For past eight years FAMA International has been acknowledged and honored by leading educational institutions, foreign governments, media, intellectuals, libraries and general public in the Balkans and around the world, for our intellectual, creative abilities and the efforts to preserve the Truth and Collective Memory for future generations.
" …Hence the shock when the latest printed
document out of Sarajevo, breaking the endless flow of atrocity narratives,
is a macabre spoof whose target is immediately obvious to anyone…"
Washington Post
"…FAMA makes clear that it is a chronicle, a guide for survival, a part
of a future archive which shows the city of Sarajevo not as a victim,
but as a place of experiment where wit can still achieve victory over
terror…"
Washington Post
"…is just the age to be learning, from the unfolding Bosnian genocide,
a very different lessons about the world's susceptibility to sincerity
and logic…"FAMA" in Sarajevo seem somehow to know all about us and our
fading illusions…The sting of their wit makes them more real – than reports
of their suffering ever could…"
Washington Post
"…Attracted by the content of Sarajevo Survival Guide,
as well as the quality of work by FAMA with its attitude to express themselves
and present issues under the extreme situation of going through the war…NHK
directed a program titled "People's Lives Under War As Seen Through the
Sarajevo Survival Guide Book" as special series broadcasted in Japan,
Asia, France and Germany receiving incredible feedback…we praise FAMA's
activities from bottom of our heart and hope that the next action with
their profound intention will continue to inspire all of us…"
NHK – Japan Broadcasting Corporation
Social Information Program Division
"…Survival Guide: looks like a bona-fide travel
book … But the subject is Sarajevo, and what's inside is at first a puzzling
and than a mock-serious and chilling matter-of-fact tour of one of the
world's saddest cities…"
The New York Times
" FAMA from Sarajevo has created documents that preserve
the history and the truth the way it is and the only way it could be.
Therefore, each document whose mission is to preserve the history is priceless,
and each paper that can explain that history, to those who have not experienced
it, is truly important to all of us…"
Svijet Magazine, Sarajevo - BiH
"…Topography of Life and Death – Survival Map is much more than a typical
geographical map of Sarajevo. It is a document that will explain the tragedy
of a city during the siege in a much more truthful and convincing manner
than any other story could. It represents the history that nobody can
manipulate with again…"
Svijet Magazine, Sarajevo - BiH
"…FAMA has rescued many facts and evidence from being forgotten and forever
lost, they have diminished the elements for any future attempts to interpret
the truth behind those 1395 days of siege, they have explained something
that is unexplainable…On the Historical level it is a document, on a Cultural
level it is an event of true value and on a Political level something
very much important to look at and learn from…"
Svijet Magazine, Sarajevo - BiH
"… It is our pleasure to acknowledge, with many
thanks, receipt of FAMA projects: Survival Guide, FAMA Life magazine,
and Survival Map. We deeply appreciate your kindness in sending this material
to the Library of Congress…"
The Library of Congress
"…In successfully presenting a record of what everyday
life was like in Sarajevo after it was besieged by Bosnian Serbs…FAMA
chose to combine dark biting humor with the travel guide format…for presenting
an accurate picture of real life…documenting what really happened to ordinary
people day in and day out and show the humor of Sarajevans…"
Chicago Tribune
"…"hardware is destroyed but the software survives"…FAMA continues its
work within the ruined infrastructure while using its creativity, hope,
resiliency and will to endure …"
Chicago Tribune
"…We have been touched and inspired by your Sarajevo
Survival Guide…in making an exhibition which looks into the modern city
of the last 150 years and into ideas which developed in connection to
its dynamic forces…"
Copenhagen – Cultural Capital of Europe
"…We would be honored to exhibit the Sarajevo Survival Map…that will extend
the knowledge of your work in Denmark and Europe…"
Copenhagen – Cultural Capital of Europe
"…War or no War…Get a Life…FAMA recently published
a single-issue magazine profiling survivors of the war…"
Newsweek
"…"When Art imitates Life"…FAMA has decided to honor the spirit of the
war-torn city by publishing a one-time magazine profiling residents who
have survived the siege…"
Newsweek
"…Survival Guide; a guide through Life and Death is
the most important and most efficient book ever created in Sarajevo, until
now…"
Vreme Magazine, Belgrade - Serbia
"…FAMA, a media agency from Sarajevo, in the pre-war period, was active
in producing TV program that has faced up the politicians with their politics
in an effort to bring out the true nature of the events, explain them
to the audience and have a profound positive effect on their future development
through TV media, and prevent the worse from happening. That was the Art
of Living…"
Vreme Magazine, Belgrade - Serbia
"…with text, photograph and its structure the "Survival Guide" changes
many principals of artistic reality…The horror in Sarajevo conducted in
front of us, is our own horror…the fact that the book about Sarajevo does
not consider itself as a victim, as Sarajevo itself is a "Guide to Survival"…"
Vreme Magazine, Belgrade - Serbia
"…Survival Guide completely changes the balance between the moral and
aesthetic elements, it diminishes, in advance, within the reader any sense
of sympathy or fear; its idea is here to be remembered forever within
ourselves…You can kill yourself or carry within what you like the most,
or carefully read the Guide and guide your future conducts on its platform,
learn how to survive a post-cataclysm that hasn't originated from the
supreme power, but from our own hand…"
Vreme Magazine, Belgrade - Serbia
"…FAMA projects and work evoke some very simple but
essential issues for the existence of the human-being to be reconsidered
by the people anywhere in the world…"
Tokyo EXPO 96'
Organized by Tokyo Metropolitan Government
"….SAM 96 has made our visitors extremely interested in your activities
but also involved them in the imaginable (but always realistic) situation
of survival by themselves…"
Tokyo EXPO 96'
Organized by Tokyo Metropolitan Government
"…Survival Art Museum contains a strong paradox and criticism; as the
museum represents a modernity and materialistic strength…linked with exhibit
pieces that show a spring of ideas and labors after the heavy destruction
by the war…"
Tokyo EXPO 96'
Organized by Tokyo Metropolitan Government
"… FAMA Life Magazine features photographs and interviews
with scores of artists and intellectuals who lived and worked in Sarajevo
during the city's 41-month long siege…an artifact of the Bosnian war,
a documentary of the siege…its voice is pure Sarajevo!…"
Reuters
"…Time International (1994) featuring its cover story
using FAMA Photo archives from Sarajevo Survival Guide…."
