Cord Jefferson, award-winning American screenwriter and director, Oscar® and Emmy winner, on Saturday, August 17, held a masterclass at the Bosnian Cultural Center as part of the programme of the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival. Masterclass was moderated by writer Ennis Ćehić.
Jefferson spoke about his film AMERICAN FICTION, which will be shown tonight, at 8:30 p.m., at the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema, as part of the Open Air programme. At the beginning of the conversation, he pointed out that it is difficult for people in America to talk about race, sexuality and identity without becoming emotional, angry and upset.
“It’s especially hard to laugh at these things and find humor in them. That’s why I decided to have a scene at the beginning that would kind of give people permission to laugh, and let them know that this is not going to be a movie where we’re going to be great serious about these issues,” Jefferson said, adding that AMERICAN FICTION deals with these issues in a different way.
In the continuation of the conversation, Jefferson talked about his literary beginnings, pointing out that when he was still in the third grade, his mother told him that he would be a writer, and it took him 20 years to realize that. He was engaged in other work, but every day, when he came home, he wrote, because he felt unfulfilled. Writing first turned into a hobby, and then he started writing for a magazine and for years engaged in literary work.
“I knew a lot of people who had art as a hobby, but I didn’t know anyone who made it their primary career. I believe that if you don’t come from that background, it can be a little difficult for you to understand how art can be a profession that is for you. I I’m from a town called Tucson, Arizona. It’s not too far from Los Angeles, but it’s certainly far away culturally. I thought the artists were in New York and Los Angeles, Paris and London, not where I’m from.”, he said.
Based on “Erasure,” the novel by Percival Everett, AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts the contemporary obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment making profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish Black book of his own—a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.
