Post-Yugoslav Cinema

Post-Yugoslav Cinema
Post-Yugoslav Cinema
Towards a Cosmopolitan Imagining
Dino Murtic
University of South Australia, Australia
© Dino Murtic 2015
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For Yanli and Benjamin
Contents
List of Figures viii

Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Theoretical and Methodological Considerations 8
2 Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo 20
3 An Historical Fable of a Country That Is No More 36
4 Ordinary Men at War 74
5 Women Speak after the War 86
6 Roma: The Other in the Other 124
Conclusion: Sarajevo and One Illusion in August 161
Notes 180
Filmography 186
Bibliography 188
Index 204
vii
List of Figures
3.1 Blacky, Marko and Natalia in the cellar (still, Underground)

d 48
4.1 Bosnian soldier Cera abandoned in the trench (still,
No Man’s Land)
d 81
4.2 Johnny drinks coffee alone (still, Ordinary People) 84
5.1 Sara shaves her head (still, Grbavica) 122
6.1 Taip is the unchallenged patriarch of his family
(still, Gypsy Magic) 137
6.2 Matko and Dadan mean business (still, Black Cat, White Cat)
t 148
C.1 Alma, a close-up (still, Snow) 169
viii
Acknowledgements
While researching and writing this book, I accumulated and now owe
a debt to many.
First and foremost, I wish to thank Robert Hattam for continuous sup-
port, encouragement and guidance. I also owe a great debt of gratitude
to Adrian Guthrie, Katrina Jaworski, Margaret Peters, Suzanne Franzway
and Anthony Elliott.
I am also in debt to Douglass Kellner, whose influence on the theo-
retical and methodological foundations of this book is profound, for
offering his valuable perspective on the key themes in this book. Thank
you is the minimum that I should say to Josko Petkovic, who was yet
another insightful commentator on my writings prior their publica-
tion. I am also grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for their support for
this project. Extra special thanks go to my friends Sally Richards and
Monica Behrend, who proved once and for all that the fellow scholars
and editors are not the only individuals who read and comment on an
academic text before its publication.
I am indebted to Miljenko Jergovic, Aleksandar Hemon, Vuk Perisic,
Dina Iordanova, Pavle Levi, Svetlana Slapsak, Ivo Zanic, Andrej
Nikolaidis, Alen Pejkovic, Robert Donia, Fran Markovitz, Sanjin Pejkovic,
Boris Dezulovic and Slavoj Zizek. Even though I did not have a chance
to meet them in person or to be engaged in any kind of personal con-
versation with any them, I benefited significantly from reading their
intellectual and artistic meditations on the Western Balkans, the city of
Sarajevo, and post-Yugoslav cinema. Their perspectives on the subject
matter are embedded in my own.
My research and consequently this publication were made possible
through the scholarship I received from the Australian Department for
Education and the University of South Australia.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the continual support, kindness
and encouragement given to me by my family. In particular, I am grate-
ful to my partner Yanli, as her love, understanding and support have
been generous and unconditional. Yanli, you are my lighthouse and my
inspiration.
ix
Introduction
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of a new era for the European
continent. The immediate consequences of the more-than-symbolic
demolition of the wall that divided the city of Berlin were the
re-unification of Germany and the beginning of democratic processes all
over Eastern Europe. What followed was the Continent’s cultural, eco-
nomic and political convergence, previously unparalleled in European
history. In the years to follow, the supranational organisation named
the European Union (EU) would economically and politically integrate
the European ‘west’ with most of the European ‘east’. The process has
not been without setbacks and dilemmas but it is still ongoing. The EU
official motto is ‘United in Diversity’. The motto signifies Europeans
longing for a continent embracing peace and prosperity; a Continent
which prospers due its cultural and linguistic diversity.
Paradoxically, the fall of the wall also marked the beginning of the
end for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Prior to the last
decade of the 20th century, Yugoslavia had been one of the most cul-
turally and linguistically diverse countries in Europe. Constituted of six
republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia
and Slovenia) and two autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)
within the Serbian borders, the state of Yugoslavia was a rare example
of a European post-World War II geo-political entity in which different
cultures and people lived together. ‘Brotherhood and unity’ was the
official motto of the Yugoslav Federation. For the Yugoslav Communist
Party, which undisputedly ruled over Yugoslavia for forty-five years, this
slogan was a symbolic appeal for different nationalities to live in peace
and coexistence.
Instead of further prosperity, the post-wall democratic changes
in Yugoslavia unleashed military conflicts and consequent despair
1
2 Post-Yugoslav Cinema
unprecedented in Europe since the end of World War II. Initiated by the
nationalist elite in Serbia, the curse of nationalism quickly spread over
all the Yugoslav republics. The multicultural state of Yugoslavia ceased to
exist when the war first broke out in Slovenia in 1991, and then moved
quickly to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The end of 1995 was the
end of conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The consequences
left behind were horrendous: the total destruction of the Croatian town
of Vukovar, the three-and-half-year siege of the city of Sarajevo, and the
massacre of the Bosnian Muslim population in East Bosnia. Those are
the most poignant, but not the only examples of the misery that mili-
taristic nationalism brought upon people living in these two republics.
In 1999, a new war front opened in Kosovo. Only the intervention of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) would eventually stop
the massacre and mass exodus of Albanians from Kosovo. The last war
in the territory once known as Yugoslavia happened in Macedonia
in 2001.The political elites of majority Macedonians and minority
Albanians found it necessary to resolve their political dispute through
an open war. This time, fortunately, the war was short-lived, as both
warring sides made political concessions to each other.
A decade of peace has brought uneven socio-political development
to the post-Yugoslav territories. Slovenia joined the EU in 2004. As the
democratically and economically most advanced republic in former
Yugoslavia, Slovenia relatively easily fulfilled the EU socio-political
conditions, which require, amongst others, respect for human dignity,
freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human
rights—including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. Croatia
joined the EU in 2013. But all other constituencies that once were part
of Yugoslavia have an uncertain future. Issues such as disregard for
individual and collective human rights, corrupt bureaucracies, crippled
economies, and the prospect of new military conflict, hang like the
sword of Damocles over people living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo,
Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
The EU—despite being flawed by its own economic failures and poor
record in challenging racism (Balibar 2002; 2004a), and more recently
Islamophobia—has been, by and large, perceived as the only possible
pathway for socio-political stabilisation of the former Yugoslavia (or the
Western Balkans, or South-East Europe or post-Yugoslavia). That the EU
has little or no alternative is further underlined by the univocal support
for post-Yugoslav integration into Europe’s largest supranational organ-
isation by leading intellectuals and scholars from the region. Thus, for
instance, Nerzuk Curak (2006), Mile Stojic (2007), Obrad Savic (2007;
Introduction 3
2008), Slavoj Zizek (2008a), Mario Kopic (2009), Ivan Lovrenovic (2009),
Vuk Perisic (2009) and Andrej Nikolaidis (2011) indicate that eventual EU
membership for the entire region is the only way for further consolida-
tion of peace processes, reconciliation, and the improvement of human
rights. Furthermore, it is in the best of interests of Europe to integrate
the Western Balkans into its socio-political sphere, because the events of
the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia are an ‘image and an effect of its own
[European] history’ (Balibar & Williams 2002, p. 74). Only in this case, as
Balibar and Williams argue, will Europe itself ‘probably begin to become
possible again’ (2002, p. 74). Only with a peaceful and integrated
Western Balkans might the EU serve as a model for other regions in
the world.
Film is important to understanding politics. This, however, is not a
matter of convenience, where films become useful resources we can
draw on to unpack the complexities of political events. Film, Post-
Yugoslav Cinema demonstrates, is crucial to articulatingg our understand-
ings of what it means to be human against the backdrop of political
disintegration. This intimate relationship between film and politics, as
the book also demonstrates, is important for furthering the humanisa-
tion of human beings against the return of nationalism in post conflict
zones. Thus, Post-Yugoslav Cinema focuses on film in two interrelated
ways: as a platform from which we can address nationalism in the
context Yugoslav politics; and as a fabric without which we cannot
embrace the wounds of the past, in order to imagine and think other-
wise in the future. This focus locates film as a methodological and
heuristic framework through which we can rethink humanism and
cosmopolitanism as political and aesthetic responses to the blinding
rage of nationalism.
Drawing primarily on selected filmic texts from former-Yugoslavia,
the book examines key social and political events that triggered the
Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Yugoslav politics and society are set within
the broader artistic and cinematic strategies that helped stabilise post-
Yugoslav territories—strategies that were part of the national desire
to look forward to a time of ‘perpetual peace’ and its subsequent cos-
mopolitan norms. It argues that filmic texts demonstrate the degree
to which nationalism was at the heart of the violent disintegration of
Yugoslavia. Yet the concern of the argument is not simply to offer a
filmic critique for the sake of it. Thus, through the selected films, the
book also develops an alternative to nationalism, namely, a theoretical
framework through which cosmopolitan humanism is at the forefront
of addressing the former Yugoslavia’s political wounds.
Interdisciplinary in its approach to the analysis of film and politics,

the book develops its trajectory by focusing on the complex and con-
tradictory ways in which care for others—as one of the core concerns of
cosmopolitan humanism—is framed by cinematic narratives. To do so,
the book critically appraises films such as Underground, Black Cat, White
Cat,t Gypsy Magic, Grbavica, No Man’s Land d and Ordinary People. The
analyses of these films pay close attention to the socio-political implica-
tions of the films with regard to their capacity to recognise and improve
human rights for those deemed Other(s) in the post-Yugoslav context.
The book’s aim is to establish the above mentioned feature films, as
well as numerous other visual texts, as significant historical references
for post-Yugoslav social development. Secondly, the book argues that
critically examined filmic texts—if read with or against other socio-
historical literature—can become a alternative historical reference
which offers yet another perspective on a particular period of time and
its events. Thirdly, the book uses historical references to show that films
are keyy to understanding how human beings are changed by politi-
cal turmoil—a change which tells us that challenging political ideas
requires creative and aesthetic spaces through which we can visually
rethink—or see—how we ought to respond and care for others, because
we cannot imagine our political futures without them.
While assuming that visualisation is an important part of the prolifera-
tion of cosmopolitan ideas, Chapter 1 lays the conceptual and theoreti-
cal framework for the development of the book’s central argument. It
foregrounds issues in continental philosophy such as a cosmopolitan
humanism embedded in planetary equality, conviviality and care for
the Other, as well as film studies that insist on an ethically conscious
cinema. The chapter briefly focuses on two specific aspects of cosmopoli-
tanism and its imagination. First, it elaborates on Derrida’s (2001) notion
of hope in hospitable cities as independentt from a state or nation. It also
elaborates on how responsibility and care for the Other should be an
overarching imperative in any meditation on cosmopolitanism. Given
the impetus of the book, the methodology is located in the tradition
of Critical Theory and its interpretative perspective of reading a media
text by relying on ‘political hermeneutics’ and ‘diagnostic critique’—two
methodological formulations developed by Douglas Kellner.
Chapter 2 attends to this matter by describing 1980s Sarajevo, which,
at that time, signified a microcosmic example of a cosmopolitan space
within broader Yugoslav and European contexts. The chapter dem-
onstrates how the city’s vibrant cinematic culture contributed signifi-
cantly to creating its cosmopolitan spirit. Film director Emir Kusturica
Introduction 5
is introduced at this point in the book’s narrative. From here on,

