Jasmin Dizdar

Jasmin Dizdar (June 8, 1961, Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a screenwriter, film director and author on cinema.

He grew up in a secular Bosniaks family and in the tradition of secular humanism. He attended the elementary school and high school (Gymnasium) in Zenica. In addition to regular classes at school he was an award winning short story writer. As an adolescent he joined a local film club where he wrote, edited and directed numerous award winning short films and began to take interest in film theory, particularly Russian structuralist film theory.

Jasmin Dizdar studied film directing at the prestigious Prague film school FAMU. Legendary Czech film director Elmar Klos (Oscar winner for the film "The Shop on Main Street") gave Grand Jury prize to Dizdar's graduation film "After Silence". This student film is preserved as a national treasure in the Czech national film archive.

His friendship with internationally acclaimed Czech cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek led to the publishing of Dizdar’s book about film director Milos Forman, "Audition for a Director" (Prague, 1990).

Dizdar moved to United Kingdom where he wrote number of screenplays for BBC Television and a radio play, "Intimate Tragedy", for BBC Radio 4.

"Beautiful People" is the first feature film written and directed by Jasmin Dizdar. The film won an award for the best film in Un Certain Regard category at Cannes Film Festival 1999, a "Gold Gryphon" at Saint-Petersburg International Festival of Festivals, and many other awards around the world. "Beautiful People" is a satire set in London, during October 1993. It follows smitten Britons and Bosnians facing the same dilemma, unable to live in their own country or away from it. The lives of four English families are affected by an encounter with war refugees from the ex-Yugoslavia. As Britons and Bosnians try to come to terms with the fast changing world of the nineties, they gradually realise they share similar life crises and dreams. “Mamma Roma” (2006) - tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mamma Roma" (1962) - is segment for the feature film "Les Europeens". A sophisticated Italian tour-guide lady and a primitive Maasai warrior meet by accident at Rome's car-park. As she desperately tries to get rid of him, she falls in love with him and their inability to understand each other helps them achieve perfect harmony.

External links

* Jasmin Dizdar (imdb) - [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0229026/]
* Profile: Jasmin Dizdar (4 pages) [http://www.allbusiness.com/services/amusement-recreation-services/4370843-1.html]
* Just Beautiful - by a film critic for Time magazine Richard Schickel [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996401,00.html?iid=chix-sphere]
* Beautiful Film - by a Pulitzer Prize winning American film critic Roger Joseph Ebert [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000303/REVIEWS/3030302/1023]
* Reconnect what chaos rips apart - by a film critic for New York Times A. O. Scott [http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/021800beautiful-film-review.html]
* To the street - a special in-depth analysis by a scholar Lesley Smith [http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/b/beautiful-people.shtml]