Dane Komljen

Dane Komljen

History

Dane Komljen (1986, Yugoslavia) was educated in film directing in Belgrade. After his studies he made a video installation in Serbia and short films in Bosnia and Croatia. At Le Fresnoy in France, he learned about contemporary art during his Master's study. Komljen's Our Body was selected for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films in 2015 and then nominated for the European Film Awards by IFFR. In 2016, he returns to the Rotterdam competition with the co-directed All Still Orbit.

Profile

Dane Komljen

Movies

Project
Writer
Forty-six years after its completion, the International Trade Fair Complex in Lagos, Nigeria, lies waterlogged and in disrepair, its modernist concrete pavilions flooded and overgrown with vegetation, and its shopping stalls and convention centers now serve as makeshift workshops, bike repair stalls, and playgrounds. Shooting in a soft-edged standard-definition video, Komljen observes the complex’s grounds with equanimity and warmth, marking both its history as a former utopian project and its present-day vernacular uses.
Project
Director
Forty-six years after its completion, the International Trade Fair Complex in Lagos, Nigeria, lies waterlogged and in disrepair, its modernist concrete pavilions flooded and overgrown with vegetation, and its shopping stalls and convention centers now serve as makeshift workshops, bike repair stalls, and playgrounds. Shooting in a soft-edged standard-definition video, Komljen observes the complex’s grounds with equanimity and warmth, marking both its history as a former utopian project and its present-day vernacular uses.
Afterwater
Writer
Afterwater is a three-part film spanning fiction, documentary and experimental film aiming to study and compare lakes across the world and their hidden treasures: submerged settlements, failed utopias and collective dreams, the remains of past eras and the seeds of a hopeful future.
Afterwater
Director
Afterwater is a three-part film spanning fiction, documentary and experimental film aiming to study and compare lakes across the world and their hidden treasures: submerged settlements, failed utopias and collective dreams, the remains of past eras and the seeds of a hopeful future.
I Was at Home, But...
Jorge, the Young Director
After a 13-year-old student disappears without a trace for a week and suddenly reappears, his mother and teachers are confronted with existential questions that change their whole view of life.
Movements of a Nearby Mountain
Editor
In a remote, abandoned industrial site near a centuries-old ore mine in the Austrian Alps, a self-taught mechanic runs a business exporting used cars to his native Nigeria. As he pursues his lonely day-to-day activities with wondrous serenity, past, present and future begin to overlap, and memories of a lost friendship resurface against the backdrop of a mysterious promise of everlasting resources.
Fantasy Sentences
Editor
Borrowing its title from an experimental text by Walter Benjamin. Many years ago, the cities by the river were gripped by a contagion. Things started to change and everything slowly became something else. It was not clear if transformation was a symptom of the disease or a way to escape it. The contagion touched everything and everyone: animals and plants, stones and soil, men, women and children, their thoughts, their dreams, their memories. An old woman once told me how all memories turn into trees, I could hardly make out what she was saying. She said she could hear the trees singing: To be a body, to be any body. After the years of contagion ended, the cities appeared untouched. One had to look hard to see the traces of the previous time. If one could listen to the trees, what would they say? A way out, a way out?
Fantasy Sentences
Writer
Borrowing its title from an experimental text by Walter Benjamin. Many years ago, the cities by the river were gripped by a contagion. Things started to change and everything slowly became something else. It was not clear if transformation was a symptom of the disease or a way to escape it. The contagion touched everything and everyone: animals and plants, stones and soil, men, women and children, their thoughts, their dreams, their memories. An old woman once told me how all memories turn into trees, I could hardly make out what she was saying. She said she could hear the trees singing: To be a body, to be any body. After the years of contagion ended, the cities appeared untouched. One had to look hard to see the traces of the previous time. If one could listen to the trees, what would they say? A way out, a way out?
Fantasy Sentences
Director
Borrowing its title from an experimental text by Walter Benjamin. Many years ago, the cities by the river were gripped by a contagion. Things started to change and everything slowly became something else. It was not clear if transformation was a symptom of the disease or a way to escape it. The contagion touched everything and everyone: animals and plants, stones and soil, men, women and children, their thoughts, their dreams, their memories. An old woman once told me how all memories turn into trees, I could hardly make out what she was saying. She said she could hear the trees singing: To be a body, to be any body. After the years of contagion ended, the cities appeared untouched. One had to look hard to see the traces of the previous time. If one could listen to the trees, what would they say? A way out, a way out?
All the Cities of the North
Editor
It’s like almost all is lost. Yet still they are here – abandoned bungalows, an artificial lake, dirty plastic bottles, lost donkeys and stray dogs, draining pipes running over fields of salt, deserted factories, statues of revolutionaries, concrete playgrounds covered with weeds, rotten fruit, folded T-shirts, pop songs, decades of forgetting, a single room with a blue tent inside. And it felt like a kiss.
All the Cities of the North
It’s like almost all is lost. Yet still they are here – abandoned bungalows, an artificial lake, dirty plastic bottles, lost donkeys and stray dogs, draining pipes running over fields of salt, deserted factories, statues of revolutionaries, concrete playgrounds covered with weeds, rotten fruit, folded T-shirts, pop songs, decades of forgetting, a single room with a blue tent inside. And it felt like a kiss.