Kusturica’s film art, and his public socio-political engagement, are a spe-
cific and sporadic focus throughout the book. His first two features—Do —
You Remember Dolly Bell (1981) and When Father Was Away on Business
(1984)—contributed significantly to visualising Sarajevo’s pre-war cha-
risma. The chapter ends by narrating the beginning of the military siege
of Sarajevo in April 1992.
The historical events that led to the three-year siege of Sarajevo, and
other acts of human madness during the 1990s, are discussed in the third
chapter. The socio-historical analysis of Chapter 3 argues that films can
demonstrate the degree to which nationalism was the primary cause for
the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. Kusturica’s film Underground d (1995)
is analysed first because it is the most significant recent aesthetic and
historical cinematic reference on the Yugoslav disintegration. By focus-
ing on two parallel worlds, above and underground, Underground d serves
as a visual record of Yugoslav post-World War II history. Those above are
the Communist rulers who profited most from the victory over fascism.
The less fortunate live underground in accordance with the distorted
reality imposed upon them by their rulers. By the time those who live
underground reach the surface, the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia
are in full swing. For Kusturica, those who appear from below, includ-
ing rigid nationalist forces, are purely the consequences of the crimes
committed by the Communists against their own people. A close criti-
cal analysis of Underground d questions whether the film’s aesthetic power
and allegorical richness are indeed those of an authentic or emancipa-
tory political imagination.
In following a cosmopolitan humanism as an alternative to post-
Yugoslav nationalism, the next three chapters focus on three examples
of ‘the Other’, as seen in the selected post-Yugoslav films. Chapter 4
begins the task of offering an alternative by focusing on a group of men
who either volunteered or were forced to participate in military conflicts
imposed on them by the state’s nationalistic leaders. The chapter reveals
that a discourse of the rebellious warriorr was embedded in Yugoslav cultural
spaces long before the creation of the modern nation states in Western
Balkans. The multinational Communist party, which emerged as the
victorious and undisputed political subject after World War II, invested
much artistic and political effort in the celebration of the Communist
warrior. Post-Yugoslav cinema at the beginning of the 21st century, how-
ever, preferred an anti-war narrative in which men in conflict zones walked
a fine line between being perpetrators crimes against humanity, and victims
of those very crimes. Two films are discussed—No — Man’s Land d (Tanovic
2001) and Ordinary Peoplee (Perisic 2008)—as examples of a strategic

demilitarisation of the violent discourse deeply embedded in narratives
about men from the Western Balkans. As the chapter reveals, both films
show that despair is what binds enemies and that anyone is capable of
committing horrendous crimes under particular circumstances.
The tenor of analysis changes in Chapter 5, by focusing on women.
The chapter examines the visualisation of the socio-cultural status of
Yugoslav women from the end of World War II to the present day.
It argues that almost forty years of cautious gender politics during
Communist rule did not erase widespread patriarchal norms. Cinema
during Communism had done little to promote gender equality, with
only a few emphatic moments in which cinematography significantly
challenged women’s inequality within Yugoslav socio-cultural spaces.
The film Grbavica, however, is an extraordinary example of socially-
engaged cinema. Created in a multicultural artistic milieu, Grbavica
(Zbanic 2006) focuses on the post-war social condition of a woman
raped during the Bosnian war. The film’s political significance lies in the
fact that the director, Jasmila Zbanic, successfully gained international
attention for the impossible conditions for women who had been sexu-
ally abused in the recent Yugoslav wars and who were then rendered
invisible in post-war cultural, social and political spaces. Chapter 5 in
particular shows the degree to which cinema and filmic texts can liter-
ally intervene against the abuse of human rights.
The final perspective on the Other in post-Yugoslavia is dedicated
to the Roma people who live across post-Yugoslav national spaces.
Considered as the racial Other in pre-World War II Yugoslavia, together
with the Jews, the Roma people faced the prospect of extinction in the
Nazi-influenced south-Slavic versions of fascism during World War II.
Despite the extraordinarily strong and continuous interest in Romani
subjects by film artists from the region, Chapter 6 demonstrates that the
Roma people in most cases have suffered from deeply racialised, biased
and stereotypical visual representations. Gypsy Magicc (Popov 1996) and
Black Cat, White Catt (Kusturica 1997), two films about the Roma that
have attracted broader interest within film culture, refer to the estab-
lished stereotypical racial norms for Roma representation and, conse-
quently, their personification amongst the dominant national identities
in post-Yugoslavia. In both films, the main focus is on irrational impul-
siveness and a lack of moral conscience amongst Roma men. Together
with the exotic attractiveness of Roma culture, the targeted framing of
irresistible, laughing, living caricatures is all that the examined films
can offer an audience.
Introduction 7
The book’s concluding chapter returns to the city of Sarajevo at the end
of the first decade of the 21st century. Contemporary Sarajevo is the very
opposite of the promising cosmopolitan place it was considered to have
been in the 1980s. Yet Sarajevo, during ten days each summer, transforms
itself again into a cosmopolitan urbane place for the annual Sarajevo Film
Festival, which has gradually become one of the most important cultural
events in the former Yugoslavia. Film artists and film audiences from all
over the region fill Sarajevo’s virtual and physical spaces. Discourse that
challenges the status of women within post-Yugoslav national states is
clearly visible and recognised in contemporary films. Furthermore, the
defeatt of the discourse that idolised armed men in the former Yugoslavia
is almost complete, as no significant film or film-artist from the Balkans
celebrates the mythical figure of the warrior. Film and its culture, unlike
some other artistic and visual expressions from the region, is indeed the
first artistic practice which has crossed borders in the Western Balkans
and challenged nationalism. Thus, the book ends by suggesting that
film plays an important role in the cosmopolitanisation of the former
Yugoslavia. Yet the book also concludes by suggesting that blatant racism
and ignorance towards the ultimate post-Yugoslav national Other, the
Roma people, is yet to be seriously challenged in cinematic representa-
tions and the national imaginations of the former Yugoslavia. Despite
the fostering of some cosmopolitan norms, the Roma remain a case of
bad conscience on the region’s road towards the cosmopolitan society it
has yet to become. It is up to film to address this case of bad conscience
precisely because of the power of the visual to reimagine and rethink the
political.
1
Theoretical and Methodological
Considerations
Cosmopolitanism über alles
Theoretically speaking, this book finds its conceptual framework in

ethical philosophies grouped under the umbrella of cosmopolitanism.
This conceptual meditation on cosmopolitanism, however, begins
with the presumption that cosmopolitanism is no longer a utopian
concept; it has already been achieved (Balibar 2002). The consequences
of ‘world unification’, explained by either the impact of rapid techno-
logical modernisation or the current domination of neo-capitalism, are
clearly visible. Nonetheless, the majority of moral principles on which
a utopian cosmopolitanism has been conceived, as a ‘precondition or
an immediate consequence’ of humans’ interconnection, has not been
implemented (Balibar 2002, p. 149). By bearing in mind Balibar’s obser-
vation, my aim in this book is to emphasise the role of filmic images in
conceiving and reconfiguring the ethical and socio-political landscape
of our time. In this sense, particular film art has the possibility to par-
ticipate in, if not initiate, a critical dialogue between a cosmopolitan
imagination and embodied ethics.
In its most idealistic form, cosmopolitanism is seen as a move
towards the recognition and improvement of complex, but at the same
time universal, human rights, developed and applied in a world that
acknowledges both global diversity and global interconnectedness.
At the moment, the integration of the Western Balkans in the
European socio-political space is perceived as a conceivable pathway
for permanent peace in the region. Perhaps, two world wars and
the Holocaust were sufficient to persuade European intellectual and
political minds to imagine a cosmopolitan Europe built on mutual
understanding between its nations, the strict rule of democratic law,
8
Theoretical and Methodological Considerations 9
and emphasis on collective and individual human rights. Thus, in the

past, ‘Europe has produced not only racism but also antiracism, not
only misogyny but also feminism, not only anti-Semitism, but also
its repudiation’ (Todorova 2009, p. 189). The next step for Europe,
according to Todorova, is to find the ‘complementing and ennobling
antiparticle’ (p. 189) in contemporary post-Yugoslavia. With a peace-
ful post-Yugoslavia, a united Europe might serve as a model for other
regions in the world.
However, the post-World War II European (cosmopolitan) accom-
plishments should not be perceived as an exclusively European heritage.
As Croatian philosopher Mario Kopic (2009) underlines:
With Christianity, Europe took over the 4,000-year-old Egyptian

golden rule of interpersonal relationships (do not do to others what
you do not want them do to you); the 2,600-year-old Buddhist
emphasis on the sacredness of life; and Hellenic respect for the ‘law
of death’ (as shown in Sophocles’ Antigone). As such, Europe has out-
lined a space for the autonomous dignity of a human being. (p. 29)
One may add here Fabrizio Tassinari’s (2009, p. 3) important remark

that it was Islam that preserved Hellenic classical philosophy during
the Middle Ages. It was the particular stream of philosophical Islam that
existed in medieval Spain which made a crucial contribution of return-
ingg Hellenism to Europe. ‘The best mind in that continent [Europe]’,
as James Cleugh (1953) perhaps poetically describes this period of
European development, ‘looked to Spain for everything which most
clearly differentiates a human being from a tiger’ (p. 70). The Spanish
city of Cordoba, in particular, was of crucial importance for the devel-
opment of a European humanism. With its 600,000 inhabitants and
seventy libraries (the largest library had 600,000 titles) the medieval
city of Cordoba was a European intellectual torch during the dark age
(Burke 1978, p. 122). Only the epoch of wars and the consequent intol-
erance of the medieval Spanish rulers towards the Muslim and Jewish
Other(s) would eventually destroy Cordoba’s pivotal role in European
illumination.
Similarly to their medieval Spanish predecessors, the contemporary
nationalists in the former Yugoslavia perceived the city as a threat.
‘Nationalism is’, as Tatjana Jovanovic (2009) argues, ‘an anti-urban phi-
losophy’ (np). She continues by claiming that a ‘cosmopolitan City, as a
community of people of urban spirit, is, at present, the only idea of our
civilization which in its definition includes the Other’ (np).
The emphasis on a city, as an emancipatory and hospitable entity is

