Documentaries From Post-Yugoslavia: Serbian War Discourse, 1999

Afterimage, Jan, 2001 by Nevena Dakovic

The turbulent recent history of Yugoslavia--13 years of raging wars, secessions, hyperinflation, bombing and pseudo-"transitional and democratic processes"--is carefully chronicled in the national documentary film production. Thus, in spite of its ever-decreasing character and increasingly blurred boundaries between "pure" docu-films and TV reports (or any other "electronic" genres), titles are frequently analyzed from a variety of perspectives. The research focuses mainly on the ways and modes that national history, politics and ideology are cinematically represented, commented upon and problematized. Most of the analyses are concerned with (re)presentation of typical, individual topics--war propaganda, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, communism, transition, etc.--within the film texts taken to be the reflections and exposures of the current political chaos and conflicting ideologies in Yugoslav society.

From a different perspective, I would like to profit from taking the position of the insider, eyewitness and participant of the depicted years and analyze a carefully chosen body of films in order to demonstrate how most of the mentioned issues coalesce and are inscribed within two opposed but coherent documentary film discourses. The exclusive case studies include films--outstanding, yet paradigmatic titles such as Kosovo, Mesto Zlocina (Kosovo, Crime Scene, 1999, by Bane Milosevic); The Name of the Game (1999, by Aleksandar Karisik and Dragan Zivancevic) or Anatomija Bola (The Anatomy of Pain, 1999, by Janko Baljak)--dealing with the NATO bombing of 1999, which were awarded the highest prizes at the 2000 Festival of Short and Documentary films in Belgrade. [1] The topic is quite rewarding as the 1999 bombing marks both the beginning of the true end of the long period of decay and misfortune, as well as the peak of the Yugoslav crisis and its various physical manifestations such as economic destruction and political oppression and less visible manifestations like spreading ideologized and politicized discourse that contaminates all spheres of communication and life. The documentaries offer almost perfect, all-encompassing examples that summarize the range of issues, processes and crises developing since 1989. The external aggression only intensified the already approaching culmination of the tense and problematic internal state. This simultaneous culmination--which may be indicative of governmental calculation--overshadowed the inner crises, refocusing the attention of the population and homogenizing and uniting the nation in front of the NATO airplanes.

It is only now, in the transitional moment between the last days of the ancient regime and the first days of a new era, after the election of Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, that the rhetoric and discourses of the films about NATO days can be analyzed with a certain detachment, objectivity and precision. The film discourses are revealed to include densely intertwined "post" theories that are the emblems of the second half of the twentieth century, particularly, post-communist and postcolonial theses and trends that are inseparable from national/nationalist feelings, all three posing as the corners of the Bermuda triangle that Yugoslav modern history resembles. The imperative discursive confluence of these elements ultimately shapes the Serbian war discourses of the films. 2 The discourse exists in two basic versions that aptly recapitulate the opposed political attitudes of the war years of Slobodan Milosevic's rule.

Country In Between

Research about the constitutive elements of Serbian war discourse should be carried out cautiously, always bearing in mind the specific nuances that permeate local existence. As I will later prove, Serbian postcommunism and postcolonialism emerge as temporal and conceptual variations of the valid definitions for the cases of the other ex-socialist countries. For these other countries, postcommunism designates the period of transition and radical democratic changes that followed the end of communist rule. The beginning of the postcommunist era coincides with several historical moments: the national revolt for systemic change by Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, the break-up of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Postcolonialism refers to the "aftermath" of colonialism; the adoption of the term "clearly coincided with the eclipse of the older 'Third World' paradigm." Postcolonialism emerges from "the colonial experience of the 'Third World countries' or the experience of the 'minorities' within the geop olitical divisions of east and west, north and south." [3] In the case of eastern Europe one cannot speak about colonial relations of the Third World. It is more convenient to define their postcolonialism as emerging from the experience of the "minorities" within the geopolitical configuration of the USSR-dominated Eastern block. Serbian history does not fit smoothly with either of the already appropriated definitions. Additionally, during the fast-paced development of the aforementioned events, both movements merged into one, glued and decisively shaped by the overall national(ist) feelings.