FILM "INVOKING SPIRITS" WINS "EMMY" AWARD

( Editorial: --> 9461 ) ZAGREB, Sept 10 (Hina) - The documentary film "Invoking Spirits", a tragic testimony about the suffering of Croatian and Bosnian women, won an "Emmy" award in New York last night. The film's producer and director Mandy Jacobson and co-director Karmen Jelincic received the award from the US President's special representative Richard Holbrooke. The executive producer of the film is actress Julia Ormond. The 63-minute long documentary shows the exodus of people from Hrvatska Kostajnica and Vukovar and the suffering of people in concentration camps. The film revolves around two women - prisoners of the Bosnian Serb concentration camp in northern Bosnia. The first women is Jadranka Cigelj, a Croat accused of being a vice- president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) branch in Prijedor (north-western Bosnia), while the second victim is a Muslim woman, a judge at the Prijedor Municipal Court, who opposed the aggression on Croatia. According to Cigelj, the film was named "Invoking Spirits" because the women prisoners in the Omarska camp were so desperate they even resorted to invoking spirits to find hope in salvation. The documentary is dedicated to five women killed in the Omarska camp, which had 37 inmates. It has received nine awards at international film festivals as well as major awards from international human rights organisations. The material presented in the documentary offers evidence for initiating proceedings for the arrest of war criminals and has already been shown in the US Senate and Congress. The documentary was filmed in Croatia and Herzegovina over a period of three and a half years at a cost of US$300,000. It was financed by donors, producer and director Jacobson and co- director Jelincic, a Croatian from the island of Brac. Used in the film are also parts of documentaries from Croatian Television, Television Bosnia-Herzegovina, the BBC and materials illegally obtained from Serbian reporters. The film has been entered for Oscar nominations in the category of documentaries. (hina) rml /mbr 101502 MET sep 98