By Christopher Vourlias. The streets of the Bosnian capital were pitch black. Power cuts brought on by a crippling siege, which started in when Bosnian Serb forces surrounded the city, left the town plunged in darkness. Residents fortunate enough to own gasoline-powered generators were reluctant to use them, for fear that lights would attract sniper fire. Shelling left giant holes in the streets and pavement.
The Apollo was housed in the basement of the Sarajevo Academy of Performing Arts, where the Obala Art Center — a group that had risen to prominence in the s — mounted acclaimed stage productions that traveled around the world. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, a faint light glowed in the distance. Popular on Variety. Cousins was then programmer of the Edinburgh Film Festival and was part of a cultural delegation that had been invited to Bosnia. Films are multi-tonal.
The director had arrived in Sarajevo aboard a military plane from Zagreb and then crossed the city in an armored personnel carrier.
I kept some of the cheese I brought to nibble in the dark, on my mattress at bedtime. He remembers the Apollo as a scrappy, bootstrap effort. The chairs were hard and packed together. Yet despite the rationing, despite the blockade, despite the sniper fire and the steady bombardment of artillery shells raining down on the city, Cousins arrived to a full house: Bosnians who had put their lives at risk with something somehow more precious than survival at stake.
To keep Sarajevo alive. When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia following a March referendum, Bosnian Serb forces encircled the capital of Sarajevo, stationing upwards of 13, troops in the surrounding hills and battering the city with a relentless bombardment of tank and artillery fire. On May 2, the Bosnian Serbs began a punishing blockade of the city. Sarajevo was cut off from the rest of the world.
