whos is this memory?

8/17/2019 Whos Is This Memory?

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Whose IS inis jnemory :Hushed Narrat ives and DiscerningR em em bran ce in a lkan Cinema

by Dina lordanova

The more look at S o u t h e a s t e r nEurope's cinema, the more it seemstha t all imp or ta n t f i lms f rom the

region ultimately deal with historical memo-ry. More specifically history is t reated assome th ing to e n d u r e , to live th roug h, aprocess where one does not have agency butis subjected to the will pow er of externalforces. Som eone else ultimately decides yourpresent and future. Shifting narratives per-m it the s tory to be told from differe ntangles. Priority is given to some mem orieswhile others are neglected or totally elimi-na ted . These condi t ions of ten resu l t inuneven or choppy narratives ofth e histori-cal past, present, and future ofthe region.

The Ottoman FootprintThe present political configurations and

alignments of Eastern and Southern Europelargely match the three empires that definedthe map a century ago. Central E uropea nstates roughly correspond to the formerAustria-Hungary and are definitely consid-ered European. The cluster of Russia and itsformer satellites is equivalent to the RussianEmpire and is thought to have the potentialto become truly European with some adjust-ments. And the Balkan lands, all of whichwere once part of the Ottoman Empire, aretreated as repre senting v arious degrees ofOrientalist culture. The dynamic, rational,and pragmatic Europe is thought to haveonly a weak association with the Balkans, aregion that is generally associated with being

slow-moving, lazy, poorly organized, auto-crat ic, mystic, and inefficient . Countriessuch as Greece, Macedonia. Bulgaria, Romania,Serbia, and Albania are therefore deemed insufficiently E urope an. They are regardedwith distrust and have to constantly provetheir suitability for European status. EvenGreece, which has been a m e mb e r of th eclub for a while, has to face such misgivingsan d is forced t o con stantly speak of itself as the cradle of European civilization.

O ne of the ma in ideological goals foreach Balkan country following the expulsionof the Ot tomans was to assert a d i s t inc tnational identity. Historical narratives werecraf ted tha t presented the c en tu r i e s ofOttoman rule as intrinsica lly alien to a nddestructive of national identity. Each respec-tive nation was shown as having emergedfrom the Ottoman period unsullied by theforeign Islamic influence. Anything thathinted at mixing with the Turks, an)'thingthat al luded to imp ure na t iona l i ty, wasberated or denied. T urks w ere assigned thero le of t h e a r c h e t yp a l bad guys in theregion's literature and cinema. ty].iically pre-sented as oppressive, corrupt, and treacher-ous vil lains. Thus, scenes of cruel Turk simpaling fair-haired Slavic rebels have beena frequent feature of Balkan cinema. A fewacamples of such fare are the Yugoslav BanovicStrahinja (1983), the Greek 922 (1986), the

Bulgarian Time of Violence Vreme na nasilie,1988), or the M acedonian Diisf (2001).

More recently however historians and

filmmakers have begun to reject tradihistoriographic traditions that elimitwist the complex nature of the O t tperiod. Quite often a challenge to na tnarratives requires questioning tradnational borders. Maria Todorova's itial work restored the concept ofthe Band Balkanism. triggering a host of that treat the Balkans as a metaphor, ing the syncretism and the hybridity olocal culture, thereby embracing aspOttoman culture. Other historians fon the history of city or region rathea nation state. Mult icultural Thesshas been the subject ot several such p

T he wo rk of E l ia s Pe t r opou loan th rop o l og i s t a n d u rban e thnogwho served prison terms in Greece his writing is celebrated in n UnderWorld (2004), a documentary by KLegaki. Petropoiiios was powertully ed to subject matters that revealed thence of im pu rity in the official highlenic culture. Among his topics wunderworld of Athens, the culture ofbetikci music, unconventional sexualthe intricacies of gay slang, Greek Jethe Ottoman influence on Greek cuPetropoulos, who emigrated in the 19shown sitting in his Paris apartm ent the camera he now enjoys w riting self-publishing his works, and hurlin like hand grenades into Greece.