the focus of Derrida’s essay On Cosmopolitanism (2001) in which he asks
for the creation of ‘cities of refuge’, places that should have a legitimate
separation from states, which would have the possibility of offering
hospitalityy for all in need (p. 4). For Derrida (2001) the main question
that humankind faces in creating such refuge is:
knowing how to transform and improve the Law [of hospitality], and
of knowing if its improvement is possible within an historical space
of which takes place between the Law of an unconditional hospital-
ity, offered a priori to every other, to all newcomers whoever they
may be, and the conditional laws of a right to hospitality, without
which the unconditional Law would be in danger of remaining a
pious and irresponsible desire, without form and without potency,
and of even being perverted at any moment. (pp. 22–23)
Derrida (2001), apart from enigmatically mentioning that a ‘new order

of law and democracy has yet to come’ (p. 23), gives no clue about how
his idea of cosmopolitanism and unconditional hospitality for those
in emergency should look. What I understand from Derrida is that it
is his hope for cities, not states, to become refuges for those in need,
and for cities to be able to accept and protect anyone who requires
humanitarian intervention. For Derrida, re-empowered cities are the key
to ensuring individual rights and the ability to create cosmopolitanism
possibilities. For this book, however, the significant focus on the city of
Sarajevo serves as a paradigm for Derrida’s (2001) meditation on a city
‘that has yet to come.’
By combining European norms on human rights since the end of
World War II with the hospitability of the city, it becomes clear that
the care for the Other is the foci of the very idea of cosmopolitanism.
‘A more genuine cosmopolitanism’, as Ulf Hannerz (1990) points out,
‘is first of all an orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other. It
is an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness toward divergent cul-
tural experiences’ (p. 238). In the palette of dominant (and yet always
incomplete), discourses, humankind’s ‘I’, ‘the Other’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ are
generally grouped under the umbrella of class, gender, sexuality, race,
religion and nation/ethnicity. The history of humankind shows that
we/they relationships, with rare but important exceptions, have often
been hypocritical or vicious until the point when we, in order to live,
‘must’ eradicate the other, either by physical elimination or the con-
sequences of segregation (Foucault 2003). ‘It was only when subaltern
figures’, writes Edward Said in 1989, ‘like women, Orientals, blacks

and other “natives” made enough noise that they were paid attention
to, and asked in so to speak’ (p. 210) that cosmopolitanism returned
as a possibility. Thus, by following Said’s logic, the book emphasises
particular ‘Other(s)’ from the Western Balkans that indicate another
cosmopolitan possibility for the region, Europe and, perhaps, the world.
Critical theory
If cosmopolitanism is perceived as the conceptual frame for this book,

then critical theory may serve as my theoretical approach. Critical the-
ory, according to philosopher and media critic Douglas Kellner (1989),
was animated by interests in the categories of ‘freedom, happiness and
[social] justice’ (p. 14). Hence, critical theory ‘points to aspects of society
and culture that should be challenged and changed, and thus attempts
to inform and inspire political practice’ (Kellner 1995, p. 25). Unlike
traditional theory, ‘critical theory’, as Robert Hattam (2004) underlines:
also involves a language of possibility … [and] might be understood

to involve a struggle to explain the present in ways in ways that open
to possibilities of a more socially just future. (p. 11)
Critical theory aims to speak the language of conventional social and

political thought supplemented by a theoretical language required to
address changing social circumstances and new forms of inequality
and subjugation. Thus, the components of this theoretical vocabulary
include traditional Marxist concepts of exploitation and ideology;
feminist’s concepts of gender; postcolonial and poststructural concepts
of racism, ethnocentrism and otherness; as well also drawing on the
contemporary examinations that matter the socio-political struggles of
Indigenous populations (Hattam 2004, p. 4). As such, the multifaceted
dimension of critical theory fits appropriately with the main promise of
this book, which is to give historical as well as contemporary alterna-
tives to multiple otherness in the Western Balkans.
The significance of critical theory for this book also lies in the fact
that this theoretical approach was one of the first philosophical medita-
tions on the political functions of art, culture and mass media (Kellner
1989, p. 121). Walter Benjamin, in particular, believed that prolifera-
tion of mass art, especially through film, can contribute to a critique
of society by suggesting new or alternative ways of being in the world.
According to Kellner (1989), Benjamin argued that film would ‘raise
political consciousness by encouraging scrutiny of the world as well as

bringing critical images to millions of spectators’ (p. 124). Keeping in
mind this aspect of critical theory, I now turn my focus to theoretical
perspectives which are exclusively of film narratives and images.
Politically conscious film: its mimetic power, its historical

significance, and its author
There are several approaches to studying film. Those approaches

include, for instance, the study of film techniques, the study of genres, a
focus on stars, and the study of regulation of the film industry, to men-
tion a few. For this book, however, I focus on critical approaches to the
matter of socio-cultural significance and the impact of film on a society.
It was on the eve of the civil war in Spain and at the zenith of Hitler’s
pre-war power in Europe that Walter Benjamin (1936/1973) wrote his
famous essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.
In the essay, Benjamin was preoccupied with the capacity of the arts
in general, and film art in particular, to predetermine an historical
period. Consequently, for Benjamin, film has the potential to expose its
viewers to the otherwise inapprehensible aspects of their own time in
history. As such, Benjamin was indeed one of the first critical theorists
interested in the political implications of film which, at that time, was
a phenomenon that was relatively unconsidered in intellectual circles.
Benjamin (1973) felt and described film as something unique in the
history of art:
Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses

toward art. (…) Painting simply is in no position to present an object
for simulations of collective experiences as it was possible for archi-
tecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie
today. (pp. 236–237)
Together with other segments of artistic expression, Benjamin per-

ceived film aesthetics as one means to re-imagine and renew our social
worlds. Yet, Benjamin was well aware of the possibility in which a
filmic re-imagination of the world can swing in more than one direc-
tion. In Benjamin’s time, one direction led to the politicisation of art
(Communism), the other to the aestheticisation of politics (fascism).
In the time when Benjamin wrote his ‘Work of Art’ essay, mainstream
academia still refused to recognise the political implications of art and
its political potential. For instance, Albert Guerard (1936) wrote the
essay ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ where he argued that the aesthetic should
be the only imperative for an artwork. According to Guerard (1936),
art should never be placed ‘at the service of any other cause … and
should make Beauty [its] sole guide’ (p. 264). Perhaps, it is important
to emphasise the different hermeneutical circumstances of Guerard and
Benjamin. In the 1930s, Benjamin lived an economically deprived life
in Paris as a refugee who fled Nazi Germany, whilst Guerard wrote his
essay from the comfortable perspective of a young scholar at Stanford
University. Nevertheless, Guerard did change his stance on (a)political
aspects of art. However, it only happened after he took an active role in
World War II as an officer in the US Army. Thus, in the post-World War
II years, as a prominent novelist and scholar, Guerard (nd) wrote that
he was not capable of putting the ‘political subject aside’. Perhaps, his
personal catharsis caused by the brutality of conflict changed his insist-
ence on ‘art for art’s sake’ only.
Guerard’s fellow countryman and contemporary Don Thompson
(2006), however, recognises the liberating potential of political art and
underlines that the most ‘insightful of critical theory regarding film
comes out of a stance that is at once inherently political, social, spiritual
and economic’ (np). Thomson’s argument is that cinema is part of life,
film is life’s imitation, and life embodies political, social, spiritual, and
economic conditions all together. Thompson (2006) concludes that
‘politics in film has become vogue again, precisely because so many
have recognized that without that kind of artistic dialog we lose our
sense of who we are as a people’ (np).
For Benjamin (1973), art practices are the battleground for politics,
and neither their tendencies nor outcomes can be predicted in advance.
As one of the most influential Marxist critics, Benjamin influenced
other followers of Marxism(s) to see cinema1 as an instrument for social
change. Regardless of their differences, for most Marxists, films are
always ideological: ‘they embody the value structures in which they
are produced’ (Costanzo 2004, p. 67). A major function of the Marxist
critic then, continues William Costanzo (2004, p. 67), is to ‘demystify’
the image, to expose the artifice in cinematic art and remind us that
what seems natural and necessary may be only a matter of historical
arrangements and therefore can be changed. For Kellner (2010), a film
incorporates ‘aesthetic, philosophical, and anticipatory dimension’
(p. 14). As such, film, according to Kellner,
provide[s] artistic visions of the world that might transcend the

social context of the moment and articulate future possibilities,
positive and negative, and provide[s] insights into the nature of

human beings, social relations, institutions, and conflicts of a given
era, or the human condition itself. (p. 14)
Yet, visual narrative may be the cure and also the toxin. As imagina-
tive interpretations of the world that mediate understanding, films
have the capacity to shape social relations for better or worse. If cin-
ema with progressive democratic and ethical ideas has the power to
stimulate social changes, so also does non-democratic and conserva-
tive cinema. Film scholar Valenti (2000, p. ix), reminds us that Hitler
was only the first political figure to be fabricated through manipulated
cinematic images.
As a large component of mass culture, film provides the possibility to
carry the voice of those who are marginalised by the elite who dominate
in the (re)production of identity. By being represented on the screen,
those on the margins of society build ‘trenches of resistance and sur-
vival’ against the dominant discourse in a society (Castells 1997, p. 7).
However, the visual representation of disadvantaged subjects makes
sense only if it has the possibility to be developed through a puissant
dialogue on the intellectual and public level. As philosopher Judith
Butler (2004a) explains:
it would be a mistake to think that we only need to find the right

and true images, and that a certain reality will then be conveyed. The
reality is not conveyed by what is represented within the image, but
through the challenge to representation that reality delivers. (p. 146)
Through the visual portrayal or engagement of crucial issues, films can

