An overview of the Macedonian non-professional filmmaking 

There is a move to form a partnership between Union Méditerranéenne de Cinéma et Vidéo (UMCV) and the Macedonian Federation ... here Mitze Chapovski explains how the idea struck him.
When someone mentions Macedonian cinema, probably the first thing that comes to your mind is the critically acclaimed and Academy Award nominee Before the Rain, directed by Milcho Manchevski. But, does Republic of Macedonia have a bit more to offer when it comes to filmmaking? Yes, indeed it does! 
At the very beginning of the 20th century, the two brothers Yanaki and Milton Manaki made the first shots with their Bioscope film camera which had the serial number 300, capturing, for the first time, real life moments into motion pictures.They were the first to bring this new and revolutionary thing called a film camera into the Balkan region. 
Only ten years after the first film by the Lumière brothers, they marked the birth of cinematography in the Balkans, and set the foundations of Macedonian filmmaking. 
Soon Macedonian amateur filmmaking began. It was in the 1930s that some authors, such as Blagoja Drnkov, Kiril Minoski, Blagoja Pop Stefanija, Stojan Malinski and Sifrid Miladinov, made the pioneer move by selecting and editing their shots, putting them together, and thus making a film.This marked the beginning of what is known as amateur filmmaking in Macedonia, that has been preserved and developed up to today. 
Nowadays, non-professional Macedonian cinema has its own place in the filmmaking, in general. It is still the start-up place for some of the novices, who have yet to prove themselves and eventually become professional filmmakers, and it stands as a solid ground for the 'stubborn', always enthusiastic and real amateur-film aficionados(like myself).
Yes, today's picture is far from the fullness and strength that it had back in Yugoslavia, where the well-developed network of cinema clubs functioned quite well, but it is not that weak either. This is just because there are still a couple of things that sustain the Macedonian non-professional, i.e. amateur film. First, there is the Cinema Association of Macedonia, an institution that handles the organizational aspect of the non-professional cinema. Second, there are about ten active film, video and cinema clubs throughout the country, that keep the film festivals and workshops alive. 
Finally, there are the filmmakers who still make good films, keep faith with non-professional filmmaking, and say loud and clear:
No, we won't be the endangered species, and 
Yes  - we will always bring new filmmakers into our wonderful world of cinema!
To sum up, even with the threat of being wiped out (which is a worldwide trouble, not only in my country), Macedonian non-professional cinema is kept alive, thanks to the films produced and festivals held every year, and thanks to the people who always believe that this form of film expression should exist, and this type of media should be taken care of.

As Mrs. Ilindenka Petruseva, a well known Macedonian film critic and a lifetime amateur film explorer, recalls in her book Times Of Games And Dreams (Време на игри и соништа):

“The amateur film lives and develops (among everything) - 
like a game,
like a dream, 
like love... 
and it moves like the waves...”.