S pe a k i ng w i th Man th i a D iawRouch in Reverse (1995) lean Rouch


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here is danger th at African co untrie s mayecome "balkanized." His usage implied

hat balkanization was something that hadome from the outside and was imposed.he Ottoman millet system of governance

hat divided populations into language andeligious units is a classic example. Ethnical-y mixed populations were divided and grewuspicious of one another. One consequencef the imposed Balkanization was the urgeo differentiate oneself from one's immedi-

e neighbors. Chauvinists nourished andult ivated innumerable terr i torial claimsased on ethnic purity, claims that becamee basis for irredentist warfare once thettomans were overthrown.

Contem porary filmmakers have begun torobe aspects of their culture that tradition-ists have been trying so vigorously to erad-ate. Numerous documentaries and fea-

ures seek and red iscoveraces of hu.shed multicu ltur- histories and past migra-ons. One recent film. Ha-

mam Memories (dir. Peggyassiliou, 2000), looked athared litestyle features byiscovering the use of theu r k i s h - s t y l e b a t h h o u s e shamani) across the region.n Between Venizelos andtatUrk Streets (2004 ) . Turkish d i rec torande Gumuskemer interviews the remain-

ng survivors of the "exchange of popula-ons" between Greece and Turkey in the92O's that involved 1.5 million Greeks andhalf mil l ion Turk s. A forgotten ethnic

eansing campaign is the subject of Turkishirector Yesim Ustaoglu's Waiting for thelouds (Bulutlari beklerken, 2004) wh ere anthnica l ly homogeneous Turkish v i l lageith a hidden multicultural past still shelters

urvivors ofthe massacres of Pontian Greeks.

Courage is needed to make films abouthese Balkan hushed histories. Films thatddress these issues are considered highlywkward and often trigger negative reac-ons. Set in contested territories, these filmsre pol i t ica l ly inconvenient ,ouching on topics that even

day are still regularly avoidedn d su r rounded by mu ted

actions. These films are con-ntious also because they oftenepict events that take placeeyond the territory ofthe pro-ucing country and thus con-ern the lives of people who aree facto foreign subjects.

Impor tan t and pol i t ica l lynsitive cinematic texts made

cross the Balkan region oftenmain largely unseen withineir own countries and rarelyach international audiences.n example of such work is

fter the End ofthe World (Sledraya na sveta, d i r. Ivanichev, 1998). which nostalgi-

ca l ly tackled the gent le and complexinterethnic balance of multicultural Bulgariafrom the early twentieth centur)'. Set in oneof the o ldes t ne ighborhoods of the p ic -turesque city of Plovdiv, the film showsArmenians. Turks, lews. Gypsies, Bulgari-ans, and Greeks who have lived alongsideone another for genera t ions . One of themost popular recent Turkish f i lms. EzeAkay ' s Why Were Hacivat and KaragozKilled? (Hacivat Karagoz neden oldilruldu?,2006) shows another multicultural and plu-ralistic chronotope. Set in the city of Bursain the fourteenth century, this colorful revi-s ionis t h i s tor ica l f i lm shows the ear lyOttoman empire as a truly ethnically andreligiously diverse sphere, where Islam isstruggling for dominance and gaining fol-lowers mostly because of tax-related advan-tages, and where a group of strong-willed

Historians and filmmakers have begunto reject traditional historiographic traditions

tha t eliminate or tw is t the complex natureof the O ttoma n period. Quite often a

challenge to nationalist narratives requiresquestioning trad itional national borders.

Amazonlike women enjoy the most respect-ed and powerful position in society.

