Homelands (2020) - full transcript

Nothing Is Here Yet,
But A Form Can Already Match It

Homelands

Last year, around February,
we had an incident up in the mountain.

Some mountaineers came,
from Skopje, two mountaineering clubs.

And they set off,
there was a storm.

They didn’t listen to us:

the visibility was really low,
just a few feet.

It was snowing the entire day,
a meter of snow fell in just one hour.

They weren’t really well-equipped,
from what I could tell.

I was just here
when they first arrived.

They headed up to the church.



And on their way back from the church
two of them got lost.

So instead of coming back
to the ski center

they got stuck somewhere
behind the mountain.

Their club didn’t provide
this information on time

so they weren’t reported as missing
until after two hours, give or take.

We first started
looking for them by the phone

and we found out,
through our army’s transmitter

that they were stuck somewhere
at the steep part of the mountain

in the direction of Macedonia,
Skopje, of Bitola in fact.

For a while, they were answering
the phone, the girl did.

This guy who works for the rescue
team went down to look for them.

But because of the storm, the fog,
he was unable to get them.

So he went to the other side,
and then he found them.

But the girl was already...
she already froze to death.



Then he found the guy,
he started shaking him

but he was already
hallucinating from the cold.

When the rescuer tried to reach him,
the guy pushed him, slipped and fell.

And the hardest part was the next day
when this young man’s father came

Aleksandar was his name I think

He says: “Is my son dead?”
– “Yes, he is” I say.

Then he asks me:
“Are you sure?”

Here, I remember, in 1947,
there were partisans in the village.

Actually, the soldiers
were in the village

and the partisans would come
from outside and attack the army here.

In ’47 there was army in this village,
and the people from the mountain

used to come, hit them, the army,
and go back to the mountains.

That was in 1946-’47.
Here, at the foot of the mountain

the army would attack
with machine guns

and then the partisans
would come down and attack...

Our army, all around the mountain,
had the machine guns

but the guys from
the mountain used to come

kill the army and go back again.
Antartes, you know.

The illegal warriors.

In ’47-’48 there was illegal
movement across the mountains.

There was army here
so the soldiers fought the partisans

in the mountains...

Then the army went to the
mountains and finish the illegals.

From ’47 to ’48 this was.

Some of the accused ones
were taken away and killed.

Who did that?
- I don’t know exactly who...

He says he doesn’t remember
who did that but some kind of army

was coming here, took some of
our men and just killed them.

But he doesn’t remember
who they were.

It was war then...

It was war.
Mixed things.

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To let the others hold the reigns

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To let you be, while I'm not

When you dictate my life

With my earth and my water

When you dictate my life

With my earth and my water

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To see that the road
is always closed for me

I refuse to have my opinion silenced

To wait in vain for the right time

I refuse to have my opinion silenced

To wait in vain for the right time

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To let the others hold the reigns

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To let you be, while I'm not

When you dictate my life

With my earth and my water

When you dictate my life

With my earth and my water

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To see that the road
is always closed for me

I refuse to have my opinion silenced

To wait in vain for the right time

I refuse to have my opinion silenced

To wait in vain for the right time

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse

To let the others hold the reigns

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog

I refuse to let them
do whatever they want

I refuse to drown in the fog!

You’re hungry, aren’t you...

Over there too...
Good job!

Eat this too, here...
Eat it...

Oh, you rascal!
Here...

Here, this too...

Go on!

We are going to prepare 20 apples...

... to fill the pan.

I’ll do it slowly so you can catch up,
we don’t want them to turn brown...

With apples,
you need to be quick.

And then...

we’ll fill the pan

and add sugar and cinnamon

and cloves, to make them smell nice...

And then we’ll put them
in the stove.

Not an oven, but a stove.

The traditional way...

And whoever tries them,
will come back for more...

Straighten the wheel!
Straighten it!

A bit to the left!

Left!

Turn left, left!

Go on, go on!

Straighten it!
Straighten it!

