Sarajevo's Winter Olympics: 30 Years On

Cinematographer Donald Duncan’s adventure to Sarajevo in 1984 for the Winter Olympics takes the art of adaptable filmmaking to a whole new level.

A month or so ago, I saw some hilarious Twitter feeds from journalists who had just arrived at the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia. It was the usual stuff about unfinished hotels and badly assembled toilet seats and wacky translations on signs.

It got me reminiscing back to February 1984 when I was making the transition from camera assistant to DOP, and was lucky enough to find myself and four companions in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, shooting a half-hour documentary at the 14th Winter Olympics.

A doco idea had been fermenting in the mind of producer/director Howard Moses for two to three years and while he had the foresight to apply for official accreditation, he hadn’t been able to raise much funding to cover such an ambitious project. Drawcard for the story was a profile of** Simon Wi Rutene,** a very promising young Maori ski racer who was a great medal hope for the NZ team. Our crew included good friend **Steve Latty **as camera assistant, Steve Douché on sound, and Charles Gordon as PA.

We left on a wing and a prayer and the smell of an oily rag – a moderate grant from the late Sir Roy McKenzie, airfares going on Howard’s Amex card, film processing temporarily arranged through John Laing’s National Film Unit account, introdu ctions to Arriflex in Munich from Graeme Cowley at Film Facilities, fees deferred by all, and an overwhelming optimism from Howard that he would jack up contra deals and investment in the film once we landed in the country formerly known as Yugoslavia.

Before we’d even hit the ground in Europe, it had become obvious that the NZ Winter Olympic team management didn’t want the distraction of a film crew anywhere near their prized skier, so the thinking caps went on over a few in-flight duty-free miniatures, to come up with a completely new approach that had international potential.

As aspiring filmmakers, we were intrigued by the 1960s’ Direct Cinema approach of** DA Pennebaker** (Don’t Look Back and Monterey Pop), the Maysles Brothers (Gimme Shelter), Les Blank (Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers and Burden of Dreams) with his wonderful films on food, music, and crazy directors, and from NZ, Tony Williams and Michael Heath’s great doco at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, Lost in the Garden of the World. Hence was born the idea of an impressionistic, behind-the-scenes view, of the great five-ring Olympic circus – with not a shred of narration allowed. Let the people speak for themselves! This was not to be A film about winners, but a film showing extraordinary sports imagery contrasted with the passion of the people who found themselves in the midst of all this crazy hoopla.

Arriving in Munich, we got a first-hand tour of the Arriflex factory and walked out with our 16SR1 rental kit and a swag of 400ft rolls of 16mm Eastman stock. We then embarked on a marathon 20-hour train trip to Sarajevo with our shiny aluminium cases, and upon arrival, caught a tram to the press village and joined the throngs of foreign media setting up camp for the next two weeks.

The accommodation was a very far cry from luxury, but I don’t recall any dodgy toilet seats. Our first impressions were of a recently repressed socialist society trying exceptionally hard to show the western world how capable and hospitable they could be.

On the first day, we condensed our shooting kit into backpacks and set off by tram to gather some street images, while the producer went off in search of sponsorship from the major corporations. True to form, Howard arrived back that night with a sponsored 4WD Mitsubishi van and driver, along with some other funding deals in place.

Our point of view became the Olympics from a street-level perspective. With this as our password, we went walkabout, camera always in hand, avoiding officialdom where possible. We discovered the nicotine-stained, smoke-fugged nighttime delights of Sarajevo’s backstreet cafes with their sizzling charcoal grills, mellifluous accordion bands, and exuberant slivovitz-supping patrons.

Although we had press passes, this only gave us access to media mosh pits at the major events. Competing against some of the world’s most determined sports paparazzi meant front-line tactics became the name of the game, with early arrival, long stakeouts for position and sharp elbows becoming important weapons in the fight against the motor-driven Nikon fisted enemy.

Our favourite camera positions were always the most verboten places, such as right under the lip of the ski-jump, on a treacherous icy slope where slipping would have meant certain death – but the angle was worth it – 5.7mm wide lens, handheld whizz tilt, 75fps, directly under the ski-jumpers take-off path. Magic! Of course, once we had breached the barriers and grabbed a few shots, an official would arrive to throw us out, but director Howard would delay him with lots of gesticulating and babbling in Pidgin-Europa and demanding to speak to a higher ‘Kontroller’. By the time the second official arrived to really eject us, we had snuck a few more shots in the can and were ready to leave anyway. Similar techniques worked well at the bobsleigh – getting trackside and hanging dangerously over the edge of the course to get that real ground-rush feeling as the bobsleigh hurtled past, mere inches away.

Another useful technique Howard taught us was the Buddhist ‘art of invisibility’ – an old scammers trick for getting into concerts free. We used this to get ringside at the now legendary Torvill and Dean ‘Bolero’ ice-skating performance, even though we had no passes for this event. It works by standing close to the ticket-taker, perfectly still, making no eye contact, until you blend into the background and disappear – when he looks the other way for a moment you slip through. Gone! One by one, we all got in this way, and to have filmed this perfect performance in one continuous take is a true goose-bump experience.

Back in NZ, the film gained a title – ‘Zimska Olimpijada’, the DFC invested in the project, and it was cut together by editor John Gilbert. It sold around the world and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival in 1987. One of the judges commented “for all its millions and minions the ABC didn’t unearth a fraction of the beauty that this small film did”. Note that the ABC was the official filmmaker.

For me, Zimpska Olimpijada was a chance to immerse in the culture and meet the kind and warm folks of Sarajevo. To see this beautiful city under terrible siege in a civil war, less than eight years later was an awful shock.

Thirty years later I look back on our adventure and ponder how crazy we were to travel to the other side of the world, on an unfunded project. But that is the magic of being in your twenties and full of piss and vinegar!