Marko Zubak inter­view for Carhartt

19 / 9 / 2017 / Interview

Q: Hi Marko. Could you please intro­duce yourself?

A: My name is Marko Zubak, I’m an artist from Zagreb, Croa­tia. Skate­board­ing is one of my loves ever since I first stepped on it in primary school.

Q: Who is organ­iz­ing the Vladi­mir Film Fest­iv­al and what is the idea behind it?

A: Fažana, although a small fish­er­man vil­lage in Istra, Croa­tia, happened to be a place where a bunch of people (not only skaters) with sol­id ideas and vis­ions got togeth­er in one place. I can start with a names of Nikola Racan and Oleg Morović, who are work­ing all year on it, but have to fol­low with Mar­ina Jak­ulić, Iris Mošnja, Marta Baradić, Elvis Butković, Tibor-Marko Jak­ulić and oth­er people who jump in and help out. This year I have to men­tion Nich Kunz, from San Fran­cisco, who is resid­ing in Fažana for three months, work­ing on his photo exhib­i­tion in Kino Valli in Pula, pre­par­ing a Print Exchange Pro­gram show at Bri­oni Hotel in Fažana (and skat­ing around Istria).

I’m the only one involved who is not from there, but I have anoth­er stu­dio in Rov­inj, a city some 40 km from there, where I spend half of the year, so I come often to Fažana. The idea, from the very first day, is to focus on inde­pend­ent pro­duc­tion, small com­pan­ies and skate doc­u­ment­ar­ies, as well as Croa­tian scene, which is not big, but we man­age to screen few loc­al videos every year and here I have to men­tion Nikola’s pro­ject “Sol­sti­cij”, which took him five years to fin­ish, to be premiered last year, which is also the first Croa­tian skate video that is sold world­wide.

Q: As far as I know, this year’s edi­tion will be the 7^th edi­tion of VFF. Please tell us some­thing about how it star­ted and what is dif­fer­ent in 2017 com­pared to the first one in 2011?

It stared totally spon­tan­eously, with the idea to screen some loc­al edits and skate videos with pro­ject­or, in the small loc­al skate park in Fažana, as an event after the whole day skate session.

This first year Sergej Vutuc con­nec­ted us with Phil Evans and I talked to Hugo Liard, so soon after Ber­trand Trichet sent us a pack­age from Car­hartt WIP with Format Per­spect­ive and The Occa­sion­al Ant­iz Flash­back. (Here is how it looked like). Last year the event took place in aban­doned glass fact­ory in Fažana, where Nikola Racan and skaters both from Fažana and Pula star­ted build­ing their first DIY spot. This was also when the pho­to­graphy entered the fest­iv­al as accom­pa­ny­ing exhib­i­tion program.

Each year brought some­thing new and now, in 2017, Fažana has no skate park, two beau­ti­ful DIY spots are gone, but fest­iv­al exten­ded to four days (three offi­cial days plus day zero), from which one day is in Pula and one on Nation­al park Bri­oni islands, some parts of the pro­gram are tak­ing place in Pula’s cinema and gal­ler­ies, photo exhib­i­tions are as import­ant as film pro­gram and now we have Kas­arna, a place to go “after”, with a mini ramp. People from all over the world are com­ing to present their works or simply to attend, some­thing nobody from us ever thought would happened.

I still remem­ber how Nikola appeared with the big pot full of grilled pilchards on our first event. Well, this hasn’t changed, the fest­iv­al has still this kind of “famil­i­ar feel­ing”, people are stay­ing in the houses of people from Fažana and pilchards for everybody!

Q: Can you tell us some­thing about this year‘s edition?

A: The fest­iv­al is grow­ing with each year, even though the budget remains very small through all these years. It wouldn’t be pos­sible without the team work and help from loc­al people, which is maybe also the reas­on some­thing like this can’t pop out in a big­ger com­munity. Last year we had more vis­it­ors than ever and this year we expect even more, so new thing is that people can reserve accom­mod­a­tion dur­ing the fest­iv­al for only 12€ per night per per­son, includ­ing free boat tick­et to Bri­oni. It’s worth to men­tion that we arrived to the point where people start to return to the fest­iv­al, because they had great time on one of the pre­vi­ous edi­tions, which is one of the greatest sat­is­fac­tions for us.

The pro­gram is out at the vladi​mir​filmfest​iv​al​.com and amongst video pro­jec­tions and exhib­i­tions, we have spe­cial gastro night this year, with chef Tibor Rep from Slov­e­nia and his REPeat, slow food for skate videos.

Q: Do you have already plans for next year?

A: We always think what could we do in the future, but don’t both­er much about the pro­gram, things just pop out, but we are also try­ing to spread our focus on inter­est­ing pro­duc­tions from dif­fer­ent parts of the world. It’s so motiv­at­ing when you col­lect people from dif­fer­ent con­tin­ents and cul­tures in such a small place that it seems that every­body came for vaca­tion and sud­denly found out that we all share same pas­sion for skate, and more over, there is some kind of skate fest­iv­al going on right now in this small vil­lage. We plan to keep it like this.

We plan to keep it like this.

Thanks a lot to Marko Zubak for all the kind­ness and inform­a­tion. Make sure to vis­it his web­site.