Educated at USC ('93). Like many an aspiring filmmaker, Adrian Belic and his younger brother Roko produced their first movie in the third grade using a friend's dad's super-8 camera.
But unlike most star-struck schoolboys, 20 years later the Belic brothers are reaping praises and prizes at film festivals around the world for their first feature-length documentary. GENGHIS BLUES (1999) melds the brothers' passion for compelling storytelling with seemingly disparate elements -- blind Bay Area blues singer Paul Pena; the Autonomous Republic of Tuva (yes, there really is such a place; it lies between Siberia and Mongolia); and the little-known Tuvan tradition of throat-singing. Throat-singing is a technique by which vocalists simultaneously produce two, sometimes even three, distinct tones -- called overtones. It involves manipulating the acoustical phenomenon of harmonics, a natural product of musical instruments, speech and singing. In Western music, vocal harmonics are commonly heard in Gregorian chanting.
GENGHIS BLUES won the Audience Award for favorite documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, and has won praise and awards at such venues as the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Berlin Film Market. The Belics recently obtained an international distributor for the film and are searching for a U.S. distributor.
How do the brothers feel about the success of their film fusing blues and Tuvan throat-singing? "We're totally jazzed," says the genre-mixing documentarian.
Belic also wrote, directed and produced BEYOND THE CALL (2006, brother Roko co-produced), which was shown on PBS' "Independent Lens" in 2007. The documentary focuses on three men (former soldiers) who travel the world delivering humanitarian aid directly into the hands of civilians and doctors at the front lines of war.
Nominated for Achievement in Documentary Features 1999: GENGHIS BLUES - Producer (w. Roko Belic)
1 nomination
