and novelist, specialized in screenplays dealing with the Ilinden Day uprising and the short-lived Krushevo Republic of 1903. He adapted to the screen his own popular novel, The Assassins of Salonika (1961), directed by Belgrade's Zhika Mitrovic, and collaborated with Macedonian stage-and-director Ljubisha Georgievski on Republic in Flames (1969). Boshkovski also was one of the screenwriters on Dimitrie Osmanli's Memento (1967), a feature film depicting the tragedy of the earthquake that hit Skopje in 1963.

Simon Drakul (1930-1999), poet and novelist, was awarded a Golden Arena at the Pula festival for his screenplay for Zhika Mitrovic's Till Victory and Beyond (1966), a war story with a humanist message. He also scripted one of the key feature films in Macedonian cinema: Branko Gapo's Time without War (1969), an uncompromising account of failed collective farming. And he was the screenwriter on Ljubisha Georgievski's Price of a Town (1970) and Branko Gapo's Macedonian Saga (1993).

Playwright Kole Chashule (b. 1921), who served for a time as the Director of the Macedonian National Theatre, saw his successful play Darkness (1962), a drama about a political assassination, adapted to the screen as Days of Temptation (1965), directed by Branko Gapo with two eminent Macedonian writers, Dimitar Solev (b. 1930) and Gane Todorovski (b. 1929), collaborating on the screenplay. Later, Dimiter Solev teamed with Gapo again on the screen adaptation his own historical novel Under the Heat, about youths in the partisan resistance and retitled A Shot (1972) in its film version.
Zhivko Chingo (1936-1987), widely recognized as among the best of the new generation of Macedonian writers to appear on the scene in the 1960s, was the screenwriter on Dimitrie Osmanli's Thirst (1971), Vardar Film's response to the critically hailed "black film" in Yugoslav cinema. His story Tatko also served as the inspiration for actor-director Kole Angelovski's We Are Cursed, Irina (1973). And Petre M. Andreevski (b. 1934), acclaimed at the 1971 Struga Poetry Evenings as the republic's leading poet, wrote the screenplay for Branko Gapo's critically praised The Longest Road (1976), an historical epic set again during the Ilinden Day uprising that was awarded a Silver Arena at the Pula festival.

It is generally conceded that Macedonian cinema officially came of age in 1971, when Aegean Macedonian writer Tashko Georgievski (b. 1935) adapted his distinguished novel Black Seed (1962) for a 1971 film version with the same title and directed by Kiril Cenevski. This story of the tragic aftermath of the Greek Civil War was to have its sequel a decade later in The Red Horse (1981), directed by Stole Popov from a screenplay by Tashko Georgievski, who documented again the pain and suffering of innocent Aegean Macedonians rounded up in northern Greece for transportation and exile in Middle Asia during Stalinist times.

Indeed, Black Seed and The Red Horse, both awarded Director Prizes at festivals in Pula and Belgrade, form the backbone of Macedonian cinema.

Macedonia - From a Nation to a Republic

Altogether, there were four distinct historical periods in Macedonia's progression to becoming an independent, sovereign state and the 181st member of the United Nations. All of these periods have been treated, or at least echoed, in the postwar history of Macedonian cinema.

The first sovereign state emerged at the end of the tenth century and lasted for nearly fifty years (969-1018) under Tsar Samuel, when Christianized Macedonian Slavs rebelled against Byzantine rule and maintained a capital at Ohrid, the religious and cultural center of Slavonic Orthodoxy. Although Tsar Samuel was eventually defeated in 1014 by Basil II (976-1025), Byzantine Emperor of the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056), the descendants of Macedonians living in the region today can trace their cultural identity as far back as a thousand years. Kiril Cenevski's historical epic Anguish (1975) generally deals with this period.

The second Macedonian moment of independence was the Krushevo Republic, founded in the wake of the Ilinden Day uprising on 2 August 1903 and covering an area of approximately 10,000 square meters in and around the town of Krushevo in western Macedonia. Although the uprising lasted only three months, with the revolutionaries killed or imprisoned, it was instrumental in nullifying the 1878 decision of the Congress of Berlin that allowed the Ottoman Empire to maintain continued control over Macedonia. In effect, the uprising anticipated the revolt of the Young Turks and eventually freed Macedonia from Ottoman rule, although troubles with its neighbors led inevitably to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. No less than six Macedonian feature films treat the historical period of the Krushevo Republic.

Macedonian achieved independence for a third time at the end of the Second World War, when on 2 August 1944 (the 41st anniversary of the Ilinden Day uprising) it became a republic in federated Yugoslavia. For the next half-century Macedonia developed into a cultural and economic entity. For the first time in modern history, its borders were politically determined and secured, in spite of continued agitation with neighbors over the so-called "Macedonian Question." The immediate postwar period also witnessed mass deportation of Aegean Macedonians to prison camps in Greece and labor camps in Middle Asia, followed later by migration of workers abroad to western Europe and an emigration movement to Australia and North America. Despite these setbacks, however, the Republic of Macedonia made great cultural strides in the direction of an authentic Macedonian language and a revival that embraced all the arts. As this monograph underscores in some detail, Macedonian cinema as a whole - feature film production, documentaries, animation shorts - waxed strong with each passing decade.

On 8 September 1991, 75% of the Macedonian electorate voted on a referendum for sovereignty - with 95% casting their vote in favor of full independence. On 17 November 1991, a new Constitution was adapted.

Kiro Gligorov was elected president. Five years later, the Republic of Macedonia has not only been recognized by over 50 countries, but it has also resolved controversies and reached agreements with all its neighbors: Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, and Serbia/Yugoslavia.

Furthermore, it has achieved prominence in the film world: Stole Popov's Tattoo (1991), the first authentic Macedonian feature film, officially represented the newly constituted republic at the 1992 Montreal World Film Festival and was nominated in the same year for "Felix" European Film of the Year. And, at the 1994 Venice film festival, Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain, a British-French-Macedonian co-production that was partially shot in the Ohrid area, was awarded the Golden Lion.
Today, film production in Macedonia is undergoing major changes. Still, due in great part to the national prestige of annually programming the International Film Camera "Manaki Brothers" Festival in Bitola at the beginning of October, Macedonian cinematography has taken its rightful place among the world's filmlands.