be viewed as providing opportunities to further respond to what is rep-
resented without taking it for granted or dismissing it. By asking diffi-
cult or seemingly impossible questions it is possible that sooner or later
a film may lead to feasible attempts to resolve problems. In the instance
of this book, it is putting the marginalisation of the Roma people in
Western Balkans’ societies before the public that may lead to addressing
and redressing current erasures. As Butler (2003) writes, language that
challenges common sense can ‘help point the way to a more socially
just world’ (p. 44). It is possible to argue that ethically engaged film
narratives represent such a language, and can also move things beyond
their current hidden state or cultural impasse. The demand for a writ-
ten and/or visual language(s) that convey the full horror and reality of
suffering has its place and importance.
The engagement of its viewers with the discursive power of film requires
a couple of further questions that need to be unpacked for this book.
How it is possible that cinema could have such an effective and per-
suasive influence on its viewers? What is it in the image that makes us
emotionally close to fictional characters? For philosopher Alain Badiou
(2009), the main advantage of cinema is in its status as a parasitic art
that feeds on all other art forms. Further, Costanzo (2004) believes that,
in some ways, filmic art may seem richer than literary forms. He sen-
sibly underlines that it is not because cinema is somehow superior to
literature. On the contrary, according to Costanzo, ‘literary codes are far
more precise and elaborately developed than those in film’ (p. 4). For
Costanzo (2004), however, the great advantage of cinema over literature
is film’s ability to cover a ‘wider range of direct sensory experience’ (p. 4).
While there are many possible points in relation to the limits of emo-
tional identification with a body on the screen, I want to draw attention
to the limits of creating a visual image strong enough to blur distinc-
tion between a body on the screen and the darkness of a theatre’s seat.
As Rutherford (2003) explains, not every dancer is able to provoke in a
‘spectator the feeling of the limbs unleashed from their sutures to the
spine, of the spine unshackling itself from its bony frame to become
molten liquid’ (np). What is true for the art of dance may also be true
for the art of filmmaking. Not every director is able to write and lead
a socially engaged project. Furthermore, some characters in a film nar-
rative have to be played by the performers who are able to reflect the
director’s impressions of the everydayness of a marginalised subject.
In addition, the spectator needs to avoid the trick, as Benjamin (1973)
observes, of being an ‘examiner, but an absent-minded one’ (p. 243). As
James Monaco (2000) succinctly writes, the ‘better one reads an image,
the more one understands it, the more power one has over it’ (p. 159).
This insistence on having an educated audience is further underlined by
Kellner’s (1998) argument that films play the role of an informant who
is revealing to potential viewers the ‘“psychology” of an era and its ten-
sions’ (p. 355). Kellner points out that films incorporate ‘raw material
of social history and of social discourse and process them into products
which are themselves historical events and social forces’ (p. 355). Sakic
(2009) also indicates that the entire apparatus of film is a ‘witness of
its era and its social context’ (p. 19). In this sense, according to Zvijer
(2009, p. 27), film is seen as a means by which past events receive
appropriate meaning. Kellner (2010), moreover, argues that, accurately
‘interpreted and contextualized, films can provide key insights into
specific historical persons, events, or eras’ (p. 14).
Thus, as film and media theorist Leen Engelen (2007) stresses, ‘[f]ilms
can, and do, represent history’ (p. 556). She continues by insisting that
film is not ‘solely a complement of written history’. Rather, film is a
‘fully fledged supplementary way to interpret and give meaning to the
past’ (p. 556). Engelen is careful enough to stress that not all films make
‘sensible’ history. As she evocatively points out: ‘there are “good” films
that do “bad” history and there are “bad” films that do “good” history’
(p. 556). What is at stake then, as Engelen profoundly concludes,
is a personal commitment to the past to avoid or pursue certain

things in the future. There is thus a certain responsibility for film-
makers and the like, but this does not primarily lie in absolute
historical accuracy, but rather in expressing and inciting emotional
awareness of past events. This feature of mainstream drama should
not dismissed, but should instead be hailed by all those interested
in true historical understanding and its relevance in contemporary
society. (p. 556)
It is a particular perspective or personal commitment and responsibility

of filmmakers (film authors) that would conclude this meditation on
the sociological significance of film art. However, being conscious of
the collaborative ‘nature’ of film production, in this book I intention-
ally decided to focus only on films whose directors are either writers or
co-writers of the scenarios. This strategy thus enables me to investigate
more freely the notion of the authorr in relation to film (text) and its
director (writer).
In his essay ‘The Author as Producer’, Benjamin (1978) names three
features of an author’s task: to help organise the proletariat; to make the
proletariat active; and to weaken their enemies. If one is uneasy here with
the term proletariat, it may easily be replaced with ‘the Other’. In ‘The
Author’, Benjamin (1978) repeats his stance from ‘The Work of Art’—that
no art can avoid being political, even if it tries to be non-political. One
may conclude with little doubt that Benjamin’s argument is based on the
postulation that political predisposition is inherent to artistic endeavour.
Thus, for Benjamin, an author should not focus on writing alone but on
the teaching and organising of readers and other writers.
Edward Said (1983)—unlike his influential predecessors Roland
Barthes and Michel Foucault who marginalised (Foucault) or even
made irrelevant (Barthes) the author’s role in the reception of her/his
text2—argues that texts and their author are inseparable. If one treats
the text simply as something separated from the world in which it is
created; then one misses the essential detail that the creation of the text
by the author is a political act that is deeply embedded in the power
relations of any given society (Said 1983, pp. 130–132). Furthermore,
as I will clearly indicate through a critical analysis of Kusturica’s film
Underground d (1995), one may slip into the distorted and consequently
irrelevant analysis of a text if she or he does not know who the author
is of the very text (film). Finally, by pronouncing the ‘death of author’
(Barthes 1977), one could prevent a process of identification with
authors that may help some marginalised groups in determining their
identities. Thus, Italian philosopher Giuliana Bruno (1993) asks the rhe-
torical question: ‘Can or should we consider as dead an author, such as
the female author, who is yet to be fully established in the public sphere
and theorized?’ (p. 234). Therefore, one should not ignore the emer-
gence of female directors from the Western Balkans, like Jasmila Zbanic
for instance. Rather, one should critically examine, if not promote, her
‘authorship aura’ with the hope that other women from the Western
Balkans and abroad will follow her artistic and intellectual sensibility as
well as her political activism.
In summary, it should be noted that the main aim of this theoretical
meditation on particular approaches in film study is not to criticise or
expand this multidimensional field within academia. Rather, for the
purpose of this book, this reflection is designated as a theoretical reflec-
tion which is essential for the analysis of chosen filmic texts and their
appropriate positioning in a given society. ‘Cinematic figures’, writes
Andrew (1984), ‘openly require the work of interpretation to complete
them’ (p. 172). However, as Agamben (1995, p. 311) specifies, rather
than just simply inquiring into film images per se, one should ask about
the ‘relations between what could be done and what actually was done’
with an image. Thus, while inquiring into chosen filmic texts in the
chapters that follow, the overarching focus will be on films’ interven-
tion in the social, cultural and political spheres of a society. In the end,
such approach towards arts is one of the principles in critical theory.
Methodological apparatus
For an interpretive procedure for the underlying meanings of film texts,

this book subscribes to the methodological apparatus of ‘political her-
meneutics’ (Best & Kellner 1987) and ‘diagnostic critique’ (Kellner 1995;
2003; 2010). Political hermeneutics is a methodological formulation
developed by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner (1987) as an alternative to
the formalist approach of interpreting the moving image which argues
‘that there is nothing behind the surface of texts’ (p. 100) and which
‘disallows or ignores the project of radical social transformation’ (p. 97).
This formalist aspect of understanding visual text, argue Best and
Kellner (1987), gives a misleading notion that there is no ‘progressive
encoding of cultural texts, and hence no cultural politics because the
depth models that these have depended upon are obsolete or irrecu-
perable’ (p. 104). This anti-hermeneutic approach does not take into
account the argument that our very mode of being is interpretive, and
that interpretation is needed precisely ‘because things for the most part
are not given’ (Heidegger 1962 cited in Best & Kellner 1987, p. 105) and
thus ‘must be interpreted, with all the hermeneutic equipment that we
can muster’ (Best & Kellner 1987, p. 105).
Therefore, Best and Kellner (1987) propose political hermeneutics as
a methodological apparatus that analyses both ‘content and form while
privileging neither and would carry through multivalent readings of all
cultural texts’ (p. 106). Yet, political hermeneutics underlines particular
moments in a text that may offer a ‘historical memory of oppression
and which point to recurrent contradictions and problems in society …
[and] might counter tendencies toward historical amnesia and a dehis-
toricizing immersion in the present’ (Best & Kellner 1987, p. 107). To
summarise, political hermeneutics allows a deeper examination of the
chosen filmic texts in a multidimensional mode that goes beyond the
surface of the image while at the same time providing a theoretical
approach for the investigation of historical oppression in socio-political
contexts.
Another methodological apparatus, which is of central significance
for this book, is ‘diagnostic critique’ (Kellner 1995; 2003; 2010).
Diagnostic critique is yet another multidimensional method that reads
a filmic text in relation to the constitutive elements of its era. In par-
ticular, as Kellner (2010) explains, a diagnostic critique is an approach
that involves a ‘dialectic of text and context, using text to read social
realities and events, and using social and historical context to help
situate and interpret key films’ (pp. 34–35). Such a dual optic, Kellner
(1995) argues, ‘allows insight into multiple relations between texts and
contexts, between media, culture and history’ (p. 116). In addition,
diagnostic critique considers the semantic depth of a chosen text and
interprets its ‘hidden, latent, and subliminal meanings’ (Kellner 1995,
p. 114). Such diagnostic reading of a filmic text:
helps with the formulation of progressive political practices which

speak to salient hopes, fears, and desires, and the construction of
social alternatives that are grounded in existing psychological, social,

and cultural matrixes. Consequently, diagnostic film critique does
not merely offer another clever method of reading films but provides
weapons of critique for those interested in producing a better society.
Kellner 1995, p. 117
Diagnostic critique provides a ‘utopian content that can be used for

social critique and to mobilize political opposition’ (Kellner 2003, p. 28).
Even if the utopian promise is left behind, diagnostic critique should
equip a researcher with a method that allows a proper interpretation
and contextualisation of films. An interpretation of films that is framed
within their historical context with an emphasis on their possible
illuminating substance is this book’s most significant contribution to
knowledge.
2
Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo
Before its brutal dismemberment at the beginning of the 1990s,

