Known to BABYLON 5 fans as the husband of Mira Furlan (Delenn), Goran Gajic (pronounced Gai-itch') has had a varied career as a journalist, a director and a filmmaker. This year, he directed the BABYLON 5 season five episode "All My Dreams, Torn Asunder".

The longer they live here, the more Goran and Mira have adjusted to the pace and lifestyle of the United States. It was a gradual process, but Goran says that he's not sure if one is ever able to adjust to Hollywood since by its very nature it's ever-changing.

Some of Goran's US credits include an adaptation of "Antigone", the drama by Sophocles, in 1997 in Los Angeles with Mira. The production as a whole took the Dramalogue Award for Best Production while Mira won for Best Performer, and Goran walked off with the Best Direction award. The Dramalogue is a diploma award given by the Los Angeles Critics Guild.

"Songs From Movies That Have Never Been Made" is the title of Mira's CD-ROM project that Goran just finished directing. Project deals with the line between fantasy and reality, it was recorded in London and New York last summer. Mira sings the lyrics to songs from projects that have never been produced -- these songs were composed for fictitious movie soundtracks. The CD-ROM contains eleven songs and plays them in a CD Player -- when played on a CD-ROM there is a multimedia presentation. The multimedia sequences are what Goran directed. The project is due out in a month or two.

DEAR VIDEO was the last project Goran worked on in the former Yugoslavia. It's available in the US on video (Infinite Visions). The movie was originally supposed to be a theatrical release in Yugoslavia but had been released at the beginning of the war. Since everything collapsed at that time, the project was lucky to air as a television movie.

DEAR VIDEO is an epistolary comedy that concerns two families -- one living in Germany, one in Yugoslavia -- who are exchanging letters made on home video. The style of the movie matches the home video style of the families' taped letters. Goran's main challenge was to to tell the story using this very strict formal pattern.

THE FALL OF ROCK AND ROLL is another project that Goran directed that made theatrical distribution in the former Yugoslavia and Europe. This three part rock'n'roll comedy was a box office success.

A full length documentary titled VICTORY UNDER THE SUN is the story of a Slovenian punk group. The group's message deals with art and symbols under totalitarian regimes. Goran approached this project to try to make the ultimate tongue-in-cheek propaganda movie. This project was also distributed in East and West Europe.

Rock-n-Roll in the widest sense of the word is what originally involved Goran in the arts. He started as a short-story writer in his teen years then branched out to music journalism. The New Wave and punk scenes were creating a groundswell in all parts of Europe and Goran followed the scene from its inception.

The late-70s and early-80s were a good time to live in Yugoslavia. The restrictions were starting to lift and there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone was mingling and the economy was good. "The same people who are now at war were traveling between the cities to attend parties. At that time it was completely unimaginable that the war was going to happen."

Speaking about his early schooling in filmmaking. " Before I enrolled in Film University in Europe I had the chance to work for an independent TV station. It consisted of two guys -- myself and another crazy guy -- who occasionally borrowed the equipment from the state television to make something. We'd make our own projects and shoot straight to tape or dub down to VHS or Beta. Then we would go to a club which would show our work every Thursday night. We would occasionally go to newly built buildings which were fully wired for cable. We'd go to the roof and patch our equipment into the building's system and preview our work for the whole building." [Kids, don't try this at home. It was illegal in the former Yugoslavia and the FCC would really frown on it in the States -- as if you didn't know.]

Contrasting the work he did in Yugoslavia to the work stateside, Goran pointed out he worked on mostly movies in Yugoslavia, while here in the US he's had a chance to direct plays. Back in the former Yugoslavia, Goran was bored and impatient with theatre. Mira was the influence in his life that opened that door for Goran. She took him to see some plays but still his mind was firmly entrenched in movies. He would wonder where the close-up was at the appropriate moment. Goran noted that direction in plays sometimes denotes the need to have to play a scene "bigger" than it would for TV and movies. It still bothers Goran when he sees a play where actors are basically spouting dialogue, not creating characters. "You go to the theater and are listening to words but nothing is touching you and you're checking your watch, waiting for it to end."

That's the type of thinking that colored his approach to directing the production of Antigone. He made the show very short; 1 hour 15 minutes. He cut all the historical background, the character in Sophocles' story that ages through the generations. It had meaning and subtext but to a modern audience, it slowed the narrative drive of the story. Another technique Goran used in the Antigone production was to utilize the bareness of the theater where they staged the play.

"The play was staged in a nondescript place which reminded one of the former Yugoslavia. The set design (by John Iacovelli from BABYLON 5) incorporated a broken bridge and ruins of buildings. Among the ruins were scattered six TV monitors which played the role of the Greek Chorus in the play. In Sophocles' play the Greek Chorus comments on the story and characters. It is the voice of the people, the society."

"So in my version I replaced the chorus with documentary footage that I shot in Los Angeles. I interviewed people of Los Angeles on issues that the play is dealing with like, 'What would you die for?', 'What would your feelings be if there was a civil war in this country and your brother took the other side?', 'Would you consider him a traitor?', 'Where do you put your loyalty first, to your country or to your family?' All those things that Antigone is dealing with, I used those as positioning between the scenes. Those documentary clips set the tone of the play. It brought everything so much closer to modern day instead of having a classic Greek play that a modern audience can't relate to. I wanted to really hit the audience in the gut with such a fast, intense play. They reacted nicely -- many people were crying. Two things are great in this work -- when you make people laugh and when you make people cry with something you've created. If someone is moved or can take something from the performance, that's the true payoff."

<*> Continued in Part Two <*>