BALKAN CINEMA in the 90s: AN OVERVIEW

Afterimage, Jan, 2001 by Dina Iordanova

Critical voices from within Yugoslavia developed the genre of the mock-documentary, which mixed fact and fiction and used re-enactment and stagings, such as the hilarious production of Studio B92, Zilnik's Tito Among the Serbs for a Second Time (1993). The topic of the largest number of films was Sarajevo: over 70 documentaries, by both local and international filmmakers, explored the city's ordeal. While being systematically destroyed, the city was perpetually revived in the works of the Sarajevo Group of Authors (SaGA) who chronicled its agony and proud survival. SaGA, under the creative leadership of Kenovic, was responsible for many of the films made here, including Sarajevo: Ground Zero (1993) and MGM Sarajevo: Covjek, Bog, Monstrum (MGM Sarajevo: Man, God, Monster, 19921994, SaGA, Bosnia). Many other independent documentarians worked in Sarajevo as well, making remarkable films about the city's ordeal.

Wrapping up the decade, it is likely that the year 2000 will mark a slow-down in the numbers of films that dealt with the painful and traumatic Yugoslav breakup. But weren't the best Vietnam-war films made in America only years after the official end of the war? Didn't the ghosts of Vietnam feature powerfully in Hollywood as recently as 1995, with Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump? Similarly, in 1998 two acclaimed films treated the 20-year-old subject of the Lebanese civil war-Ziad Doueiri's West Beirut, and Ghassan Salhab's Phantom Beirut. The filmmakers, who were teenagers at the time, revisited the topic of war two decades later and recreated it in their personal cinematic narratives. Deepa Mehta's Earth 1947 (1998) reopened the still controversial theme of the Indian partition nearly 50 years later.

Similarly, with time, it is possible that more films about the breakup of Yugoslavia will be made. Those whose lives were deeply affected by what happened there in the 1990s will return to their traumatic experiences. In the years to come, Balkan filmmakers will be looking back at taking sides, villains and victims, displacement and migrations. Many more important films are likely to appear that will revisit the topic of war in Yugoslavia, and of the healing process, which has, presumably, begun.

THE INDUSTRY

The industry cyde: from finance to exhibition

Film industries in the Balkan region originally developed early in the twentieth century. Only after World War II, however, were systematic production patterns established, and did national cinemas begin to take shape. This was the time when most studios in the region were built and film production thrived from the 1960s through the 1980s.

The data on feature film production from the various Balkan countries throughout the 1990s reveals two general patterns: stability in countries with capitalist economies like Greece and Turkey, and decline in cinematic output across the countries undergoing the transition from state socialism to a free market economy. The drop in production numbers is dearly visible in the case of Bulgaria and Romania which in 1985, the peak year under state socialism, respectively released 40 and 30 feature films. There is no reliable data on the production numbers of some of the Balkan countries, or where data exists it only concerns select years. Cyprus, for example, released three features in 1995, only one in 1996, two in 1997, and none in 1998. The data on Albania is even more sparse--while in 1985 a total of 12 features were made, in 1992 only one is listed. Still, due to the breakup and the division of the film industries, it is most difficult to track down the Yugoslav output. In the 1980s, the Yugoslav production n umbers were set at around 30 feature films a year. Since its independence in 1992 Macedonia has produced about 10 features, Bosnia fewer than 10, Croatia over 50, Slovenia about 15 and Serbia has been releasing films at the pace of about 10 annually.