Yugoslavia was a complex, multicultural society constituted of six
republics and two autonomous provinces. Its capital was Belgrade, the
only city in Yugoslavia with more than one million inhabitants. Other
administrative urban centres included the cities of Zagreb, Ljubljana,
Skopje, Podgorica, Novi Sad, Pristina, and Sarajevo. Centred in the
geographical centre of the central republic in the Yugoslav Federation,
the city of Sarajevo was, as the cultural anthropologist Fran Markowitz
(2011) observes, ‘Yugoslavia’s most Yugoslav city’ (p. 71). It was
Sarajevo’s dynamic cultural and metropolitan presence that represented
the ethnic and religious diversity of Yugoslavia as a cosmopolitan
national entity.
The city of Sarajevo was founded by the Ottoman invaders in 15th cen-
tury; when they expanded a settlement around the ruins of a medieval
fortress on land that had been owned d by two feudal families: Tvrtkovic
and Tomasevic. The families’ last sovereign was Stjepan Tomasevic; and
his title, granted by the Pope Pius II, was the King of Bosnia (Malcolm
1994). Stjepan the King, his nobility and his vassals spoke the common
dialect of the South Slavic language. The South Slavic language—which
is now called Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin—has remained
the common spoken language across the region.
The new rulers, the Ottomans, administered Sarajevo and Bosnia for
almost four centuries. The Sultans in Istanbul did not care much for this
underpopulated, peripheral province deep in the European continent.
As long as the Bosnians paid taxes to Istanbul, and occasionally sent
their men to the Ottoman Army to either defend or expand the empire’s
borders, they were left on their own. Sarajevo under the Ottomans was
known as a place for trade and a microcosmic example of medieval
20
Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo 21
cosmopolitanism. There, three Abrahamic religions lived in relative

harmony, as Sarajevo housed adherents of Sunnite Islam, Sephardic
Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity (Donia 2006;
Markowitz 2010). Ethnically speaking, since its foundation, Sarajevo
had been settled by South Slavs, Roma and Turks. The Sephardic Jews
of Spanish origin had begun settling in Sarajevo at the beginning of the
16th century. The Ottoman rulers granted them refuge in Sarajevo after
their forced expulsion from Spain.
‘The sick man of Europe’, as 19th-century Europe named the
Ottoman Empire, was pushed out of Bosnia and Sarajevo in 1878. The
new ruler, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, added new architectural and
administrative elements to Sarajevo. Some new residents also began to
call Sarajevo their home. Austrians, Hungarians and Ashkenazi Jews
from Central Europe and other Europeans who had lived all across the
mighty Austrian-Hungarian Empire added a new cosmopolitan flavour
to the city.
The rule of the Habsburgs over Sarajevo lasted until the end of World
War I, when the city and Bosnia were once again incorporated into a
larger entity: the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. According to
historian Robert Donia (2006), Sarajevo and its residents benefited little
if at all from the new rulers, who gave advantage to Belgrade, Zagreb
and Ljubljana, the main urban centres of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,
the three nominal constitutive nations within the Kingdom. Donia
(2006, p. 155) considers Sarajevo was ‘neglected because of its diversity
and torn by the forces that were coming out of the three favored urban
centers, Sarajevo has become a forgotten city.’
In 1941, Sarajevo was occupied by Nazi Germany. Many segments
of the administrative power over the city, as well as of the entire ter-
ritory of Bosnia, were given to the Nazi puppet state of Independent
Croatia. The city was governed through terror and intimidation. The
invaders and their local collaborators inflicted incalculable harm on
Sarajevo. They killed 9,000 civilians of whom seventy per cent were
Jews, with the rest including Serbs, Roma and antifascist elements
within the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian populations (Donia 2006, p.
268). This extermination changed the demographic composition of the
city. Fascist repression prompted the development of resistances. Some
of those struggles were peaceful and relatively powerless, while others
were armed and dangerous for the invaders and their allies (Donia 2006,
p. 194). The most successful of these movements, the partisans led by the
Communists, successfully undermined and eventually destroyed
the power of the occupiers and their allies.
Sarajevo was liberated by the Communist-led army on 5 April 1945.

