IF THIS WERE A MOVIE
By Almir Imširević
Almir Imsirević's inspirational text depicts the author's almost autobiographical relationship with the phenomenon of the siege. Twenty years ago, we both entered the war as no more than boys, but now we speak about it from a father’s point of view, from the perspective of adults. The text is written concisely, and the movie metaphor is not accidental. This is a fragmentary and post-traumatic work, elliptical in dramaturgy, with some fleeting reflections of Imširević's earlier, If This Were a Performance . . . Among other questions, is that of whether or not cinematic (or stage) truth can be stronger than the commonplace truth of the day-to-day. For us theater workers who live in parallel worlds, it is the truth of the stage that can be stronger, more beautiful or uglier, than that of everyday.
— Dino Mustafić, director, Kad bi ovo bio film . . .
The narrator is a disabled person who, like the audience, is displaced by the plot itself. In doing so, Imširević created a distance for re-examining his own relationship to the same historical event: It ranges from a comic review of repeated mistrust and misunderstanding to a devastating realization of the total predictability of the tragic event. The author places the war tragedies "side by side" with Whitney Houston's wedding, Richard Gere's divorce, Haile Selassie's death, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize, but also Bruce Springsteen's World Tour, and frames the drama with a camera obscura simulation, as a technical and ideological solution because it refers to a text that is organized by a series of photographs . . . This is a drama of successive "crashes." The author builds the need for movement in parallel to the feeling of being trapped. Still shots of discrete moments only emphasize the pure impossibility of resisting time which moves inexorably forward.
— Muhamed Dželilović, From the preface to "Seven Dramas from BiH," Silson, Skopje
Images from the 2012 premiere of If This Were a Movie . . ., at the National Theater of Bosnia. Photos by Fuad Fočo.
About Almir Imširević
Drawing by Biba Kayewich
The story in Almir Imširević's plays is really the one we all experience today. The author puts his finger on the eternal wounds of society. Imširević's drama exposes. — Sava Andjelković, preface to Si c’etait un Spectacle, L'espace D'un Instant
Almir Imširević is a playwright, dramaturg, critic, and professor. His works have been produced in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, France, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Included as a playwright in the Twentieth Century Anthology of Bosnian and Herzegovinian Drama, he has served as a dramaturg as well on numerous plays for B&H theaters, and as a critic for Sarajevo-based magazines.
