Von Otto Reiter.
Von Otto Reiter.
Once upon a time there was a country called Yugoslavia, which suddenly no one wanted to remember any longer. Set on fire by professional political criminals and left to its fate by too many reasonable people. This sounds like the start to a fairy tale and yet is nothing other than the greatest European tragedy since the Second World War.
Forget the myths of the wild Balkans, academic and populist theories of the eternal enmity between different races, the traditional laying of blame at the doors of the CIA, the Jewish financial mafia and the Vatican that have dominated the Yugoslav propaganda machinery for decades!
Political bureaucrats such as Milosević, nationalist dissidents such as the Croat Tudjman and the Bosnian Izetbegović utilised the favourable opportunity offered by a political vacuum to feed their personal vanity and greed for power. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children had to die for them. For nothing. This is the most deeply horrifying aspect and the reason that all ex-Yugoslav film makers seem at present hypnotised, like helpless, paralysed mice in front of a snake, instead of revolting, or reacting with shocking, analytical, alternative images.
Serbia: teenager ballyhoo and the most brutal horror fill the cinemas
At the end of the 1990s the legendary Serbian film provocateur of the 1960s, Dušan Makavejev (1965: “Man is not a Bird“, 1974: "Sweet Movie“), returned to Belgrade from his involuntary 30-year exile in Paris. He was gawked at like an exotic animal from a different world but ultimately ignored. Despite his passionate flow of wonderful ideas the returned son Makavejev was forced to recognize as a 70-year old that this dream of anarchy was something that had existed once upon a time. He flew back to Paris to his final exile, misunderstood and bitterly disappointed. The extent of this loss for the Serbian film scene will probably only be recognised in a number of years. At the moment young directors are on the rampage with escapist films lying somewhere between teenager ballyhoo and brutal horror that are volubly celebrated in packed cinemas.
Still during the war the excellent director Boro Drašković ("Život je lep“ – "Life is Beautiful“, 1986) failed at the place where in 1991 the senseless killing began ("Vukovar“, 1994). In the ruins of the town of Vukovar he tells the tragic love story of a young Croatian woman and a young Serbian man. But without a critical background, no mention is made of the political and media organisation of terror. The entire work becomes involuntarily palliative: war, it seems to say, is a mood of nature, a kind of bad weather front. Depressingly unsuspecting and helpless in view of the real political propaganda and war-mongering all around that was visible, audible and palpable to everyone.
But also in the few other films that dared to address the war such as "Why Have You Left Me“ (1993, director: Oleg Novković) or "Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames“ (1996, director: Srdjan Dragojević) a similar silence predominates that is overlaid with melancholic melodies or folklore macho affectation. The former film was, naturally not a success, but the others unfortunately were.
The amazing thing for outsiders may well be that, despite the political and economic disaster and the international embargo in the 1990s, Serbian filmmaking has experienced a revival unparalleled in any of the former Yugoslav states, even without the support of television stations or of the Ministry of Culture.
Famous actors such as Ljubisa Samardzić or Dragan Bjelogrlić have developed not just into producers but also into directors. Others, such as Goran Marković, who made a number of excellent films since the 1970s, found themselves in internal emigration again: "Although I did not want to emigrate just because a band of criminals had seized power". So in eleven years Marković has made only one feature film with the significant title "Burlesque Tragedy“ (1995), financed with French money and made in Bulgaria with Serbian actors. His look back is filled with bitterness: "Quite a number of friends and colleagues played along with the criminal Milosević regime whether out of "patriotic“ conviction or purely to promote their careers. As professor at the Academy of Art I earned eight Deutschmark (about 4 euro) a month, others had suddenly thousands available to make films with dirty money from bloodstained hands."
But at an even earlier stage the most unbending of them all had too little money but plenty of critical ideas: Želimir Žilnik from northern Serbia, Novi Sad, Vojvodina. He was awarded the main prize at the Berlinale in 1969 for his debut film "Early Works“ (1969). But in his native country he was rewarded by being practically banned from practicing his profession. But up to the present day he has never let himself be hindered. And so he continues to film using cheap video material to make feature films, documentaries and sometimes a mixture of both. Two years ago the Graz "Diagonale" dedicated a homage to him that received a considerable response. Nor has he lost anything of his provocative humour, for example in "Tito Back among the Serbs“ (1994) he had Marshal Tito return from the grave and wander in his best army uniform through the streets of Belgrade, keen to talk with "his" people. Tito alternates between attacks of rage, enthusiasm and sorrow. A film that will become a mirror of Serbian deviations.
Makavejev lives a withdrawn existence in Paris, but Žilnik continues to fight: "I thought humour and fantasy accompany the Yugoslav path to socialism. I must admit that I was rather blind as to the extent of the scornful and angry reactions that my films provoke. I know", Žilnik continues, "that lasting happiness is to be found only in the cemetery but these ruthless people who were in power then have today again found 'spiritual brothers and sisters'. All play the same old melody, perhaps with more modern instruments. For me little and yet everything has changed in the most awful way.“
Croatia: escape from reality instead of confrontation
In complete contrast to Serbia Croatian cinema has never been rebellious or individual. A legendary "black wave" in the 1960s like in Serbia would have been completely unimaginable in Zagreb. For decades the successful production company Jadran Film was a figurehead, but is now on the edge of bankruptcy. Many lucrative international co-productions (Karl May Westerns or partisan films, above all "Sutjeska“, 1972 with Richard Burton as Tito and Orson Welles in a supporting role) served to promote tourism as well as the ideological doctrines of the state. These times are long gone. In relation to other low wage countries production costs in Croatia have been artificially raised but there are also other, political hurdles. For example Steven Spielberg did not film "Schindler's List“ in Croatia as originally planned but in Slovakia and Poland because the Croatian government was at the time experiencing severe difficulties in cooperating with the Yugoslav war crime tribunal in Den Haag.
In addition the Croatian television station (HRT),Tudjman's most important propaganda instrument, and his radical nationalist party HDZ still play an enormously important role in relation to the roughly half a dozen cinema films that are made each year.
And so filmmaking in Croatia is restricted to TV series reduced to feature film length and using theatre actors. They cultivate the "Tito and Yugoslavia nostalgia" such as in Branko Schmidts "Queen of the Night“ (2001). Or they are extremely simplistic religious propaganda films, such as Jakov Sedlar's "Madonna“ (1995). The local public does not appreciate such films. More and more cinemas are being forced to close down, at present there are about thirty per million inhabitants.
The biggest hit in recent years was Vinko Brešan's war film "How the War Started on my Island“ (1996). This film reached an audience of 300,000. Surpassed only by the international US blockbuster "Titanic“.
But that did not unfortunately make him more courageous. Although his latest film "Svjedoci“ ("The Witnesses“, 2003), shown at the Biennale 2004, addresses a Croatian taboo theme, the murder of a Serb family, it is made in the style of a better TV crime film, without the urgently necessary background images.
For decades Yugoslav filmmakers used to meet at the national film festival in Pula in Croatia. After the start of the war this became a purely Croatian film festival, now even Serb and other European films are shown. A promising step forward.