A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Branislav Bala

Branislav Bane Bala (writer/director/producer) is a Serbian filmmaker based in New York City. He holds an MFA in film directing from Columbia University.

His short films have played worldwide. His short film Shades of Gray was distributed by Doug Liman’s Hypnotic Releasing, and his commercial spot Magic was a Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker’s Award selection. He co-produced two low-budget features: Across Dot Avenue and Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish. The latter was invited for a week-long run at New York’s famous Lincoln Center and opened to rave reviews. He has taught various film classes at the University of Hartford, The New School, Art Institute of Austin, Ramapo College and was the chair of the Film Department at Katharine Gibbs School. He often collaborates with his brother Nemanja. Their latest collaboration, a feature film “Love Hunter” premiered at the prestigious Warsaw Film Festival and was “among its highlights”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

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It opened in New York on November 14, 2014 and was among New York Times Critics’ Pick of the week. New York Times called it "at once fantastical and gritty… one of the most refreshing New York independent films." It was invited to screen at the prestigious Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. Kino Lorber, esteemed distribution company added the film to its catalogue.


SA

 

People Directory

Milica Paranosic

Critically acclaimed composer Milica Paranosic has established herself as one of New York’s finest and most daring composers, performance artists, producers, and technologists. Her music was described as “Amazing…astonishing,” (The New York Times), “Like liquor-filled pralines,” (Germany’s Morgenpost), and “A painter, musical Jackson Pollack,” (SEAMUS). Milica’s works range from one-woman multimedia shows and sound installations to operatic and symphonic works. Inspired by her travels and international collaborations, Milica imaginatively incorporates music of her Serbian homeland in addition to cross-continental muses such as Brazil, Ghana and China, always striving to create new sound worlds in which contrasting concepts vividly coexist in unique textures.

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Publishing

The Hagia Sophia

The Mystical Light of the Great Church and its Architectural Dress

by Charalambos P. Stathakis

Dear reader, as you run like the rest of us along the dizzy main road, stop, stay aside for a while. Let the others be dizzy, and take the secret underground trail, which will lead you through the dewdrops of the leaves, the crystal smile of the sun, the city’s underground galler- ies, your knowledge, and your feelings, to the doorstep of the Hagia Sophia. Because all dew- drops, all sunrays, and all beauty lead there. That is what you will be told by my friend, the author, whom I am fond of and whom I send you to, Charalambos Stathakis: the doctor, the warm and humane researcher, the scientist devoted to his work and his patients, who has given a series of scientific papers, who, nevertheless, retains a nest of beauty untouched in his heart, which makes him outstanding—even though he is not a specialist in architecture, nor a historian, nor a theologian, nor a Byzantinist—it makes him stand out in all these together and in entirety.

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