The old photos show a massive crowd on the city’s main streets, cheer-
ing its liberators. In the first three decades of Communist rule by the
multicultural Yugoslav socialist state, Sarajevo underwent an unprec-
edented transformation. The city spread over an area that was several
times larger than before, and its population rose from less than 60,000
at the end of the war to over 300,000 in the 1970s. The new rulers pre-
served most of the city that was built by the Ottomans and Habsburgs
while erecting new high-rise apartment complexes, sport arenas, muse-
ums, art galleries and cinemas, all of which added a further urban and
cultural dimension to the city. The transformation was driven by a gran-
diose vision that was formulated by a handful of local Communist party
members. Their vision was shared by many people of Sarajevo willing
to live in an equitable and progressive society (Donia 2006, p. 230).
With a significant increase of inter-ethnic and inter-national couples in
Sarajevo in the post-World War II years, the so-called ‘mixed marriages’
represented a radical negation of an ideology of ethnic and national
purity that had characterised the preceding period and was a sign that
Sarajevo was becoming a cosmopolitan civil society. Donia and Fine
(1994) suggest that almost forty per cent of marriages in Communist-
ruled Sarajevo were between couples of different ethnic or religious
backgrounds. Nevertheless, despite its cultural, urban and economic
progress, in the late 1970s Sarajevo was still perceived as a provincial
place by many Yugoslavs (Jergovic 1998, p. 46; Iordanova 2002, p. 50).
What Sarajevo needed was an image—a message that would show oth-
ers what Sarajevo was and where it was heading.
The people of Sarajevo had always shown their passion for film.
In many cases, film-artists residing in Sarajevo celebrated Sarajevo as
well. Thus, film director Hajrudin Siba Krvavac created one of the most
evocative visual epigraphs dedicated to a city ever made. In the last
scene of his film, Valter Brani Sarajevo/Walter Defends Sarajevo (Krvavac
1972), a World War II German general is shown standing on a hill over-
looking Sarajevo. His campaign has failed against the guerrilla move-
ment in the city led by the legendary Communist known only by the
code name Walter. The general is forced to retire. Now, accompanied
by his successor, he watches the city that lies down in the valley below
them. The general says (in German); ‘From the moment I arrived in
Bosnia, I have been trying to trace Walter; now I am leaving and I think
I know who he is’. The new officer, his successor, suddenly becomes
agitated: ‘You do!? Tell me his name immediately!’ The general answers:
‘Yes, I do. I will show him to you’. He gazes at the city that lies below:
‘Have a good look at this city! This is Walter’. Immediately after the
general’s last sentence, the skilful camera movement brings into focus a
remarkable panoramic shot of Sarajevo and its surrounding mountains.
Accompanied by a memorable musical sequence, the film’s end credits
begin to roll.
If this last scene were somehow cut from Krvavac’s film, Walter
Defends Sarajevo would be yet another ode to the Yugoslav Communist
regime and its role in Yugoslav liberation from the fascist occupiers. The
Communist led urban guerrillas in Sarajevo are depicted as a group of
fearless men and women. The character of Walter, particularly, is por-
trayed as a hero of mythic proportions. His multiple abilities include
skilful usage of various weapons, as well as the capability to drive cars,
trucks and even a train; furthermore, Walter speaks fluent German.
One could say that Walter is a socialist version of James Bond. Yet,
with its concluding scene described above, Krvavac’s film pays tribute
to the city of Sarajevo with at least equivalent emphasis to the compli-
ment he offers the Communist rulers of the time. In the artist’s vision,
not a single human being or political organisation, but rather the city
itself, is unconquerable by fascism. Despite being conscious of its occa-
sional kitsch, the people of Sarajevo have adored Walterr (Sesic 2006,
p. 114). The film showed them and their city as an honourable whole.
According to Krvavac’s cinematic message, resistance to tyranny rep-
resents the soul of Sarajevo. ‘This lesson’, as Donia (2006) argues, ‘was
readily accepted by people of Sarajevo as an accurate portrait of their
core ideals’ (p. 266).
Sarajevans, however, appreciate not just Walter Defends Sarajevo, but
cinema culture in general. Perhaps, at the beginning, such affection was
not spontaneous but rather came from a calculated decision made by
their post-World War II rulers. The Yugoslav Communists considered
film an important apparatus and mode for practical engagement with
the population while heading towards a society built in accordance
with Marx’s theory of justice.1 Whatever the case, film quickly became
the most popular form of artistic entertainment in Sarajevo.
In the late 1970s, for instance, Sarajevo had only 300,000 inhabitants,
but it had fourteen cinemas. Their repertoires—surprisingly, to those
unfamiliar with Yugoslavia as the only Communist-ruled country that
was politically brave enough to be open to both sides in the Cold War—
were diverse, and these cinemas showed moving images from almost
every corner of the planet. Thus, on an mundane midsummer Friday
in 1979, for instance, a radically enthusiastic filmgoer might have seen
the latest blockbusters from Hollywood or French production houses.
If our cinephile had enough time on that very day and perhaps liked
melodrama of the epic proportions of Bollywood, she or he could enjoy
watching one of the many, persistent repetitions of the ever-popular
Indian film, Geett (Sagar 1970).
American or French mainstream films were most likely to be screened,
one after another, in cinemas in the very centre of downtown Sarajevo.
However, to see Geet, t our cinemagoer had go to a theatre on Sarajevo’s
fringes, as films made on the Indian subcontinent were only screened
on the margins. Even in the ‘best possible socialist state in the world’, as
the Yugoslav leadership of the time described Yugoslavia, the division
between the imagined East and the desired West persisted. Indian pro-
ductions were considered B grade and were not mixed with apparently
A-grade mainstream films from the West.
Nevertheless, in 1979, Sarajevo’s cinemas also screened films from
outside the popular, blockbuster canon. Miljenko Jergovic (2004), one
of the most prolific writers to be born in Sarajevo, remembered that
only five people, including him, watched Andrei Rublevv (Tarkovsky
1969) at a special afternoon screening in the summer of 1979. The
venue for Tarkovsky’s masterpiece was a small and dampish cinema
complex named Kinoteka (Jergovic 2004). Unlike other cinema theatres
in the city, which relied heavily on the popularity of screened films,
Kinoteka was imagined and run as an educative venue hoping to enrich
future generations of city-dwellers for whom film art would be either a
‘profession or the prettiness of free time’ ( Jergovic 2004, np).
Before any further remarks on Sarajevo and the post-Yugoslav history
represented in its film art, it is somehow important that I introduce
myself to this book and its content. In the midsummer of 1979, I was a
seven-year-old boy who paid his first visit to Sarajevo. I arrived on the
city’s fringe and temporarily settled in a small, grey, brick house that was
owned by my uncle. The house was built at the end of a street with a
narrow, dirt road. As the road stopped there, the house was surrounded
by hilly paddocks on three sides. Until that moment, I had only lived
in a small hamlet near the town of Visegrad in Eastern Bosnia. In the
years that followed I would live my life between schooling and playing
in Sarajevo and working and playing in the hamlet where most of my
family lived. Soon after I arrived in Sarajevo, I went to see a movie in a
cinema named Mayday.
The Maydayy cinema was not far from the above-mentioned Kinoteka
in which young Jergovic watched Andrei Rublev. In contrast to the
Kinoteka, the Maydayy was Sarajevo’s home for low-budget films and mar-
ginal audiences. In the summer of 1979, this place, named in honour
of the day in the year dedicated to working-class women and men, was
the first cinema hall I ever entered. Of course, I was not alone. I was
accompanied by dozens of local children. Most of these noisy, wander-
ing working-class boys were older than me. The oldest amongst us had
already turned fifteen. At least one of them, I still remember, had fluffy
contours of facial hair above his upper lip. My cousin was one of those
‘elders’. He was, according to my mother’s logic, a warranty for my
safety. On the programme was The Big Boss (Wei 1971), a Kung-Fu film
with Bruce Lee in the main role. There were no girls with us. Watching
this famous warrior on screen—whose Chinese name translates as
Little Dragon—was men’s business. While heading on foot towards the
cinema that day, I still remember that the boys did not stop talking
about Little Dragon. The emphasis was on his martial-art skills, speed
and bravery. I did not participate in the discussion; I was listening. In
those days, and perhaps for eternity, if surrounded by the same gender,
an inexperienced and physically weaker male was supposed to be quiet
and unobtrusive.
If I return into my deepest memories, the experience of seeing this
man, born as the result of love between a Chinese man and American
woman, was an extraordinary one. I had seen and understood Little
Dragon as a handsome, brave man who would defend the weak and
fight for justice in an unjust world. Little Dragon was, perhaps, an ideal
that we all longed for, due to our real or imagined vulnerability and
marginality. Twenty-five years later, in his afterword to Rancière’s book
The Politics of Aesthetics (2004), Slavoj Zizek would argue that 1970s
Kung-Fu films were ‘a genuine working class ideology of youngsters
whose only means of success was the disciplinary training of their only
possession, their bodies’ (Zizek cited in Rancière 2004).
In 1979 Sarajevo, the legend called Little Dragon was already on
the way out. Bruce Lee had been dead for six years, and for Sarajevo’s
downtown kids, he would no longer be the preferred hero for a long time
( Jergovic 2000, p. 60). We, semi-urban, children from the outskirts, would
erase Little Dragon from our core consciousness a couple of years later.
And the vivid memory of Bruce Lee would only survive in Sarajevo’s
shanty districts, populated mainly by Roma. Until the eve of the wars of
the 1990s, as Jergovic (2000, p. 61) recalls, the Roma boys from Sarajevo
that he would occasionally meet mimicked Bruce Lee’s movements and
his warrior’s shout. In remarking on the Roma boys who kept their
faith in the unfashionable hero while all the other children in Sarajevo
erased the memory of him, Jergovic recognises a non-calculating
approach towards the contemporary amongst the most disadvantaged
group of people living in the city: ‘Roma people are easy to accept new
fashion and trends, but hard to forget them. They are not ashamed of
themselves from yesterday as we are’ (Jergovic 2000, p. 61). In the years
to come, during the 1980s, non-Roma Sarajevan boys discovered their
heroes in characters such as Superman and Indiana Jones. I, too, have
lost faith in Little Dragon. But I was always sceptical about the divine
power of a man born on the planet Krypton.
I also experienced the importance of film culture to Sarajevo and its
dwellers by observing, although from the safe distance, a film set. In
those days we outskirt children did not only watch the movies in the
cinema. Sometimes, we witnessed their creation too. Two or three times,
we—an almost identical group of boys from the edge of town who had
watched Little Dragon in the Mayday cinema—would run rather than
walk through the Sarajevo’s streets until we reached the Old Town. In
the autumn of 1981, some of Sarajevo’s streets, squares and one whole
suburb in the Old Town were temporarily cordoned off at the request of
the crew who shot Miris Dunja/The Scent of Quinces (Idrizovic 1982)—a
drama set at the beginning of occupation of Sarajevo by the Nazis and
the Ustasa. Idrizovic needed the city for the exterior scenes that domi-
nated the film. In one of these exterior shots, a six-year-old boy—who
lived in the same Sarajevo’s periphery as I did and who admired the
Bruce Lee films shown in the Maydayy cinema with the rest of the periph-
eral street children—was lucky enough to be chosen to lend his face
to a few frames, as an unknown Jewish child taken on a Nazi military
vehicle with his family and neighbours to the same fate. Human bodies
either sit or stand on the truck’s platform. The bodies—of all heights,
age and gender—are bordered by soldiers. Some of them guard the truck
and its human cargo. Others run through the streets, going into or leav-
ing the neighbouring houses.
Although complex, the scene is brief. Idrizovic’s attention is not on
the Jews or the Jewish collective, but rather on the moral and ethical
dilemmas of their neighbours—who are either witnessing or participat-
ing in the Holocaust. With the ‘truck scene’, Idrizovic gives a necessary
historical marker as well as a universal dimension to the Holocaust,
since from Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris to Belgrade, Zagreb or Sarajevo,
the gathering and transporting methods were similar. Otherwise, the
scene would be considerably different. As such, I would compare it with
the unforgettable scene from Polanski’s The Pianistt (2002) in which the
Warsaw Jews congregate in a large group at a depot near a train station.
The despair is palpable. The members of the Jewish family are con-
scious of their deportation to a concentration camp and certain death.
We presume that other Jews at the depot are also aware of their fate.
Yet, in the midst of this misery, Polanski decides to focus the camera
on a Jewish boy who is selling a small amount of sugar candies placed
on a tray bound to his body by rope. He approaches the family offer-
ing them his goods in exchange for money. The father asks him about
the point of trading at a time when death is near and definite. Instead
of answering the question, the boy insists in repeating the price for
a single candy. Without further conversation, the father pulls out his
wallet and gives the boy an undisclosed amount of money and takes
a single caramel lolly from him in return. Carefully, very carefully, he
cuts the condensed, sticky brown sugar into six even parts with a pock-
etknife and gives one piece each to his three adult children and wife.
In that very moment, the young woman with a toddler in her embrace
enters the scene. The woman slowly circles very closely around the
family of five. She and her child are staring at the six adults ready to
eat their sweets. Both mother and child are silent. Obviously visible to
the audience of The Pianist,t Polanski decided to make the woman and
child imperceptible to the family of five. They all begin to chew sugar
without paying the smallest attention to the woman and her child.
A morsel of caramel is the family’s final sacrament. Yet, the picture of
a child destined to perish without a chance for a last drop of sugar will
stay forever in my memory.
If, somehow, Idrizovic, with The Scent of Quinces, had ‘followed’ this
example from The Pianist, t then the close-up of the face of the boy from
my childhood would have been in frame longer and a potential viewer
would eventually make a personal, mimetic contact with the six-year-old
Jewish boy from 1941 Sarajevo with a freckled face, grey eyes, and
strawy, brown hair. If that had been the case then his confused and
fearful facial expression might have led the average Balkan or European
viewer into a self-exploratory journey on human madness, responsibil-
ity and, perhaps, guilt. But Idrizovic did not find his face worth memo-
rialising. He needed the boy’s body for a numerical reason. The boy was
just one of many who was taken and destined to perish. Yet, we kids
from the block, the local school, and most of the outskirt street dwell-
ers, remembered his role in the film.
It was the beautiful face of a young woman (played by Ljiljana
Blagojevic) that Idrizovic chose for the representation of authentic
Jewishness in his film. The Scent of Quinces tells the story of a Sarajevan-
Muslim family deeply shattered by the war. The father is a classic patri-
archal figure, common in Bosnia at that time. He is in favour of staying
neutral and distant from the war as much as is possible. But his power
is challenged by the overwhelming circumstances that the war visits on

his family. His younger son and daughter choose the Communist side
that resists the occupation, while his older son joins the local fascist
Ustasa forces. The film’s narrative selects Luna, a young Jewish woman
hidden in the attic of their house, as a witness to their destiny. In the
last scene, Luna runs towards presumed freedom dressed in an orthodox
Muslim women’s robe. A hijab hides her face while she runs through
a typical Sarajevo’s Old Town narrow street, which is paved with little
oval rocks that make a greyish, riverbed-like mosaic.
We do not know from Idrizovic’s film if Luna survived the Holocaust.
Nor have we seen a metaphoric Luna in a different cinematic narrative
that might tell us if she lived to tell the tale of her post-Holocaust life.
Did she decide to return to Sarajevo and participate in the Communist
party-led project that promised—in the euphoria of the victory over
fascism and the longing for absolute political domination—a class-
less society to come? Or did she, as did many surviving Jews from the
Balkans, find her home in the lands between the Eastern Mediterranean
Sea and the Jordan River? The land which, after the 1948 UN decision,
most of the world recognised as Israel? We do not know, and those who
create feature films in productions from former Yugoslavia won’t tell
us either. There is no contemporary film project on the horizon that
might revisit Luna’s destiny after her escape in the last scene of The
Scent of Quinces.
Perhaps, in time to come, some enthusiastic and well-off Hollywood
production may have an interest in making a feature film based on
Geraldine Brooks’ novel People of the Book (2008). In this story, Brooks
sketches, inscribes and blurs actual historical events and figures with
numerous fictional characters. Brooks’ people have one thing in com-
mon. They all crossed their destinies with a six-century-old Hebrew
illuminated codex now known to the masses as the Sarajevo Haggadah.2
One of them, Lola, a young Jewish girl from Sarajevo, whose entire
family vanished in the Holocaust, will see this historically and aestheti-
cally significant illuminated script twice. It is in the home of an Islamic
scholar and devoted Muslim from Sarajevo—whose humanist ideals
were strong enough for him to hide his Jewish neighbours—that Lola
will see the Haggadah for the first time. According to the official histori-
cal reconstruction, but also in Brooks’ novel, he saved the manuscript
by smuggling it out of the national museum just hours before a Nazi
officer had shown a predatory interest in the museum’s most valuable
item. In the next encounter with the Sarajevo Haggadah, Lola is an old
woman living in present-day Jerusalem that has been her home city
since the end of World War II. Brooks mentions that Lola speaks Hebrew
with an accent.
The 1980s and Sarajevo’s favourite artist
Both logos and pathos urged me to introduce myself to this research.

