BALKAN CINEMA in the 90s: AN OVERVIEW

Afterimage, Jan, 2001 by Dina Iordanova

Across the region--in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Sofia, Bucharest, Skopje, Athens, Istanbul and Tirana--many young filmmakers engaged in avant-garde video projects exploring burning issues of identity and politics of what many of them dub "Balkania."

The films of the Yugoslav breakup

It is a bitter irony that the recent interest in Yugoslavia and its cinema was triggered by the bloody conflict there. Yugoslavia's break up in the 1990s attracted the attention of a large number of filmmakers, both from within the country and internationally. Over 250 feature and documentary films were made about the Yugoslav breakup, thus making it the event that inspired the most active cinematic output in postcommunist times. Along with these films, scattered writing on the subject matter of Yugoslav film, and particularly on those dealing with the Yugoslav breakup and its causes, appeared in a wide range of popular and academic periodicals.

The global trend that turns all feature filmmaking into a multinational enterprise is clearly visible in the case of the features that look at aspects of the Yugoslav breakup. The early conflict of the Croatian breakup was featured in Draskovic's Vukovar: Poste Restante (1994), making the case for the Serbian side, and in Branko Schmidt's Vukovar se vraca kuci (Vukovar Comes Home, 1994), making the case for the Croatian side. At least 35 feature films were made internationally in response to the Bosnian war. The most ambitious ones tackled the complex history of the Balkans, like Kusturica's Cannes-winner Underground (1995) which offered a controversial take on the history of Yugoslavia since 1941. Numerous films explored the difficult choices in taking sides in the ethnic conflict, like Srdjan Dragojevic's acclaimed Lepa sela lepo gore (Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, 1996) and Milcho Manchevski's Venice-winner Before the Rain (1994, UK/France/Macedonia). Many other films focused on Sarajevo. Ademir Kenovic's Perfect Circle (1997, Bosnia/France) explored the fate of displaced children, Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997, UK/USA) looked at the moral issues facing journalists covering the siege, and so did Territorio Comanche (Comanche Territory, 1997, by Gerardo Herrero, Spain/Germany/ France/Argentina). The Italian Il carniere (Gamebag, 1997, by Maurizio Zaccaro) told the story of two hunters caught in the middle of the siege. Other films, by Gorcin Stojanovic and Paskaljevic, focused on the psychological stagnation of people in Belgrade. The experiences of displacement that many from former Yugoslavia lived through were the subject of various works that looked at involuntary migrations and diasporas in the making. The Kosovo bombing was the backdrop for the psychological drama Nebeska udica (Sky Hook, 1999), directed by Belgrade actor and producer Ljubisa Samardzic.

In documentaries, the breakup of Yugoslavia attracted the attention of internationally renowned documentarians, such as French veterans Chris Marker who made the 30-minute film Le 20 heures dans les camps (Prime Time in the Camps, 1993, France), and Marcel Ophuls who made the four-hour collage Veillees d'armes: Histoire du journalisme en temps de guerre (The Troubles We Have Seen: A History of Journalism in Wartime, 1994, France/UK). The documentary that gained the best international exposure was the multi-national television coproduction Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (1995, by Angus McQueen and Paul Mitchell) which used a large variety of documentary sources and featured interviews with most of the main political figures involved in the conflict. Documentaries were also made by well-known public intellectuals whose usual domain is the written word, such as Bernard-Henri Levy with Bosna! (1994, France) and Michael Ignatieff with Blood and Belonging: The Road to Nowhere (1993, UK/Canada). In Truth Under Siege (1995, France/USA), Natalie Borgers and Leslie Asako Gladsjo tackled the workings of independent media across former Yugoslavia. Mandy Jacobson's Calling the Ghosts (1996, USA) investigated the Bosnian rapes.