New Tales of Past and Future (look what's NEW! on youtube and facebook)

New Tales of Past and Future

(look what's NEW! on youtube and facebook)

I am continuing the tale of the history of uskoks from Žumberak. In this picture you can see the re-written text of the original document from the Croatian State Archive about the first settlement of the uskok families of soldiers to Žumberak, from the year 1530. It is a letter from Ivan Karlović, then the ban of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia (ban used to be a noble title in Croatia throughout the whole medieval period until early 20th century, for the head of the government. In some way ban was Croatian prime minister in the Middle Ages) addressed to Johan Katzianer, then the Knight and Captain of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, in which Karlović asked Katzianer to send him money to pay the soldiers who were defending the borders of the Monarchy from Turkish attacks.

Monuments of the past in Žumberak are mostly sacral buildings and ruins of the Old and New Town of Žumberak. The oldest existing Roman Catholic churches date back to the 14th century, while the oldest Greek Catholic churches date from the 17th century, ie from the time after the multiple waves of settlements of the uskoks to Žumberak. Although the oldest known church on Žumberak dates back to the 10th century. It is the parish church of st. Sixtus in Pribić, mentioned in one document from 925. However, this church was restored and rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I also add here another interesting picture, as a symbol from the Middle Ages. This pillar on the right side of the picture is the so-called pil, the easternmost pillar of that kind on the territory of Croatia. It is located next to the parish church of st. Nicholas in Podžumberak built in 1645 and that pil is actually a pillar of shame. In front of it there were being punished the law offenders in the middle ages.
In addition to the numerous medieval churches, I recommend You to come to see a newer one, especially interesting and unusual church on water, ie artificial lake. It is the Greek Catholic church of the Annunciation in Pribić, which was built in 1911 in a Neo-Byzantine and Neo-Romanic style.
Numerous houses in Žumberak are the place of origin of the prominent Croatian researchers, scientists and artists. I will write something more about it next time.
Now let's go into the future.
Here is the reason why I wrote in the last text about the examples of western interest in the Far East and examples of the cultural influences from the East in music. Unlike the present, often carnival way of interest for the customs of the Far East, I have imagined in my futuristic novel with the elements of science fiction and crime thriller, how would it be if the Far East in the future really became a dominant cultural imperium. I have placed the story of the novel in the distant 23rd century in the time when the Far East surpassed the West and became the first power in the World. Of course, given the fact of current rapid development of China and other "far-eastern tigers", it does not seem like a far away and hard-to-expect future.
In collaboration with the publisher Valentin, we have decided to make a special way of web promotion for this novel. We have created short animated films in the far-eastern (Japanese) style of popular anime movies which show dramatized selected scenes from the novel, along with texts from the book translated into English, to make it available to the broadest international public.
It is important to point out that the moving pictures and other content (comments in two other World languages, Chinese and French) that you can see from now on my youtube channel, are used only for the audio-visual animations on internet. So my novel, which in printed form has a total of 412 pages on the classic A5 format of page, is NOT a graphic novel with pictures. They are here only for the imaginative visualization of the book's content.
In particular, we are grateful to the imaginative visual creations of numerous digital artists, whose futuristic images and photos we have been used in these short films. They are listed in the last 24th short film. Their artworks can be viewed at pixabay.com.
As we tried to make the content of certain part of the book, shown as good as possible, in such form of a short film, we faced something about what I have already written in my last article here. David Sylvian and Japan wanted to put a lot of stereotypical images of Chinese culture into the short music video for the song "Visions of China", to show metaphorically what the song is about. In short animated films in which we dramatized selected extracts from my futuristic novel "SHENGZIAN OPARAMUN", I had to make a similar way of taking something what visualizes as fast as possible that what we, the westerners know, superficially I admit, about the faraway cultures of China and Japan. My colleagues and I have recorded a total of 24 short movies that you can see on youtube.
When I'm mentioning the inspiration of Japanese anime films, I will also say that the creators of the celebrated trilogy The Matrix, perhaps the first westerners who went deeper into the knowledge of Japanese style of movie animation, thus raising the interest of the World's audience for Japanese anime, brought closer to me as well that Japanese art of making animated images based on the original in the comics, Japanese mangas. From the pioneer of this movie genre Mr. Osamu Tezuka, to the contemporary authors such as Satoshi Kon, who mostly makes anime movies in the style of western noir detective stories and Katsuhiro Otomo, who mostly places the plot of his films on the West. For example his "Steamboy" is located in Manchester at the time of the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 19th century. While in the West the most rewarded author of Japanese anime, Hayao Miyazaki chooses a bit more traditional and more typical Japanese themes.
As we can see, this production style of movie entertainment today, mainly was taken over by the Hollywood production studios, using the comics and graphic novels of Marvel and DC Comics.
What is immediately noticeable in the most anime movies is the fact that the characters in them generally have no distinctly far-eastern physiognomy of face and slanted eyes, but rather large eyes of neutral origin (usually such eyes are symbol of a good guy, naive and optimistic humanist) or on the other side narrowed eyes of the kitten type, which usually have those, who are of course, the clever bad guys in the story.
Here I have listed just the top World examples of the animated film production, well-known all over the world and of course that what I and my colleagues made, in our local technical conditions as an animated promotion of my novel can be in no way compared by the technical quality with the mentioned feature films. That was not our goal, such examples can only serve as a milestone to what extent all the computer technology could be used if you have such resources available.
So we offer You to watch the anime style promotions of my futuristic novel "Shengzian Oparamun" with the story set in the far future. Each of these 24 short animated films in which we dramatized selected extracts from my book, lasts about 5, 6 minutes in average.
You can see them on my youtube channel by now, (just type and search IGOR SULJAGIC YOUTUBE), and soon on more internet sites as well.
I wish You pleasure in watching and reading this possible future with imaginary objects and elements of the futuristic world,

Find out more about Žumberak on website:

http://www.croatia-tourism-culture.com/en
(This printed book was published 2017 in two languages. You can order it in Croatian original or translated in English language.)

Watch beauties of Žumberak on facebook pages as well:

Perfecta Terra Futura (Zumberak, Croatia)
Valentin (web publisher from Zumberak)
hostel Flores (Kostanjevac, Croatia)
(open for reservations whole year except the winter season, the guests of the hostel get discount on price of my books, plus as a gift with the purchase one more book from wide, domestic bibliotheque of interesting books in Croatian, English and German language.)

You can also add your comments and suggestions on my profiles:
Igor Suljagić (@IgorSuljagic) | Twitter
Igor Suljagić | Facebook

Interesting sights of Žumberak