Azem Shkreli
Azem Shkreli was a Yugoslavian writer, poet, director and producer of Albanian ethnicity. He was head of the Kosovo Writers' Association, president of the Association of Writers of Yugoslavia, manager of the National Theatre of Kosovo in Pristina and founder and manager of Kosovafilm, a film production, distribution and screening company.
Biography
Azem Shkreli was born on February 10, 1938, in the village of Shkrel of Peja, Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He lost his mother when he was two years old, and was brought up by his grandmother, who also died when he was a young boy. He went to elementary school in his hometown, and in Pristina, he attended high school and graduated in 1961, and then went to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pristina, to study in the Department of Albanian Language and Literature Studies, from which he graduated in 1965. As a student, he began writing for the daily newspaper Rilindja and served as head of the Kosovo Writers' Association. He worked as director of the National Theatre of Kosovo from 1960 to 1975 and in 1975 he became founder and director of Kosovafilm, a film production, distribution and screening company – a post he held until he was expelled by the new Serb administration in 1991.He was the president of the Association of Writers of Yugoslavia between 1982 and 1983.
The poet was deeply concerned with the fate of Kosova, dedicating himself wholeheartedly to the struggle for his people’s fundamental human rights and liberation. During the 1990s, he spent some time in Germany, where his wife received medical treatment unavailable in Kosova. Despite this, he chose not to remain abroad with his family, instead returning to Prishtina to live alone. This was a painful choice for him, yet one he felt compelled to make out of a sense of duty and commitment. When invited to stay for three months at Villa Waldberta in Bavaria in 1993, he grew restless and left after only six weeks.
Shkreli worked tirelessly, never losing sight of the ultimate goal: freedom and independence for his fellow Kosovo Albanians.
On May 25, 1997, he died at the Prishtina airport, just moments after stepping onto his homeland’s soil following a visit to Germany.