Haris Pašović
Internationally acclaimed theatre and film director, Haris Pašović, made his name in the late 80s with his landmark production in Belgrade of Wedekind's “Spring's Awakening”. When Sarajevo fell under siege, Pašović returned to the city. He remained active throughout this traumatic period, directing plays and also creating the first Sarajevo Film Festival themed as “Beyond the End of the World”. Pašović produced now legendary Waiting for Godot, directed by Susan Sontag. Also, he managed to make yet another exceptional venture during the Siege of Sarajevo when he led the Sarajevo Festival Ensemble on tour in France with the shows Silk Drums based on the Japanese classical theatre Noh and In the Country of Last things by Paul Auster. The tour started with the two weeks presentation in Paris at Peter Brook's Bouffes du Nord, continued in several French cities and Pasovic and his ensemble returned to the besieged city! In recent years, his Class Enemy by Nigel Williams was a part of the program of the Edinburgh International Festival, Singapore Arts Festival and many other festivals. Football, Football was in the programs of Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Singapore Arts Festival and National Arts Festival of South Africa. His documentary Greta about Greta Ferušić, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp and the Siege of Sarajevo, was shown on the documentary film festivals in New York, London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Rome, Stockholm, Sarajevo, Ljubljana and others. In April 2012, Sarajevo Red Line commemorated those who were killed in the city's siege twenty years earlier. Sarajevo Red Line was a concert and a visual art installation consisted of 11,541 red chairs, one for each victim, placed on the main Sarajevo street. The event was attended by dozens of thousands of people and was reported worldwide. In 2013, The Conquest of Happiness, Pašović's spectacular theatre event inspired by the writing of Bertrand Russell had its World Premiere in the UK at the Derry/Londonderry City of Culture. In 2014, Pašović directed a massive multimedia event A Century of Peace After the Century of the Wars in Sarajevo on the very site of the Sarajevo Assassination for the 100 years anniversary since the beginning of the First World War. The show was co-produced with the French Mission Centenaire. Pašović is a director of the East West Centre Sarajevo and a professor of theatre and film directing at the Preforming Arts Academy Sarajevo. He teaches at the universities in Slovenia and Serbia and gives the lectures and workshops internationally too. He also writes the plays, essays and articles. His essay “Divine Uncertainty and Fall of Nationalism” opened last year the BBC World Service series Great War.