TO COMRADE TITO

ZEMUN FOR LIFE

The change of weather
comes with the wind

there is this precise moment
as the summer reaches its end

when something in the air changes

sometimes I think

you can get this feeling
only in the places you call home

the change of seasons
is seen as unavoidable

if only it were like that
with social systems too

after the summer
leaves remain on the ground

after the change of social systems
ruins remain

ruins

our world will become so hot
it’s always going to be summer

the scorching,
killing summer

I imagine
our world disappearing

I wish I could say slowly
but not really

and so I think
that in a little while

we are all going to disappear
in the fire of the sun

now this wind that announces the fall
gently bends the grass

it sprouts from the walls foundation
backyard of a house

there’s a tree around
and the secret life of plants goes on

a woman who used to live here
became the most important woman to me

ruins

there were people
and there was war

someone was killed
someone escaped

people left

and the houses
collapsed from sorrow

ruins are monuments
built by the nature

the patrimony of communists
who used to live here

sometimes I think that the war against nature
is somehow also a reckoning with communism

the trees actually
live the communism

they understand the equal distribution
of resources and goods through their roots

they know that they will grow
and live together as a forest

if everyone has what they need
not if one branches out

so that it suffocates the others

trees and forests know that resources
have to be nourished and shared justly

they know the thrill and the beauty
but also the perfect peace

dead soldiers wounded in German
offensives are the proof

dead youth whose bed
is now forest moss

lives interrupted
and unburied in human rites

the forest took them all in
they merged with it

blended with the moss
the trees the grass

and now as these beeches
and oaks stand tall

somewhere in their leaves
dead partisans are rustling

trees hid my grandmother

when it was rough and when
her father was killed

when she fought for a better world
and for capitalists to drop dead

trees hid many other women like her

they flutter for them and sing
keep them cool when it’s hot

hide them from the stalking eyes

tell them stories
with their hidden tongue

about the beauty of the equal
distribution of goods

all this today

that’s revenge against trees
because they know about communism

I sat on a clearing in the forest

and the forest talked to me about her

about her father’s death

and how she said she was leaving
to be a refugee in socialism

whatever happened to her afterwards
we always wondered

she looked like you

except for that silly board
she had a real gun

which she used to hunt
grouses for the wounded

before falling asleep

she would say that our roots
make the best pillow

and we would laugh
at her charming lies

she used to sing lullabies to me
she caressed my cheek

when I was little
she taught me Greek

she learned that from us,
the forest said

if she misses a note we drop an acorn
on the ground and she sings it right

that’s why she sang so lovely to you
you sing lovely too and really

you look like her
except for that silly board

I left the forest
and I was thinking

how the female line
of continuity of history and politics

is passed through lullabies

take this woman

remembered still
by these ruins and this forest

she fought for something

for emancipation,
for socialism

and then in a socialist country
she spent her lifetime in patriarchy

and in this patriarchy
she sang combat songs to me

taught me a foreign language
and the beauty of the collective

that is how the song passed along
the female line of combat

that’s how the fighting spirit
of women circulates

the matter circulates through nature,
basic laws of physics

so you can’t have ideology
or politics without guts

the lines on a woman’s face
are born out of desire for justice

I seem like a young woman

and the superficial eye never sees
that I am made of old women

a perfectly arranged collage
of old women

makes up my skin,
organs and spirit

they made me
I owe them everything I am

without them I would never
even consider rebellion

I wouldn’t know
the language of the forest

or the emotion of the ruins

I would have been more fearful
and more scared of life

and so here

I’m learning to snowboard in a ski center
made upon ruins of my grandmother’s house

I feel the wind in my hair

I soak in the air of my grandmother’s
childhood and her revolutionary years

as the chill bites
and freezes my eyes

the mountain the ruins
and I talk and dance together

it’s a dance of memory
and strength

a dance with the fight
in its steps

a dance that reminds us
of the women who fought

right here and now
behind that hill

a river of women
is gathering

still out of reach
of the human eye

snow falcons
that you can’t see yet

who, as falcons do, will soon come soaring
down against all the world’s injustice

it’s right there the river of women that’s
just about to flow through the mountains

riding a snowboard
and not giving a fuck

the river of women
is taking over the world

powerful and terrifying,
unstoppable, destructive

she is coming down the slope and
behind them forests are rising up

snow falcons on boards
carrying everything on their way

the last judgment
by the women and the nature

poetic justice taking its shape

wiping capitalism off
the face of the earth

no more unpaid home labor

derelict hospitals
and unnecessary deaths

destroyed rivers
and burned down forests

or eternal desire for profit

before them the senseless
capital accumulators are trembling

all of them who calmly sent
so many people into the ground

who took pleasure
in other man’s hunger

seized the power uncontrollably

all of them

the women, and I with them,
we just smile

it’s a smile of sweet revenge
and poetic justice

justice that is coming
helmed by the women and the forest

and behind them
the masses of

the hungry, the sad,
the dispossessed, the rugged

and now let the world’s
injustice tremble

let the poetic justice sing!