Our past—if it is related to the historical events and subjects inscribed
in any socio-cultural research—has its own significance and may con-
tribute to knowledge. Furthermore, even without first-hand experience
of a research topic, the ‘researcher is always part of what is being stud-
ied’ (Denzin 1989, p. 31). Together with a reliance on writings about
Sarajevo and its socio-cultural life by prominent cultural critics from the
region like Miljenko Jergovic, quoted earlier, my personal experience of
the city is an additional reference that shows that Sarajevo, cinemati-
cally speaking, was like no other urban settlement.
However, what is officially written in Sarajevo’s cinema history from
1979 onward is not my experience of watching The Big Boss, or witness-
ing the creation of The Scent of Quinces. It is not even Jergovic’s careful
and scholarly observation of the audience at Andrei Rublev, as Jergovic’s
significance for Sarajevo and its culture would become obvious much
later. Rather, it is Emir Kusturica’s return from film studies in Prague
in the late 1970s. At that first, he was just a promising graduate from
the famous Film School in Prague who had directed two TV films3 for
Sarajevo television, and at this early stage in his career he did not raise
many eyebrows in the city. Two years later, however, all Sarajevans and
many people all across Yugoslavia had heard of Emir Kusturica. In 1981
Kusturica directed Sjecas Li Se Doli Bel?/Do You Remember Dolly Bell?,
based on a script written by Sarajevo’s well-known poet and novelist,
Abdulah Sidran. Dolly Bell won awards for best screenplay and best
debut director at the Yugoslav national film festival in Pula that year;
shortly after, Kusturica’s film won the award for best debut feature at the
prestigious Film Festival in Venice.
The film’s title, Dolly Bell, refers to a popular lap-dancer in the Italian
director Alessandro Blasetti’s 1951 film Europa di None/Europe by Night.
In Kusturica’s film we see an excited crowd of local men who are watch-
ing Blasetti’s film screened in a small, improvised cinema on Sarajevo’s
periphery. It is in this poor, hilly neighbourhood overlooking Sarajevo
in the early 1960s that Dolly Bell is set. The Zoljs—a six-member strong
secular Bosnian Muslim family—live there in a wooden two-bedroom
shack with a leaking roof. The head of the family, father Mustafa, is a
small-scale bureaucrat, dedicated Communist and alcoholic. Sena, the
mother, is a caring housewife who dreams of getting a decent apart-

ment for her family. The children, four of them, are made up of three
boys and one little girl. Dino, the middle of three brothers, is the main
protagonist in the film. He is a sixteen-year-old teenager who, during
the summer school holiday, becomes a guitarist and singer in the first
local rock band. Meanwhile, he experiences his first love and sexual
encounter, as well as the death of his father Mustafa. At the end of the
film, the family finally gets approval to move into a newly-built, state-
owned apartment. All the family’s belongings are loaded on a small
truck; and in the last shot, the camera overlooks the moving truck and
then focuses on a high-rise apartment construction nearby. It seems
that the Zoljs are moving towards a better future.
Besides its brilliant dialogue, Dolly Bell is marked by two characteristics
very atypical for films made in Sarajevo or anywhere else in Yugoslavia
during the 1980s. First, Dolly Bell is a rare example of cinematic narra-
tive in which the simple life of an insignificant family is dramatically
and poetically articulated. Second, in Dolly Bell, all protagonists speak
the language of Sarajevo’s streets. Dolly Bell is the first film ever made in
Sarajevo where actors do not speak official South Slavic (the equivalent
of English as heard on the BBC), but the language and slang typical for
Sarajevo. With Dolly Bell, Sarajevans heard and saw w themselves on the
screen for the first time. A pride in Sarajevan identity was somehow
immanent. Jergovic (1998) notes this socio-cultural change:
Of all the Yugoslav capitals, Sarajevo felt the least capital. On the
beaches of the Dalmatian coast Sarajevans, unlike the inhabitants
of Belgrade or Zagreb, tried their best to talk using standardised lan-
guage. They were ashamed of their slang, which only with the film
Do You Remember Dolly Bell? got a right to citizenship. (pp. 48–49)
Somehow, the materialisation of Dolly Bell suddenly erased the real and
imagined inferiority of Sarajevans within the complex structure of mul-
ticulturalism and regionalism in the Yugoslav federation and its large
cities. Sarajevans, in particular, were thrilled with the fact that their por-
traits were understood and appreciated everywhere in the world where
Dolly Bell was screened (Kusturica 2010, p. 190).
Soon after the realisation of Dolly Bell, Kusturica began work on his
second feature. The screenplay was again written by Abdulah Sidran.
However, unlike the ‘politically correct’ Dolly Bell, the new film aimed
to explore the persecution of Stalin’s supporters within the ranks of
the Yugoslav Communist party in the aftermath of World War II.
Jergovic (1998) argues that this taboo topic had been emerging for
a long time and had become somehow a ‘socio-political and artistic
trend at the beginning of 1980s’ (p. 48). However, the liberalisation of
the Communist leadership and its discourse has varied from republic
to republic. Thus, Kusturica’s project was initially stopped by some
members of the Communist leadership in Sarajevo (Kusturica 2010,
p. 214). Through family connections, in the summer of 1983, Kusturica
approached a recently retired Communist leader from Bosnia, Cvijetin
Mijatovic.4 In a friendly conversation over lunch in the coastal city
of Dubrovnik, Kusturica indicated to Mijatovic that he might leave
Sarajevo for good and settle in Belgrade if he was unable to continue
with his project (Kusturica 2010, pp. 215–216). In the months that
followed, Kusturica’s project received all the necessary financial and
political support, and the filmmaker did not move to Belgrade. In May
1985, Otac na Sluzbenom Putu/When Father was Away on Business had
its premiere at the Film Festival in Cannes. This, the most prestigious
European film festival, awarded Fatherr with the Palme d’Or. Back in
Sarajevo, Kusturica’s life changed forever. He became the city’s ‘favour-
ite son and a bona fide national cultural hero’ (Turan 2002, p. 98). The
long awaited Sarajevan muse had arrived. Kusturica became Sarajevo’s
favourite artist, who had visualised the identities with which Sarajevans
preferred
d to associate themselves.
After Cannes, Fatherr premiered in Sarajevo in three different cinemas
at the same time. Kusturica moved quickly from theatre to theatre to
bow in front of ‘excited and shaken’ audiences (Kusturica 2010, p. 218).
Before long, the city council decided to reward Kusturica with an apart-
ment in one of the most prestigious districts in downtown Sarajevo
(Kusturica 2010). According to the city’s rulers at the time, it was an
insignificant cost to pay compared with the gain Kusturica brought
to the city. Being the successful host of the Winter Olympic Games in
1984, and having the best known Yugoslav film artist in its permanent
residence, was the proof that Sarajevo had at last emerged from the
shadows of Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana. It seemed, at that time, that
all Yugoslavia, Europe and, perhaps, the world, had finally got to know
Sarajevo as a cosmopolitan and hospitable city, with residents capable
of creating the most exciting and wonderful social and cultural events.
In the sense of its narrative, Fatherr could be described as a reversed exten-
sion of Dolly Bell. Written by the same scriptwriter, Abdulah Sidran, who
basically poetically depicted his childhood through his scriptwriting for
Kusturica’s first two films, When Father was Away on Business goes back
in time fifteen years and focuses on the same Sarajevan family to that
in Dolly Bell. Unlike Dolly Bell, where the nicknames hide the religious
or ethnic identity of many protagonists, Fatherr clearly added a multicul-
tural dimension to the depiction of Sarajevo’s streets. Together with the
secular Muslim family, the audience of Fatherr gets to know their Croat
and Serb neighbours, as well as a family of a post-October revolution
Russian émigré.
The film’s story opens in the year of 1949. The head of the family has
been sent to a labour camp as punishment for his alleged alliance with
the Soviet Union at a time when the Yugoslav Communist leadership
was desperately trying to protect the country from Stalin’s arbitrary
authority. The story is told from the perspective of his six-year-old son.
The title of the film refers to the lie told to the child by his mother as
a cover up for the father’s sudden disappearance. At the end of film,
after two years, the father is released from the camp and the family is
reunited. Close to the end of film, the radio transmits a football match
between the Soviet Union and Yugoslav national teams. Yugoslavia
wins over the Soviets. The family is shaken yet ready to move forward.
So the city of Sarajevo, and whole Yugoslav nation, moved forward in
those turbulent post-World War II years.
In 1989 Kusturica finished his third feature Dom za Vjesanje/Time
of the Gypsies, based on Belgrade-based scriptwriter Gordan Mihic’s
scenario. That same year, Time of the Gypsies received a five-minute
standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. Its director, Kusturica,
was for the Best Director award. Time of the Gypsies had been initiated
by some investigative journalism about selling and trafficking Roma
children from the former Yugoslavia to Italy. The film is entirely shot
in the Romani language, thus giving recognition to the crucial aspect
of Roma culture (Iordanova 2002, p. 69). However, besides the appre-
ciation of Romani language, Time of the Gypsies does little to challenge
the stereotypical view of Roma people (Iordanova 2001). The story
follows the ordeal of Perhan; a young man from the Roma district in
Skopje (Macedonia) who is deceived by a Roma thug he trusts and is
taken to Italy and forced to steal for his masters. Besides the universal
story about corruption, crime and innocence, the film shows the Roma
as a group of lying and thieving people. But the racism of the South
Slavic majority that fixed Roma people at the very bottom of the social
scale in Yugoslavia may not have entered Kusturica’s mind. The film
concludes with a vigil around Perham’s open coffin back in his home
in Skopje. Golden coins are placed over Perhan’s eyes. His four-year-
old son steals the coins and runs away. For film scholar Horton, the
ending of Kusturica’s film is perfect, for the reason that the ‘steal
and run’ option is ‘key to survival for gypsies’ (Horton 1998, p. 187).
Muharem Serbezovski (2009, np), the Roma artist and intellectual from
Skopje, however, understands this scene as yet another visual humilia-
tion, by an outsider, of the people he belongs to.
As with Kusturica’s first two features, Sarajevans unconditionally cel-
ebrated yet another success by their favourite artist (Jergovic 1998). This
time, the Sarajevo premiere was in a sports hall capable of accommodat-
ing more than 5,000 people. A massive Roma brass band from Serbia
performed prior to the screening. As a young teenager, I witnessed this
outburst of sound and visuals and I cannot say I did not like it. In the
following days, the show visited all the large cities across Yugoslavia.
Slobodan Milosevic, at that time the still-popular president of Serbia,
had personally intervened in support so that Time of the Gypsies could
have its Belgrade premiere at the largest possible venue (Kostic 2011).
Only after this sustained eruption of profit-driven showmanship did
Times of the Gypsies begin its regular theatrical release, with screening
throughout the country.
The historical moment of the making of the Times of the Gypsies was
also the time of the political rupture of the Yugoslav Federation. On
one side of the Yugoslav political coin was the Serbian leader Slobodan
Milosevic, whose political discourse was dominated by the revival of
Serbian nationalism, for which the alleged socio-political endanger-
ment of Serbs outside Serbia was a focal point. On the other side of
same political coin, however, was the liberal leadership of Slovene
Communists. Slovenes asked for political reform, reduction in massive
appropriations for the Yugoslav Army, and more equitable redistribu-
tion of the federal budget. The Croatian leadership gradually took
the Slovenian side in this political arena. At that time, the Bosnian
Communist leadership remained neutral. Being the most multicultural
republic within the Yugoslav Federation, where Bosnian Serbs and
Bosnian Croats had shared equal institutional power with Bosnian
Muslims, Bosnia and its political leadership was not in a position to
take any side. Emir Kusturica, however, did take a side. In interviews
for TV and written press, Kusturica began openly to support Milosevic
(Skrabalo 1989; Kovac 1992; Jergovic 1998; Pejkovic 2011). In one of
these interviews (1988), Kusturica let it be known that he is in ‘passion-
ate agreement with a man who is truly dedicated to his work’ (cited in
Pejkovic 2011). Kusturica continues:
That man is Slobodan Milosevic, whom many fear for the reason that
they would probably like to see Serbia as a democracy of the chaotic
Western European style. Slobo [Slobodan Milosevic] will win them all
because he is a dangerous man.
(Kusturica cited in Pejkovic 2011, np)
In the late 1980s, Kusturica had also entered a phase of uncontrolled