The ult imate chronotope, however, isIstanbul, a place to which all Balkan nationsbear some sort of historical kinship. Thegreat Constantinople, the city of emperorsand sultans, is held in high reverence across

the region. The city truly bridges continentsand cul tures ; i t combines the rush ofmodernity with the relaxed manner of theOriental , the vert ical piercing images ofminarets with the horizontal waters of theBosporus. Fatih Akin's musical documen-tary The Sound of Istanbul (2005) superblybrings together all the city's reverberationsand contradictions into a modern beat whilesimultaneously capturing the melancholy of

Sara [Luna Mijovic ), the young daughter in Jasmila Zbanic's Grbavicanow available on DVD in the U.S. from Strand Releasing Home Video,

empire's end that permeates Orhan Pamuk'sessay novel Istanbul. Traveling to an d losingoneself in Istanbul has become a line in cele-brated centripetal narratives in films likeFerzan Ozpetek's Ham am (II bagno turco,1997) and Fatih Akin's H ead On (Gegen die and 2004), synonymous to rediscoveringoneself in Tangiers (as Tony Gatlifs Exiles,2004, or AndrtJ T^chin^'s loin, 2001) or inMecca (as Ismael Eerroukhi's Le Grand Voy-age). Nor is it by chance that Nuri Bilge Cey-l an ' s a t mo s ph e r i c Vzak (Distant, 2002 .rev iewed in th is i ssue) uses I s tanbul ' scityscape as its most im porta nt asset.

Istanbul, again treated in an atmosphericand melancholic manner, is also at the cen-ter ofthe Greek film A Touch of Spice Politikikouzina., 2(K)3, see review in this issue). TassoBoulmetis, the Greek director, was born inIstanbul. Although his family was expelled

from the city, he makes onlyslight reference to traditionalGreek and Turkish contlicts.This restraint of antagonistic

memories in favor of redis-covering possible relat ion-ships and togetherness, thewi l l ingness to s t ress com-monalities and put adversi-t ies aside, is the mostpromising ideological motif

in contemporary Balkan filmmaking.

That same spirit permeates pan-Balkanfilms like Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses Gaze(T o vlemma tou Odyssea, 1995), where a pensifilmmaker traver ses the Balkan realm insearch of shared record and reminiscence. Inlike manner, the acclaimed Bulgarian docu-

mentary Whose Is Tliis Song? (2003) followsfilmmaker Adela Peeva on her travels acrossa l i ena t e d an d l i ng u i s t i c a l l y i ncohe ren tBalkans to investigate the astonishing rangeof metamorphoses of a simple popular folktune. Beginning in Istanbul, the journey'spath meanders to the Greek island of Lesbosand then on to Albania, Bosnia, MacedoniaSerbia, and Bulgaria. Everywhere the samesong pops up in varied rhythms and with

lyr ics in d iverse languages ;sometimes as a love song, ands om e t i mes a s a be l l i ge r en tnationalist hymn claimed by

both Slavic Orthodox national-ists and Islamic l ihadists . Ineach and every place the localsare seen claiming that this is" ou r " son g , wh ich a lwaysbelonged to "our" t rad i t ion .The more different parties layclaim to i t , the clearer i tbecomes that the song, like thehistory of the region, is bestunderstood as a shared experi-ence. The search for the song'so r i g in s beco mes a mo t i f o fpan-Balkan mutuality with alli ts O t t o m a n , We s t e r n , a n do t he r con n o t a t i o ns a f f ab lyaffixed.


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The omm unist LegacyBalkan cinema also reflects a Soviet foot-

print. Many filmmakers in Romania, Bul-garia, and Albania spent the greater part ofthe 1990's uncovering the wounds of recenthistory and making public the whisperedstories of perverted communist rule. Only inYugoslavia wa s reassessing the communistyears not a major theme in cinema, partlybecause this critical project had already beencarried out in the l980's and partly becauseofthe gruesome breakup that imposed a dif-ferent set of concerns around the aura ofTito's legacy. One exception to this culturalamnesia was the Serbian domestic box-officehit Tbe Professional Profesionalac, 2003).Directed by playvmght Dusan Kovacevic, thefilm reveals how a form er se cret serviceagent systematically controlled all aspects ofthe life of the man whom he was charged withmonitoring some decades earlier. Regimesmay have changed, but Kovacevic suggeststhe surveillance professional will always tryto rule our lives.

