Oral history interview with Bledar Bujupi

Interview: 23 minutes 59 seconds

Bledar Bujupi is a freelance film editor working in Manchester. He was born in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo and he moved to the UK when he was thirteen years old. Bledar remembers a happy childhood until the war began when his family were forced to leave their home and were moved to the Macedonia as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. The family were loaded onto a train and were taken to the border and they then had to walk from one country to another. Bledar’s family were evacuated to Manchester and they lived in a refugee centre for a year when they first arrived.

Bledar and his twin brother both studied multi-media at Manchester College and they both work in the media now. Bledar enjoys living in Manchester; he finds it an accessible city and says it has everything you need. He says he would choose to live here again if he had to make the choice again and he finds it to be a creative, stimulating city.

In this interview Bled describes his experiences in Kosovo as a child before the war; the build up to and beginning of the conflict; exodus and evacuation to Manchester. He describes his life in the UK.