HK: To another country?

MZ: To another country or another job.

HK: Do you think as time goes on, though, people will come back? I should think that if you'd left your home country, you would always, want to come back as soon as it was possible again.

MZ: Well, that is my case. I left before the war started, three years before. I left because I did not feel comfortable there. Once I found out that there was a chance for political change, I went back. But I never cut the ties with personal and professional friends. I was there two or three times during the year, they would come and visit. We always have been working on something together.

Starting Again
HK: How much work were you doing prior to the war and with which companies and countries?

MZ: Altogether, we produced, prior to the war, around 1,000 minutes of animation for our own productions. Then we worked on a long series for a Canadian group, and provided services for them. We worked with a German company on a feature film, a combination of live action and animation. We did all of the animation for them. Right after that job, the war broke out. Once we established a position in the animation community, we were cut off.

HK: How is it going now?

MZ: It's building up. It's a very slow and painful process, but...

HK: Do you find that people are reluctant to talk to you once they know that you represent a Serbian company?

MZ: Not for political reasons or anything to do with the war, but because people are very conscious of the risk involved in putting their money in a country which is economically and politically unstable. That's why people are reluctant. But we invite everyone to come to see for themselves, our studio, our facilities, watch how we function, and to show them through complete products, that it is possible to do business with us. More and more people are coming, mostly those who knew Beograd before the war. They understand better the situation now. It's much easier to explain to someone who was familiar with the situation before, what's going on, than to someone who is totally unaware of the whole history. We use this opportunity to re-establish contacts and make some new contacts and to try to persuade people that we are as good as we were before, that we are as capable of doing the things that we did before. Now there is a great advantage for them because our prices, for our services, for the quality we are giving, are very competitive, even compared to Southeast Asia. That's the main advantage people see in being with us.

HK: Do you feel that now your studio is completely able to do a large production?

Bread, a ten second commercial.

MZ: I think so definitely. We lack some technical facilities. We cannot do post production. But in terms of classical animation, we can do anything which can be done anywhere in the world. I say that not only to promote ourselves, but based on the fact that whomever saw our materials here (in Annecy) were very appreciative of the quality of animation. In terms of technique and art, I think it's as good as any.

Smuggling Software
HK: What other sort of technical aspects do you think you lack?

MZ: Computers, software, the right software. We have been dreaming about buying Silicon Graphics for a year now. We are saving money for that. We have some software. We use 3D Studio Max, Digital Fusion and ADOBE Premiere, but [Softimage] Toonz we still don't have. We were just negotiating with Microsoft to give us a discount for Toonz.