Tito's charismatic and controversial fig-ure inevitably dominates all Yugoslav mem-ories. Footage of Tito cutting the ribbon onyet another part ofthe "Brotherhood andUnity" Highway or Tito gloriously comingout of airplanes is used in a great number offilms made in the former Yugoslavia. Croat-ia 's Vinko Bresan's tongue-in-cheek Th eMarshal (1999) even resur re c ted T i to ' sghost on an isolated Croatian island. Theappa r i t i on i n sp i r e s a g roup o f d i eha rdYugonostalgics to declare theleader is not dead and to seekrestoration of the old order.Local entrepreneurs use theopportunity to begin plottingthe deve lopmen t o f Ti t o -ghost tourism for ret irees.They dream of eventua l lycreating a new internationaln iche market of pol i t ica ltourism by reviving the spir-its of other lost great leaders ofthe Commu-nist era. Erich Honecker is their first choice,a sly reference to Ostalgic Germans.

The stories told in the films of commu-nism usually feature those who feel they

must tell of their suffering for the sake ofthose who perished along the way. Some ofthe most striking films, however, involvepeople who are so traumatized that they donot want to talk about their broken lives.Sinisa Dragin's documentary reconstructionPharaoh Faraonul, 2004) stitches togetherthe main episodes in the life of an agedhomeless man who has been repatriatedafter forty years in a Siberian jail and nowdrags himself silently between Bucharest'swin t ry s t ree ts and a hom e for des t i tu teelderly. The introvert protagonist is so pro-foundly withdr aw n that he barely uttersmore than a few words. All he wants is to beleft alone and not to be asked to remember.

The protagonist of Anri Sala's doc"umentaryI t i t (1998) th di t ' th

A tvpically atmospheric scene from NurJ Bilge Ceylan s Distant

also does not u^nt to remember. Her son, a filmstudent, confronts this at tract ive middle-aged woman wi th footage showing heraddressing a Komsomol rally in her youth. Thefootage has no soundtrack and the attemptto restore it is doomed to fail. Even if tech-nically possible, there is no consensus aboutrevisiting episodes that have been success-fully obliterated from memory.

Lucian Pintilie's 77 ̂ fternoon of a Torturer Dupa-amiaza unui tortionar, 2001), on thecontrary, features a protagonist who notonly feels the urge to remember but also isexcessively talkative about the darkest past.

Increasing ly, filmm akers realize tha tmaking new films telling the world how

the Comm unists cheated them wo n'tImprove today's situatio n, especially as

cheating and duping is still occurringon a comparable scale.

In this remarkable film, summarizing Pin-tilie's bitter observations on memory andcontinuity in com mu nism 's aftermath inRomania, versatile actor Gheorghe Dinicaappears as a retired communist henchman,Franz Tandra, keen to come into the openabout h is t ransgress ions . He may havesilenced many but now he wants to go onrecord and put forward his cast" to the youngjournalist and the soft-spoken professor whor e c o r d t e s t i m o n i e s a b o u t c o m m u n i s tcrimes. Tandra 's intr insic sadism and thebrutality of his early childhood years haveconditioned him for what is revealed as a lifeof cruelty and m urder. The unrep entant tor-turer lives in a shack at the end of townwhere most of his life has passed and wherehis memories play out during a confessionalafternoon in tableaulike scenes under thetree in the backyard. The shack is covered ingraffiti and abusive slogans. The giant penissomeone has sprayed at the front suggeststhat the torturer lives under siege from vandal

gangs who use the outrageous media rtions about the shady past of this nemostly as a pretext for setting free theneed to brutal ize others. These vighooligans probably would themselves hbecome torturers should there be a de

Numerous f i lms about the commpast also bring bitter conclusions abpresent-day consequences. Saimir KumDeath of a Horse Vdekja e kalit, 1995example, persuasively looks at the repyears of Albania's Hoxha regime by the fate of an honest and brave soldiebecomes victim of the envy of an official.

released after many yeapro tag onis t, who has lmembers of his family, that the treacherous bucra t respons ib le fodemise is again in powin favor with the new r

Imprisonment and iment that stem from pal envy and gain aboirecent Balkan cinema.

ples include the Romanian Hless You B inecuvdntata fii, Inchisoare. dir. NiMargineanu, 2002) in which the supcrime involves religion, or the MaceAcross the Lake Preku ezeroto, dir. AnMitrikeski, 1997) and the Bulgarian Pa

Izpepelyavane, d i r. S tan imir Tr i f2004), in which love relationships armount. These films reverse old clicstate socialist filmmaking in which communists would fall victim to peand excessively violent fascists. In thefilms, the villains are communists, beenvious and lacking in moral valuesthe victims are usually virtuous andmen and women.

