May 16, 2018 - The Tivat Culture Center has announced the premiere of the documentary film "Kotorski misal" (Kotor’s Missal) by Gojko Čelebić in August. The film is devoted to the scientific research work of Lenka Blehova Čelebić, who found and manned the "Missal of St. Jacob of the Lodge" in the State Library of Germany in Berlin. This 12th-century monastic manuscript belonging to the Kotor’s Diocese is the oldest liturgical manuscript discovered so far in our area.
Lenka Blehova Čelebić is the first paleographer who has scientifically handled this book which, in all respects, belongs to world cultural heritage. The book has 348 manuscript pages on parchment with leather binding, and it is written in the medieval letter "Benevento" in the monastery of Monte Casino in South Italy, and as such, it belongs to very rare and valuable manuscripts. The book went to the German State Library in 1930. It is assumed that it ended up in Germany after Hegel's lectures at the University of Jenna and the efforts of Goethe and Slovak Slavist Jozef Šafárik to preserve the cultural treasures of Asia and Eastern Europe. Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic and Sima Milutinovic supported those efforts. Researchers say it was a fortunate circumstance because so many valuable documents and books were preserved as part of the world's cultural heritage, including the "Missal of St. Jacob of the Lodge"- Kotor’s Missal. The younger brother of "Kotor’s Missal," "Dubrovnik’s Missal," is kept in the library at Oxford.
"Our missal is called "Kotorski" not only because it contains the image of St. Tripun, the patron of Kotor, but also because, in the handwriting, it was later written in the year of death of Blessed Ozana," said the researcher, Lenka Blehova Čelebić.
The emergence of the "Kotor's Missal" Blehova Čelebić relates to the former Benedictine monastery at Miholjska Prevlaka in Tivat Bay and considers that the Bishop of Kotor was commissioned by the bishop of Bari, whose church authority at that time was Kotor. The oldest mention in the missal was dated 1200, and the most recent 1334. The death of Blessed Ozana was also mentioned in 1545. Blehova Čelebić points out that this unusually valuable and rare book succeeded in surviving the bombing of Berlin in 1945.
The author of the "Kotoski misal" documentary, Gojko Čelebić, says the film is not yet completed, but filming in the university cities of Ljubljana, Heidelberg, Jenna, Berlin, and Terezin in the Czech Republic has ended.
"I started recording in Ljubljana last year, and the recording continued in Germany, Heidelberg, then in Jenna, Goethe's Weimar, Berlin, and in a small town in the north of the Czech Republic, called Terezin, where it once was a notorious concentration camp. Today, the cultural treasure from the territory of former Yugoslavia and today's Montenegro is stored there," Celebic said.
Celebic points out that the film, although it is low-budget, it belongs to the alternative scene and follows the energy of the direct relationship with our manuscript and identity of heritage. Celebic especially thanked the Tivat Culture Center, where he found the understanding and partners for the realization of this project.
At the press conference at the Regent Hotel, organized for the occasion of the new production, Neven Stanicic, the Tivat Culture Center director, announced the premiere of the documentary film "Kotorski Misal" for August 2018. This is the fifth film production of the Tivat Culture Center, which can only be praised by a small number of cultural institutions in Montenegro.