Time International
"…Survival Guide is some kind of camp-project…it
is dignified and respectful to the blood being spilled on Sarajevo streets,
but yet, it shows open suspicious in the dignity of those who consume
that blood through the media…"
Vijenac Magazine, Zagreb - Croatia
"…The main objective of FAMA "The Siege" project is to warn and remind
the world that the story about this city does not fully correspond to
those from the reports of other global media…it foresees the future much
closer than the one from Euro-DisneyLand… its more likely that the grandiose
Louvre will be guttered in fire and ashes – evoking the course of future
destiny as the present Sarajevo's National Library "Vjecnica" does, than
that we will live in the future were the inflatable Donald Duck will be
flying the sky's of Paris…"
Vijenac Magazine, Zagreb - Croatia
"…FAMA actually produced a Michelin-style travel
guide for the city aimed at visiting moral tourists…as Sarajevo continues
to be acquainted with the constant and inconsequential character of Western
involvement…"
The New York Book of Review
"…FAMA projects try to subvert Western fascination with the city as a
film set for Mad Max 5, a hideous perforation of the damnation which will
overwhelm our own cities if their tense multicultural orders break down
any further…Yet this fascination with Sarajevo as metaphor went along
with ever more complete disengagement with its actual fate…"
The New York Book of Review
"…FAMA hopes to subvert the Western "travel morality" that turned Sarajevo
into the most chic of all possible "fin de siecle" destinations…"
The New York Book of Review
"…Survival Guide by FAMA…whose aim is to present
their city "not as a victim but as a place of experiment where wit can
still win over terror"…"
Harper's Magazine
"…FAMA projects should be read not only by scholars
of the region and humanitarian workers deployed to the Balkans, but by
everyone…FAMA deserves full international support for its courageous efforts
to keep the spirit of multicultural Sarajevo alive…"
The University of Michigan
Donna Parmelee, Ph.D
"…FAMA, in its International Cultural Newsletter
has documented Sarajevo that has been denied the rights to civic, existential
and social rights…by using the right to survive and the right for culture
as defiance and means to continue its mission…"
Monitor, Podgorica - Montenegro
"…respectable "Washington Post" presents the Survival Guide as a cultural
undertaking…Like everything that comes out of Sarajevo, this project-document
evokes the feelings of horror and guilty conciseness, you can not go on
without asking yourself – "what have done to prevent this cataclysm from
appearing?"…"
Monitor, Podgorica - Montenegro
[Coming Soon]
The National Committee of Japanese Historians
"…FAMA juxtapose the blithely upbeat tone of a Michelin
guide with the cruel realities of life under siege… Survival Guide mimics
the format of a straightforward Michelin's guide while serving as a grimly
humorous archive of life in wartime…"
Los Angeles Times
"…FAMA integrates hopes for peace among the Sarajevans,
representing it to the rest of the world and expressing it on the cultural
level…My students at Tokyo University received a very important message…FAMA
has left a strong impression on them…I believe that FAMA activities will
be remembered as a historical monument to the future…"
Tokyo University
Isao Koshimura, Doctor of Social Studies
"…Dear President Clinton,…The International Freedom
to Publish Committee of the Association of American Publishers met today
with Suada Kapic, Director of FAMA International, to discuss Sarajevo
Survival Guide – a satiric "guidebook" to coping under the conditions
of war…inspired by FAMA projects and initiatives…we urge you to assume
a position of leadership…as too much time has passed and too little has
been done. We urge you to act at once…"
American Association of Publishers
International Freedom to Publish Committee
"…The key to successful local programming is coming
up with a winning concept and finding the right journalist to implement
it…For that reason ICG believes that documentary Dossier is worthy of
support…Dossier has a winning formula…nothing like that exists at present
…"
ICG – International Crisis Group
"…Suada Kapic the driving force behind FAMA, has the kind of track record
which inspires confidence and can be relied upon to see the project to
fruition…as high quality and original local production could help restore
trust between peoples and contribute to the reintegration of the country…"
ICG – International Crisis Group
[Coming Soon]
Mainichi Shinbun
"…FAMA organized cultural projects as a way to
resist the siege by maintaining some form of cultural normality…"Sarajevo:
Survival Guide," whose title pokes fun at other survival guides that equate
travel with life-or-death struggle…"
The Michigan Daily
"…Sarajevo Survival Map printed in original format
as central feature of the issue – an homage to life in Sarajevo during
the Siege…Sarajevo Tutta un altra storia…El mapa de la supervivencia circulation
of 100 000, world-wide…"
GenteViaggi Magazine
"…Publishing of the Survival Guide has received
a sensational incident in Japan. More than 50 reviews in newspapers, magazines,
and television programs came out dedicated to the Guide…By the very reason
why this book has had so much impact on Japanese society is that FAMA's
accomplishments show universal visions of the world we are living in at
the end of 20th century. It indicates the possibility of survival by our
own imagination under potential crisis anywhere in the world…"
Sansusha Publishing, Tokyo
"…Under their hardest situations, we determine to work with FAMA in the
years to come, based on the mutual trust and relationship we developed
until now…Let us conclude by declaring our heartfelt faith and praise
for FAMA…"
Sansusha Publishing, Tokyo
"…"Hon kartlade dodens vagar": Det ar en marktig
karta hon har gjort. Survival Map heter den och utgar fran situationen
under kriget…Det ar ett historiskt dokument…den anvands vid krigsforbrytartribunalen
Haag och inte minst uppskattas den av dem som stannade har…"
Tvadagar Newspaper
"… Survival Guide is not black humor, but real life
in Sarajevo … It is like life in the future, like science fiction. It
proves that people can live on absolutely nothing …"
Journal Constitution
"…FAMA projects prove that software can survive even though the hardware
is destroyed … mirroring the seemingly contradictory mix of fatalism and
fierce determination to stay and continue work in Sarajevo…"
Journal Constitution
"…Its hundreds of color photographs are frank and
disturbing, while its text describes war-gutted Sarajevo and the habits
of its besieged people in the laconic, fatuous prose of guidebooks everywhere.
It's a powerful work of war-art…"
Agenda
"…Sarajevo Survival Guide designed to reassemble
a Michelin travel guide, is part parody, part conceptual art project and
part brutal documentary – an illustrated guidebook to a living hell …passing
on the message that people can survive impossible conditions and remain
human … Surviving Sarajevo, sometimes with a smile…"
Mercury News
[Coming Soon]
Nihon Keiza Shinbun
"…Guidebooks that mix bitterness and black humor
are rarity, but the Sarajevo survival Guide is not only rare but special
… Produced in the beleaguered Bosnian capital by FAMA, gives a unique
presentation of every day life in a city under siege… This remarkable
project is a tribute to the indomitability of the human spirit"
Parade
"…Survival Guide: Black tragedy causes thoughtfulness
and horror; this book is perhaps the blackest travel guide ever published…An
important document to Sarajevo during its still-continuing siege…"
Travel Books Worldwide
"…another project from that front lays out the harsh
conditions with a grim sense of humor "Sarajevo survival Guide" mimics
the format and straightforward style of a guidebook while serving as an
archive of life in wartime…"
Newsday
"…De wrange visie van een kunstenares op geteisterd
Sarajevo…maar behalve voor bruitenlanders is deze kaart handig voor de
inwoners van Sarajevo. We konden tijdens het beleg tenslotte niet door
de stad lopen om te kijken waar de frontlinies…"
Het Parool
"…FAMA projects: are documents is of enormous value,
deserving of wide distribution and promotion…The perspective they present
are quite simply different from other documents of the war…By contrast
they show a still vibrant culture. Its caustic, straight-faced humor and
everyday factual information make Sarajevo and Bosnia more alive than
can all the literacy essays put together…"
University of Colorado
Kenney Padraic, Professor East-European Studies
"…Survival Guide, put together by FAMA juxtaposes
the blithely upbeat tone of a guide format with the cruel realities of
life under siege…"
Free Press
"…Survival Guide is a chronicle, a part of a future
archive…"
Tokyo City Guide
[Coming Soon]
Shunkan Kinyoubi
"…"The first guidebook to death in modern history"
uses a blend of gallows humor, frightful photographs, heavy irony and
poignant facts to wrench our attention to the gruesome truth of the suffering…"
Orange County Register
"…FAMA continues its successful work at the site where one civilization
was dismantled in the course of international violence, and another had
to be born…"
Orange County Register
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