Although many of these films arethe late 194O's and 195O's, some loomo re r e c e n t p e r i o ds . Ku j t im CaColonel Bunker (1996) focuses on thcharged with "the bunkerization" of A(see review in this issue). The colonetually becomes vict im of the syst


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rves, but his inner contradiction.s remainfficult to grasp because the very authorityat generates the paranoia does not figurethe film. Gjergj Xhuvani's Slogans (2001)

uts a more credible human dimension one same period. School teachers, ratheran engaging in instruction in the schoolhere they work, have to spend their days the surrounding hills where they assemblerious prescribed slogans in white stones.

he film, set In the mid-1980's, looks andels like the ideologically absurd 195O's.he teachers are forced to construct slogans

n d e m n i n g t h e A m e r i c a n i m p e r i a li s tgression in Vietnam, even though the wars long been over. All breathing space inis pessimistic film is obliterated by the suf-cating rhetoric ofthe party secretary.

Whatever tbe past and its bleak represen-tions, the bleakest assessment is found inm.s featuring life in postcommunism andretelling a future that is not bright. The mostteresting of these films are about mij^ation, t headual disappearance of people. The storiese usually told from the point of view ofose who stayed behind and observed howe gradually moves elsewhere, how there isthing more to be continued here, no morerths and weddings. The theme has been anstant in Balkan cinema; in Greece it can traced back to Alexis Damianos's triptych

o the Ship (Mehri to plio, 1966) and Theongelopoulos's Reconstruction (Anaparasta-s, 1971), and it is revived once again incent films of leading directors that show ammunity that is divided. Togetherness is

o longer possible. Loved ones have alreadyft (in The Death of Mister Lazarescu, th e

ughter has left for C^lanada) or paiple eager toave, give away their personal possessions,in Lucian Pintilie's Niki and lo ( 2003).

Thase who take the path of forced or volun-ry exile may have difficulties reconnectinga later point, as the life in the place theyve left behind continues in a different

rection. This line of exile and not reconnectingthe leading factor in Edgar Reiz's Heimat.ul, the protagonist, simply did not returnme one day. Only years later is it learnedat he went t o Am erica. He now faces thege moral problem of someone who tries toappear and reconnect , an endeavor forhich it is simply to o late, as half of his life is

The same theme is found n Angelopoulas'sh e Voyage to Cythera (Taxidi sta Kithira,983) that features a repatriated communistnahle to comprehend the new Greece.

People who were duped and betrayedring the years of communism, have a need tome into the open to shout about it In creasin g- however, filmmakers realize that makingw films telling the world how the commu-sts cheated them vron't im pro ve toda y's situ-on, especially as cheating a nd duping s stillcurring on a comparable scale. Whate ver thertues in making films about the past, recy-ng the s:une troE.>e by showing yet an ot he r

ctim of the system c an re nde r viewers un-ces sarily pessimistic about wha t lies ahea d

Where Are the VillainsLast year I had the o ppor tunity to talk to

one ofthe leading independent Serbian doc-ume ntarian s, whose work I admire mostlybecause of its unyielding Frederick Wise-man-ty pe appr oach. I asked him why Ser-bian documentary today is mostly populat-ed by t he i mpo ve r i sh e d a nd c on fu s e dvict ims of Yugoslavia 's breakup whereasthose responsible for this stale of affairs arelargely missing. His answer was that neitherhe nor his personal acquaintances knewanyone involved in the conflicts as a perpe-trator . He said he thought that the willingexecutioners who perpetrated the Serbianviolence of th e 199O's were mo.stly redneckscoming from remote hamlets and acting asaccidental weekend paratroopers crossinginto neighboring territory in drunken mad-ness and then withdrawing, hurl ing awaythe uniforms and returning to their normalvillage routines. He did not think it feasibleto go to these people today and make themtalk about the atrocities they had commit-

ted. H e thou ght the focus shou ld .stay vviththe victims, as they still dwell on what hap-pened while the villains have moved o n.

