Dimitrie Osmanli was a Macedonian film, television and theater director. He was given a Macedonian Ministry of Culture award for his contributions to the country's film industry. He was born in Bitola and lived in Skopje, and working in his country and abroad.
Early life and education
Osmanli graduated in film and theater directing, from the Belgrade Dramatic Arts’ Academy, and attended postgraduate studies at IDHEC, Paris in the early 1960s.
Career
Academic work
Osmanli was a professor and the first Dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in St. Cyrilus and Methodius University in Skopje. He was the unique multimedia director directing feature productions in theater, film, TV, and the radio.
Film, television and radio
He directed the short feature film Doll’s Rebellion in 1957. His work includes four long length features; he first directed A Quiet Summer in 1961. Later, he directed Memento, 1967, Thirst, 1971 and Angels of the Dumps,, 1995/97. Osmanli created 11 documentary films, 14 television features, TV series, film reports, and a number of television productions, directed for the studios in his country and abroad. He directed the TV play The Paradox of Diogenes for the Polish TV Katovicze, and the long length feature The White Shirt, the TV play The Lost Son and the seven-episode TV series Morava ’76; the latter three projects were for the Belgrade TV studio. His works had been given awards at both film and TV festivals. In 1987 on the Yugoslav TV festival held in Neum, he was bestowed with the special award for directing the TV film Skopje reveries. In June 1998 the American Film Institute presented his film Angels of the Dumps in the NationalFilm Theater in the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., honoring him with a special two days program named "Macedonian director Dimitrie Osmanli in person." He has directed more than fifteen radio-dramas by Macedonian, Yugoslav, Russian and French authors.
Theatre
Osmanli directed the staging of about ninety theater plays from a number of periods and genres, including Ana Frank in 1957, as well as the first plays by Plaut, Lope de Vega, Marivaux, the Croat classic Miroslav Krleza etc., on the national theater stage. In the mid-Seventies, he performed the tragic farce entitled Both, Pain and Wrath, his own dramatization of the war theme novel by the Macedonian writer S. Janevski. Osmanli staged a number of comedic plays which have had runs of at least 50 performances, often over 100 showings; The Wedding Ceremony was presented more than 250 times, and the French vaudeville Flea in the Ear was performed regularly for 18 years. His comedy Member of the Parliament by the Serbian classical playwright Branislav Nushich played for 15 seasons on the stage of the National Theatre in Skopje. Osmanli was involved with the Edessian Theater in Edessa, Greece, for more than twenty years. In the 1970s he directed Woody Allen’s satirical play God, Maria Baka-Stavrakou’s The Holidays of Smiley, Nikolai Gogol’s Wedding and in 1999, Pirandelo’s Six Characters Searching the Author. God, staged with the Edessian Theater, won first prize at the National Festival of Alternative Theaters in Corinthos, Greece.
