19 Oct MY COUNTRY IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF ALL, 2011- 2013

My Country is the most Beautiful of All, video still

Kolibri, Kolarac, 1987

My Country is the most Beautiful of All, installation view, Salon of the MOCA Belgrade, 2014

My Country is the most Beautiful of All, installation view, MOCA Skopje, 2018

Three-channel HD video installation, 02’51”

Kolibri was probably the most famous children’s choir in Yugoslavia. Founded in 1963 (by coincidence, that same year Yugoslavia changed its name from Federal Peoples Republic Yugoslavia to Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia, the name it would hold until its break-up) as a children’s choir of the Radio-Television Belgrade by Ms Milica Manojlovic, Kolibri marked the childhood of numerous generations of ex-Yugoslavs. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the Kolibri were singing both children’s and patriotic songs, most often written and composed specially for them.

From the mid 1970s the song My Country is the Most Beautiful of All became a part of their standard repertoire and they had been singing it for years.
In April 1987, Kolibri held a concert in Kolarac concert hall in Belgrade. On that occasion, former members of the choir present in the audience joined the choir on the stage to perform the last two songs together, which was a unique situation in the choir’s history. One of the songs they were singing was My Country is the Most Beautiful of All.

Four years after the concert, a war in Yugoslavia broke up. It was the biggest European conflict after the Second World War with more than 130.000 people killed. Disintegration of the country finished in 1999 after the NATO intervention in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro.

24 years after the concert, 20 years after the beginning of the war in Yugoslavia, some of the former Kolibri members reunited to sing the song once again in the same city, but a completely different country than was in 1987.

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My Country is the Most Beautiful of All
Lyrics: Svetislav Vuković, Music: Aleksandar Korač

When springtime paints the landscape
In crimson, green and gold,
When leaves of crops are swaying and on the whole,
My country is the most beautiful of all.

I Love it when its skies
With colors of the rainbow glow,
I love it when it is hidden
Under a blanket of snow. On the whole,
My country is the most beautiful of all.

The land of glory and heroes
I keep it in my soul,
I am proud of it, always.
My country is the most beautiful of all.

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Kolibri: Ana Cemović, Nataša Škrinjak Cvetković, Stanislava Gardašević, Boba Ilić, Miloš Kecman, Marijana Kocić, Ljiljana Lazarević Korda, Lidija Kruta, Adriana Lukovac, Vladimir Marković Luni, Bojana Milenković, Goran Pantić, Filip Pat, Ana Janković Piljić, Eduard Tešenji, Kristina Sapardić, Ana Štajdohar, Gordana Stojnić, Žile Vasić, Dario Vujanović, Olga Vulović,  Ivana Zarić.

Conductor: Milena Piralić
DP: Milan Tvrdišić
Camera technician: Miroslav Todorović
Audio recording: Dragutin Čirković
Audio recording, assistant: Pavle Dinulović
Lights: Igor Milenković
Video post-production: Mitar Marinović
Organizer: Svetlana Stojanović
Translation: Mira Orlović
Camera Red Epic: Living Picture, Belgrade

The work was realized with the generous support of Ministry of Culture and Media, Republic of Serbia, Dom Omladine Beograd, Belgrade Cultural Center and Milan Tvrdišić, Dimče Stojanovski (Living Picture), Srdjan Bajski, Bojana Gavrilović, Mina and Jana Bošnjak, Vladimir Marković Luni.