Many Yugo.slavs believe that the roots ofthe conflicts of the 199O's are to be traced tointerethnic crimes committed during WorldWa r 11. Dur ing the Tito years, however,memories of these crimes were deliberatelysuppressed and people were invited to forget(even if they could not forgive) in the nameof Tito's broth erho od and unity. The uglytransgressions ofthe Croatian Ustasa regimehave been addressed in just a handful ofYugoslav films, the hest known of whichremains Lordan Zafhinovic's classic Ocaipaiionin 26 Scenes (Okupacija u 26 slika, 1978).Public reception of recent f i lms such asDino Mustafic 's Bosnian Remake (2003)

that revisited these episodes and pointed atparallels with recent events has been su bdu ed.

Only occasional works of Serbian cinema,like Goran Paskaljevic's Midwinter Night'sDream (San zimskc noci, 2004) address thecore of recent traumatic events (see reviewin this issue). The biggest box-office hits,however, are apolitical films filled with folk-lore t rad i t ion or punk-rock humor. TheSerbs feel undeservedly punished and support

films that depict their international victim-ization over the Kosovo crisis . LjubisaSamardzic, tbe veteran actor-turned producer,for example, directed maudlin films aboutthe 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, showingit from the point of view of innocent resi-dents of Belgrade who inevitably perceived itas appalling intimidation. Milutin Petrovic'sLand of Truth, Love Freedom ( Zemljaistine, Ijubavi i slobode, 2000), wbile set in anunderground shelter during the 1999 bomb-ing, is probably the only film that criticallyrevisits the national narrative in the best tra-dition of Makavejev's associative montage,

smartly intercutting scenes of a 1950*s Ser-bian glorious populist fairy tale.

These features and documentaries showinnocuous, blameless people. They suggestSerbians all led quiet and peaceful lives intheir respective villages or towns and thenthe war came to destroy their lives and turnthem into refugees. After the war, theyremain impoverished and adversely effected,but they go on with their peaceful and quietlives. The villains are missing. We never seethose who kil led, maimed, raped, hurned,looted, and destroyed.

Bosnian cinema, on the other hand, ismostly focused on war traumas, tackled infilms like Pjer Zalica's subtle Fuse (Gorivatra, 2003) and Days and Hours (Kadatnidze Idriza, 2004), and Jasmila Zbanic's

Alb i fil k A i S l d t th hi t f hi th d hi t Intrevista


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Nino (Rene Bitorajac, left), a Serb, and Ciki (Branko Djuric), a Bosnian, warily coexist in a trench betweenenemy lines while aw aiting rescue in Danis Tanovic s Academy A ward-w inning film No Man s Land.

widely acclaimed Grbavica (2006, a.k.a. sma^s

Secret, see review in tbis issue).Bosnians' wounds are also addressed infilms made by non-Bosnians (from Spain,Isabel Coixet's Secret Life of Words, 2005;from Germany, Christian Wagner'sWarchild, 2006; from the U.K.. AnthonyMinghella 's Breaking and Entering, 2006;and from Switzerland, Andrea Staka's DasFraulein, 2006, see review in this issue).

While the official Croatian discourse isfocused on showing the country as a truedemocracy, there are Croatian filmmakerswho address some of the controversial andhushed issues of recent history. Vinko Bresan'sWitJiesses

Sijedod, 2003) revisited an unsightlyepisode of Croatia's war for independence inwhich a Serbian neighbor loses his life andhis small daugh ter is nearly obliterated. Toldfrom three different and slightly overlappingpoiiits of view, the story raises questions ofaccountability. The image of a local doctorturned politician (whose striking likeness toTudjman cannot be accidental) is particu-larly disturbing. There is no need to hold"our boys" responsible for what can easilybe covered up as co l la te ra l damage , hewarns, as it is war and the dead Serbian mancan easily be classed as an "enemy."

