A Word on Filmmaking, Storytelling and Culture with Ana Jakimska
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Ana Jakimska has graduated in General and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology Blaze Koneski in Skopje and afterwards has continued her studies in Film-making also in Skopje. Enthusiastic, motivated and progressive – with her work behind and her current engagements she always tackles some key-social and cultural challenges embedded in the Macedonian contemporary society.
Ana Jakimska has graduated in General and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology Blaze Koneski in Skopje and afterwards has continued her studies in Film-making also in Skopje. Enthusiastic, motivated and progressive – with her work behind and her current engagements she always tackles some key-social and cultural challenges embedded in the Macedonian contemporary society. Her movies produced include: Shawl (2011, short), Call me Barbara (2013, documentary/short), Loverinth (2014, short) and It’s Cold Outside (2014, short, to be premiered on Skopje Film Festival 2014). She is also into photography and into storytelling and literature in general. We are happy to have Ana answering few questions for Mladiinfo this week!
M!: You already have Bachelor degree in literature behind before dedicating more to film-making, therefore, how would you describe your personal relationship with literature?
Ana: The thought of a dimly light library with never-ending bookcases and piles of books from different centuries, from all the far ends of the world, is one of the most exciting images out there. Anyone who will argue with that is a fool. I have been surrounded with books all my life, since both my mom and dad are literature majors. I remember, I wrote (what I then called) a novel when I was ten – it was a horribly developed story about me and my doll-brother venturing into a fantastic world in the depth of some woods. Maybe that was the first strong sign that I would not make a brilliant writer, although the passion was strong. But then I read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and thought I might become a good reader instead. And so, years later, I enrolled at the Department for Comparative Literature. My relationship with literature has never been a passing flame – rather, it is a deep devotion that will last a lifetime.
M!: As you continued your studies in the field of film-making, how do you find the combination of literature and movies?
Ana: Every filmmaker must love books. Books are going to teach you a lot about the way human mind and emotions work. It is true that in order to be able to tell a story as a filmmaker you will constantly need to get in touch with many different concepts of the world and different people, but it would be wrong to limit these “meetings” only to real life interaction. Why limit yourself to the present when you can grab a book and get in touch with the great minds that have lived before you? Lately, I have been spending my afternoons rereading Hemingway and I keep learning a lot about the art of storytelling from him. Maybe film-making has been around for a little more than a century, but storytelling, the core of the art of film, has been around forever.