All the Cities of the North
Writer
It’s like almost all is lost. Yet still they are here – abandoned bungalows, an artificial lake, dirty plastic bottles, lost donkeys and stray dogs, draining pipes running over fields of salt, deserted factories, statues of revolutionaries, concrete playgrounds covered with weeds, rotten fruit, folded T-shirts, pop songs, decades of forgetting, a single room with a blue tent inside. And it felt like a kiss.
All the Cities of the North
Director
It’s like almost all is lost. Yet still they are here – abandoned bungalows, an artificial lake, dirty plastic bottles, lost donkeys and stray dogs, draining pipes running over fields of salt, deserted factories, statues of revolutionaries, concrete playgrounds covered with weeds, rotten fruit, folded T-shirts, pop songs, decades of forgetting, a single room with a blue tent inside. And it felt like a kiss.
All Still Orbit
Editor
A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.
All Still Orbit
Director of Photography
A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.
All Still Orbit
Writer
A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.
All Still Orbit
Director
A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.
Our Body
Cinematography
From here, you can see everything: the sea to the right, the mountains to the left, the sky in between.
Our Body
Editor
From here, you can see everything: the sea to the right, the mountains to the left, the sky in between.
Our Body
Director
From here, you can see everything: the sea to the right, the mountains to the left, the sky in between.
A Surplus of Wind
Writer
Two men - one in the West, one in the East, brothers. In both places, life is muted, solitary, nondescript. Here, windows are painted, switches rewired and cigarettes smoked; there, lengths swum, boxing matches prepared for, transactions made. What is it that links these things? Winter swimming pools, the sound of a bell, a bullet passing through bone?
A Surplus of Wind
Director
Two men - one in the West, one in the East, brothers. In both places, life is muted, solitary, nondescript. Here, windows are painted, switches rewired and cigarettes smoked; there, lengths swum, boxing matches prepared for, transactions made. What is it that links these things? Winter swimming pools, the sound of a bell, a bullet passing through bone?
Tiny Bird
Writer
In the flat where I grew up, in a closet, hidden behind his clothes, uniform and a pistol, my father kept a box with papers, school documents and volumes. After he died, I searched the box. In his student report book I found a name of professor who lectured "The basics of Marxist sociology" in 1976. I went to the professor and asked him: "What is friendship?" - "A tiny bird," he said.
Tiny Bird
Director of Photography
In the flat where I grew up, in a closet, hidden behind his clothes, uniform and a pistol, my father kept a box with papers, school documents and volumes. After he died, I searched the box. In his student report book I found a name of professor who lectured "The basics of Marxist sociology" in 1976. I went to the professor and asked him: "What is friendship?" - "A tiny bird," he said.
Tiny Bird
Director
In the flat where I grew up, in a closet, hidden behind his clothes, uniform and a pistol, my father kept a box with papers, school documents and volumes. After he died, I searched the box. In his student report book I found a name of professor who lectured "The basics of Marxist sociology" in 1976. I went to the professor and asked him: "What is friendship?" - "A tiny bird," he said.
Bodily Function
Writer
Adnan is driving a grocery van on his way to sell produce at the market. While he is waiting for a friend's phone call, he suspects his loyalty.
Bodily Function
Director
Adnan is driving a grocery van on his way to sell produce at the market. While he is waiting for a friend's phone call, he suspects his loyalty.
October
Writer
Through the intimate stories of seven young directors, October is the generational attitude towards Serbia today, shown in different perspectives and through different genres - from black comedy to melodrama, poetic portrait to the socially engaged horror. Motif that binds all of the stories together is the tenth anniversary of the democratic revolution. Each film is taking place on that day, 5th of October in 2010, and each film is differently related to the anniversary and what that event means 10 years after. The film brings fresh visions of the seven young directors who were teenagers at the time of the overthrow of president Milosevic and his regime. On a personal and emotional way they show a complex picture of modern Serbia.
October
Director
Through the intimate stories of seven young directors, October is the generational attitude towards Serbia today, shown in different perspectives and through different genres - from black comedy to melodrama, poetic portrait to the socially engaged horror. Motif that binds all of the stories together is the tenth anniversary of the democratic revolution. Each film is taking place on that day, 5th of October in 2010, and each film is differently related to the anniversary and what that event means 10 years after. The film brings fresh visions of the seven young directors who were teenagers at the time of the overthrow of president Milosevic and his regime. On a personal and emotional way they show a complex picture of modern Serbia.
Places I Haven't Been to
Writer
Composed of archival footage of his friends' travels, the director creates a special view of the spaces he did not physically visit.
Places I Haven't Been to
Director
Composed of archival footage of his friends' travels, the director creates a special view of the spaces he did not physically visit.
I am Already Everything I Want to Have
Writer
The boy is new to the city. Daniel doesn't know what to do with himself. He visits his sister, he visits friends. Noise begins to emerge: how to say no to yourself?
I am Already Everything I Want to Have
Director
The boy is new to the city. Daniel doesn't know what to do with himself. He visits his sister, he visits friends. Noise begins to emerge: how to say no to yourself?
The Pursuit
Vozač
Bosnian short film about some people and their problems in the city.