Nenad Puhovski 's Zagreb-based docu-mentary collective Factum has produced anumber of f i lms on highly controversial

subjects {see article on Factum in this issue).

Although only partially released in Croatia,tliey raise a number of uncomfortable questionsabout the extremities of Croatian nationalism,particularly related to situations in whichSerbians were not only mistreated but unlawfullyexpelled or destroyed. The civic bravery ofthe authors of documentaries such as Pavil-ion 22 (about an impromptu concentrationcamp early in the conflict) or The StormOver Krajina (abou t the forced expulsions ofthe Serbian population) remains unmatched inother parts of former Yugoslavia.

One Serbian filmmaker, Janko Baljak,best known for his visionary wartime docu-

mentary Will See You in the Obituary (Vidi-mo se u citulji, 1996), has ventu red in toexploring some of the most awkward issuesof the conflict. Baljak's Vtikovar: The FinalCut (2006), a Serbian-Croatian collabo ration,tried to tell the story of the deadly battle over theDanube town of Vukovar as compreheasively aspossible. People seen in the 1991 footagefrom the conflict are asked to comment inretrospect on the events and on their repre-sentation. Years have passed and life has tri-umphed over death: the crying child fromthe convoy is now a teenage girl and thewom en from the 1991 TV footage, now ten>̂Mrs t lder,

know that that they have been caughton camera precisely at the mo me nt when theirrelatives were being slaughtered elsewhere.

Was There or W asn t There?

Whereas the f i lms f rom the depicted the U.N. blue helmets as apresence a t bes t , the representa tpeacekeeping forces in films from the ns has since undergone important trmation toward the negative, from mto denuncia t ion . Danis Tanovic ' s parable No Man's Land (2001) was anwarning . P jer Zal ica ' s Fuse poweridiculed the ineptitude of the intervand the arrogance of Bosnian assistangrams. Even the Kosovar film KukumQosja, 2005), set just after the 1999 intion, depicts the pre sence of foreign

in an extremely negative light; symbothe innocuous, lovably insane protagokilled at the end by blue helmets.

Teona Mitevska's M acedonian How I KiSaint (Kako ubiv svetec, 2004) shows the radicalization and involvement with tactivities of her loai comm unity is an ineside effect to the presence ofthe intern"peacekeeping" forces. Having comhome after a lengthy stay in America,Viola is seriously worried by the sigas of Wresen tm e n t a n d a n t i -NATO sen t imTanks and foreign soldiers are everyand while they say they came for peac

carry guns all the time. Amidst the ment and violence of daily life, boysmud at any car that may be carrying


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iplomats, and NATO o bome posters areeen everywhere. Viola's own teenage broth-r has grown into an extreme nationalistnd is involved tn terrorist activities.

The peacekeepers are shooting us and areurning us into prostitutes but no one reallyares—this is more or less the message ofiese films. Local people are bitter over the

oreign presence; all sorts of extremisms arcourishing and deepening. It is impossible

distinguish between gangsters and patrioticghters, as crime and nationalist politics hav eoth thrived on the embargoes and havevolved hand in hand, triggered by the peace-eepers' presence, seen by locals as a foreignccupation.

A prevailing sense of bitterness with thenternational community" prevails all overoutheastern Europe . This is less a new feel-ng than a return of sentiments of derisionnd wurthlessness that have been around forenturies. No one from the outside seems toare what happens here, in Europe's back-ard. What is the point of remembering all

he drabness and turmoil? People here arekeptical on the matter of memory and cer-fication, and filmmakers often turn this

kepticism into a theme.Kujtim Cashku's Magic Eye (Syri magjik,

005; see review in this issue) makes a perti-ent comment on the impossibility of pub-c record. In the aftermath ofthe 1997 col-

apsed f inancia l pyramids in Albania ,nsolvent crowds seized arms and chaosnsued. The f i lm follows a photographerom the South who attempts to expose an

nstance of media manipulation. It is sug-ested that presenting lawlessness as a con-

quence of local people's insanity is a prac-ce favored by Western media agencies, theain clients for this type of material. Public

pace is show n as availa ble only for th eanipula ted media coverage . The t ru th

emains confined between the four walls ofrivate gatherings and only a handful ofeople seem to care to be privy to it.

