If Mumbai is known as "Bollywood" because of its status as the epicenter of the Indian film industry, then it seems only fair that Belgrade should become known as "Bellywood." With the exception of L.A., I've honestly never seen a town more full of film crews and sets, and all of the things and people that are required for the making of movies.
Shortly after our arrival here last year, I was out for a walk, and happened upon a film crew filming a scene for a movie in a local park. I was enthralled and stood and watched for a while, and then went home and told Wes and Virginia about it. Shortly thereafter, we began seeing a film crew for a TV show called "The Ladies of Dedinje." I am told this soon-to-be-released show is intended to be Serbia's version of "Desperate Housewives." Great. Logically, given the name of the show, they were filming in Dedinje (the neighborhood next to ours) on a street close to Graham and Mikayla's school. This went on for months, and daily we would walk or drive past the trucks, crew and set. This was beginning to feel normal for us.
Next came our brush with Coriolanus -- Ralph Fiennes' upcoming film -- which, if you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know as the film in which our Wes came very close to being cast as the lead character's son. Although he didn't get the part, we did have the pleasure of seeing Ralph and his film crews all over our neighborhood in March and April -- something that was exciting and a little painful all at once.
Having become accustomed to such things, I suppose that we should have been completely unfazed when we saw yet another film crew taking over our next door neighbor's house over the weekend. Despite the torential winds and rain that started Sunday night and lasted all day Monday, an Italian film company (Ekpia Filma) lugged in all of their equipment and set up an honest-to-gosh film set over there. They currently are filming scenes from a film entitled Il Restauratore. I am not kidding you when I say that our street is so full of cars and trucks and equipment and trailers and whatever else that I have not been able to get my Honda out of the driveway and down the street the past few days. How they ended up filming at our neighbor's house -- a fairly ordinary house, truth be told -- is something I am still trying to figure out. The language barrier doesn't help; my neighbors speak very broken English, and my Serbian is still not great, and so I haven't been able to get the real scoop on how this all went down. Despite the inconvenience, I'll admit that it has been kind of fun to take a peek every now and again to see what's going on over there.
Well, what with all of this film activity in Belgrade, all I can say is, watch out Hollywood and Bollywood, here comes Bellywood!
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| Lights set up in ourneighbor's yard |
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| This truck, and several other like it, are parked right in front of our house |
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| The big truck on the right with the double doors is the set's "kitchen;" the trailers on the left are the actors' trailers |
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| More trucks on our street -- it really is unbelievable how much "stuff" and how many people are required for movie-making |
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