Dragoslav Bokan

Dragoslav Bokan,
film director and writer,
contributor and honourable member of the Urban Book Circle

Dragoslav Bokan (Serbia, 1961) is a Serbian film director, writer, columnist and publicist.

Bokan was born in the Savski Venac area of Belgrade on February 15, 1961 to Serb parents Ilija and Milka (née Devetak). His father Ilija comes from Osredci, and his mother Milka from Mala Gradusa. Several of his family members including his grandfather Djuro and great-grandfather Dusan (father and grandfather of his mother Milka) were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp by the Ustashe during World War II, causing Bokan’s mother to grow up in a home for war orphans.

After completing the XI Belgrade Gymnasium, he graduated from the Department of Film and Television Directing at the University of Arts in Belgrade and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. In his youth, he directed a music video for the rock group Riblja corba, acted in the film Telefomanija and was an assistant director of the film Srce i njena deca. Together with his brother Aleksandar (1968–2023), he initiated the publishing and Serbian language translation of Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History in 1988. Through that edition, he became friends with Dragos Kalajic, who wrote the afterword for the book. In 1989, he worked as a director of the cultural-historical documentary series produced by broadcasting service RTB called Svedoci vekova (Witnesses of the Centuries) about medieval monasteries and churches in Kosovo and Metohija. Later that year, he moved to Port Chester, New York and a year later he returned to Serbia. After returning to Belgrade from the USA, with the support of Dragos Kalajic, he got a job at the Belgrade Publishing and Graphic Institute (BIGZ) as an editor of special editions of exclusive books of the esoteric tradition of European culture. Bokan ran in the general elections for the President of Serbia in 1992 as the president of the Serbian Fatherland Association. He was an uncredited screenwriter for the 1993 film Tri karte za Holivud (Three Tickets to Hollywood) and was interviewed in the 1995 BBC documentary series The Death of Yugoslavia. A part of his interview from this series appears at the end of the Death in June song Lullaby to a Ghetto.

He wrote for the magazine Pogledi, was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Nove ideje, the editor-in-chief of special editions of Duga, contributes to the magazines Eko kuca and Pecat and is one of the founders of the Center for Strategic Projects in Belgrade. He wrote and published a large number of newspaper columns and articles for the Press and Standard magazines. Bokan is a contributor to the Urban Book Circle (Canada).

He founded the magazines Nase ideje, Lepa Srbija, and Vodic za zivot. He designed the presidential campaign of Princess Jelisaveta Karadjordjevic under the name Initiative for a more beautiful Serbia, in which she received 62,737 votes in the 2004 Serbian presidential election. In 2004, Bokan also wrote the children’s collection Junaci srpskog ustanka (Heroes of the Serbian Uprising) under the pseudonym Vuk Devetak and was the editor-in-chief of a 1008-page monograph on Belgrade called Beograd, grad tajni (Belgrade, the City of Secrets). In 2007, he designed a billboard campaign with quotes from Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, George Washington, John F. Kennedy and Willy Brandt with the message Kosovo is Serbia. The campaign resonated globally, with The New York Times interviewing Bokan on the subject. Bokan’s monograph Politika: Mit, hronika, enciklopedija (Politika: Myth, Chronicle, Encyclopedia) won the Golden Seal diploma at the Belgrade Book Fair in 2008. Bokan designed and directed twelve audio books which were published by Sluzbeni glasnik and also directed the short film Srpsko zavestanje (Serbian Legacy) in 2011.

Since 2019, he is the president of the Institute for National Strategy.

Through his Facebook profile, Bokan published a large number of essays and articles on religious, national, cultural and general topics. A series of books of his Facebook articles under the working titles Fejsbuk dnevnik (Facebook Daily) and Fejsbuk nocnik (Facebook Nightly) is being prepared. He is married to the well-known opera singer Zeljka Zdjelar, with whom he has a son Leonida and twins Stefan and Dusan. From previous marriages, he has a daughter Sofija, and sons Vladislav and Vuk.

Published books