Most uneasiness over the impossibility tover know the real answers, however, is seenn recent films from Rom ania. They go aep further than anyone else by not only

howing it is not possible to know the recentast but also by asking the question who the

ell would need to know. The shady detailsf I l iescu's power takeover in December989 are so many that it may seem worth-hile to ask: Was there a revolution inomania? Clearly, the so-called "revolution"a s a dodgy event heavily reliant on a televisedaging, so that it may seem worthwhile to

eep up the .scrutiny on how events evolved inimisoara, Bucharest, and elsewhere. Evenhat happened to the Ceausescus is not quiteear. Hence, the recurrent symbol of the

elicopter that took them away from thatteful last rally has become a powerful trope

f popular mythology in Romanian f i lms

uch as Mircea Daneiiuc's Conjugal Bed (Patulnjug l 1993) and Lucian Pintilie's Too Late

Prea tdrziu, 1996).

Talk sho w participants in Corneliu Porumboru s 12:08 East of Bucharest

Set on the nig^t of December 22nd d uringRomania 's "revolution," Radu Muntean'sThe Paper Will Be Blue (Hartia va fi atabastra,2006) depicts the absurd military paranoia

that leads to the meaningless deaths of twoyoung militiamen, one of whom has spentthe night trying to help the uprising butfinds himself captured and accused of beinga terrorist. Reminiscent of Goran Markovic'sremarkable Cordon (see review in this issue),the film gives the story from the point ofview of those who are supposed to defendthe agonizing regime and shows how shakentheir own beliefs and loyalties are.

Taking place over a longer period butagain evolving around the 1989 revolution,Catalin Mitulescu's The Way I Spent the Endofthe World (Cum m i-am petrecut sfarsiiut

lumii. 2006) covers the same conceptualground and raises similar concerns of per-plexed individual loyalties amidst the shiftsof turbulent historic times. Teenage Eva\sl imited l ife choices and idiotic patr iot icschooling under communism are mercilesslyscrutinized and are ironically juxtaposed to

R E F R E S H P R O D U T IO N P R E S E N T S

O S N I JU I F I L M I N T C C H N I C O L O R

Poster for Pjer Zalica s satire. Fuss

a sarcastic representation of Eva at the end,sailing away on brightly-lit cruise liner, making itdear that escaping into the consume r para diseof the West remains the most des i rab le

option available in the revolution's aftermath.We are never likely to know about all the

machinations behind what mass audienceswere invited to accept at face value as a revo-lution. From the drabness and emergingpetty-gangster capital ism, however, i t isclear that communi.sm would have endedsooner or later and we would be more orless at the same dead-end point where weare today, with or without the revolution.This is the message of Corn eliu Po rum -b o i u ' s I2:OS, East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-afost?, 2006), the Romanian t i t le of whichtranslates literally as Was Th ere or Not? This

diminutive film features a talk show stagedby a small provincial TV channel in Roma-nia, where the question put to the alcoholicteacher and the acc identa l ne ighbor i swhether or not the townsfolk took up therevolution seventeen years ago. The evidence isthin and opinions differ; the conversationveers away. The pettiness and drabness ofeveryday life has taken its toll and now, sev-enteen years later, it no longer really mat-ters . Life has gone on; today's concernsprove ultimately more pertinent thiin secondaryissues like memory and historical record.

In the commentary to the DVD release of

his films by the French d istrib utor MK2,Romanian director Lucian Pinti l ie makeswhat he himself describes as a "monstrous"statement: the social and political anxiety ofpostcommunism that .surrounds him is sograve, he says, that he would not like tomake any grievances over the problematicstate of cinema. Certain things are moreimportant than making films, the directorexplains, and they need to be looked afterfirst. There are reasons to share this pes-simism. But there are also reasons to argueagainst the gloom. The production contextmay be difficult, but films coming from the

region have triumphed against all odds, andthe knotty story ofthe Balkans is continuallybeing told in cinema. •


7/7

whos is this memory?

Documents