chauvinism (Jergovic 1998, p. 50). He discussed the mental and socio-
cultural characteristics of Croats and Slovenes. He described the latter
as ‘the Viennese horse groomers’ (Jergovic 1998, p. 50). The Croats,
according to Kusturica, are ‘the Western butlers’ (Kovac 1992). Except
for a couple of young journalists, as Jergovic (1998, p. 51) notes, no
one in Sarajevo challenged Kusturica’s prejudice and doubtful political
perspective.
Kusturica left Sarajevo and the country before the military conflict
began its devastating rampage throughout the former Yugoslavia. He
accepted an offer by fellow film director Milos Forman to teach film
at the prestigious Columbia University. According to Kusturica’s own
remark, the decision to leave Sarajevo did not have any political con-
notations. ‘Simply speaking’, explains Kusturica (2010), ‘the city where
I was born … did not have a high price on the stock market in regards
to my artistic plans for the future’ (p. 221). Kusturica spent the next
couple of years living in the United States and France. While teach-
ing at Columbia, Kusturica also worked on the film that was released
in 1993 as Arizona Dream. While US audiences and critics had mixed
feelings about Kusturica’s new film, western European audiences and
critics were almost univocal in celebrating Arizona Dream. According to
Andria Zafranovic (2010), the long-time editor of Kusturica’s films, after
Arizona’s premiere in Paris, several thousand people waited outside the
theatre to see Kusturica in the flesh. ‘They perceived him [Kusturica] as
holiness’ (Zafranovic 2010, np). Few people in former Yugoslavia had
a chance to watch Kusturica’s new film. Safety and survival were the
two things that mattered most to those who were destined to live in
Yugoslav territories in 1993.
In 1990, the first post-World War II democratic elections were held
throughout the Yugoslav federal republics. The reformed Communists
won in Slovenia and Macedonia. Nationalists won the elections in
Croatia and Bosnia. Slobodan Milosevic and his National-Communists
remained the undisputed rulers in Serbia and Montenegro. In 1991, the
short war in Slovenia between the Yugoslav Army and Slovenia’s armed
forces soon became an full-scale conflict in Croatia between the Serb-
dominated Federal Army and the local Serb insurgence on one side, and
the Croatian forces on the other. In November 1991, after a campaign
of horrendous shelling, the Serbian Army occupied the Croatian city

of Vukovar; a picturesque multicultural town on the banks of the
Danube. The pictures of Vukovar’s ruins we watched on the TV screen
in November of 1991 were almost identical to those taken in Stalingrad
in 1942. The only difference was that these were in colour.
Regardless of the clear signs that the war in Croatia would soon
spread throughout the Bosnian territories, the vast majority of Sarajevo
residents refused to believe in such a possibility. Many declined to
believe that the horror of war would reach Sarajevo even after the
Federal Army, now in the firm grip of the Serbian president Slobodan
Milosevic, had begun to dig in heavy artillery on the hills that surround
the narrow valley in which Sarajevo was built. On 4 and 5 April 1992,
the residents of Sarajevo held a mass rally against the imminent conflict.
The protest changed nothing. On the second day of demonstrations,
after a Serb sniper killed two young women, the rest of the protestors
broke up in panic. The Bosnian-Serb Army soon after besieged Sarajevo.
The death and misery, with glimpses of hope and empathy, persisted in
the besieged city until the end of 1995. Memorably, however, on 5 April
1992, the peace protesters in Sarajevo repeatedly shouted the slogan
‘We are all Walter’ (Sesic 2006, p. 115). The anti-nationalist and anti-
war protesters used the film Walter Defends Sarajevo (which I mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter) as a source of compassionate identifi-
cation. This surreal identification with Walterr and its core message was
one of the last and desperate attempt of Sarajevans to stop the war and
restore dignity to the city that has sometimes loved and appreciated
films and their creators more than they deserve.
3
An Historical Fable of a Country
That Is No More
The key question, if one speaks about the siege of Sarajevo and other
horrific consequences of the Yugoslav disintegration at the end of the
20th century, is where to begin? Should I begin the narrative with the
migrations of South Slav tribes on the Balkan Peninsula and their min-
gling with the Peninsula’s indigenous populations since the 7th century
of the Common Era? I also might choose to emphasise the creation of
the several medieval feudal kingdoms, named after those Slavic tribes,
as the focal point in a narrative about Yugoslavia or the land of the
South Slavs. Or, perhaps, I could begin from the historical point when
the national state formed solely for South Slavs was mentioned for the
first time. As Ivo Banac (1992)—one of the most prominent scholars
on Yugoslav history—emphasises, it is a simultaneously burdensome
and onerous necessity to tell the Yugoslav story from the beginning.
But regardless of the starting point for any discussion of the Yugoslav
demise, one must avoid the preposterous ‘audacity of the grand simpli-
fiers’ (Banac 1992, p. 142). To avoid the simplification of grand narra-
tive, any history should cover the middle of the 19th century. That is
the time when the formation of nations, as one of the major creations
of modernity, was almost fully realised throughout Europe. Also, it
is the time when Yugoslavia, as the common state for all South Slavs,
was mentioned and imagined for the first time.
At first, writing about mid-19th century and pre-World War II
Yugoslav history in research dedicated to a filmic perspective on the
causes and consequences of the Yugoslav disintegration in the 1990s
may seem strange, because very few films were made between the two
World Wars in the region and none of these films made any social or
artistic impact. However, for the sake of giving as accurate a historical
background as possible, it is necessary to explain the reasons for the
36
An Historical Fable of a Country That Is No More 37
creation and collapse of the first common state for the South Slavs.
Otherwise, there would be a chance of creating a historical vacuum—
rendering any cultural-socio-political overview, either in visual or writ-
ten form, incomplete. Furthermore, the pre-World War II narrative on
Yugoslavia is needed to correct its absence from the central filmic alle-
gory on the disappearance of the joint South Slavic national state from
the European and world maps—Kusturica’s 1995 film, Underground.
From Illyria to the Yugoslav kingdom (1835–1941)
Far from representing it as ‘an exception and an anomaly’ in the mid-

dle of Europe, the Yugoslav example should be considered rather as the
‘epitome and an allegory of Europe as such’ (Balibar 2004b, p. 13). For
Balibar (2002), the idea, creation and disintegration of Yugoslavia is
nothing less than the postponed ‘reappearance’ of European ‘moder-
nity’ (p. 99). The idea and creation of the exclusive national state
for South Slavs indeed came very late compared with peak European
modernisation, which took place in the late 18th and early 19th cen-
turies. In this period Europe changed rapidly. For their own purposes,
the Bourgeoisie—the emerging social class—played a crucial role in
breaking up the medieval boundaries and forming modern national
states. During this period, in contrast, the Western Balkans was jammed
between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires: the two last bas-
tions of traditional imperialism in Europe. Both empires managed to
resist the first wave of revolutionary changes throughout Europe.
The South Slavic peoples, who in the first half of the 19th century
still lived under the rule of these two ageing empires, noticed the socio-
political changes in Europe and the birth of the term nation. ‘The whole
world sees morning, but in the Balkans daylight never comes’, begins
a poem written in 1842 by Ognjeslav Utjesenovic Ostrozinski (cited in
Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 43), a Serb from land that is part of Croatia
today. At the time when Ostrozinski wrote his verses, a movement for
the unification of the South Slavs had just begun. In the beginning, the
movement reflected neither popular discontent nor a political move-
ment. Rather, as Prpa-Jovanovic (2000, p. 43), emphasises, the early
movement for South Slavic unity was created in early 1830s by a group
of Croatian scholars who called themselves the Illyrians. The Illyrians
is the name for the oldest tribe known to have inhabited the Balkan
Peninsula, dating back to classical Greek times. For Prpa-Jovanovic
(2000), Illyria was a sensitively chosen name, as it further expressed the
‘desire for a historical neutral identity that all South Slavs could accept’
(p. 43). In the following two decades, to achieve their goal, the Illyrian
movement sought to open schools and cultural associations, publish
scholarly journals, and standardise a written language that would be
understandable by all Slavs in the Balkans. These activities were under-
taken not only in the effort to achieve unity among the Slavic popula-
tion in the Balkans, but also to emphasise ‘cultural differences between
the Slavs and the non-Slavs who ruled them, whether German-speaking
Austrians, Hungarians, or Turks’ (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 44).
The Illyrianism of the 1840s and 1850s was replaced by Yugoslavism
in the 1860s. The most prominent representatives of the unification of
the South Slavs were still ethnic Croats (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 44).
Unlike the Illyrian, the Yugoslav movement had a clear political agenda.
Josip Juraj Strossmayer and Franjo Racki, the leaders of the movement,
believed that the end of the Habsburg Empire was not in sight and their
immediate political goal was to reach socio-political equality for the
South Slavs with Austrians and Hungarians within the Empire. On the
other side of the border that separated the South Slavs, the Serbs, who at
that time had gained more than any other Slavic nation in the Balkans
in terms of independent nationhood, were still not strong enough to
push the Ottomans out of the Balkans (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 44). For
political pragmatics such as Strossmayer and Racki, the creation of an
independent Yugoslav state had to wait for a more appropriate socio-
political circumstance. The 1878 expansion of the mighty Habsburgs’
crown, at the expense of the Ottomans in Bosnia-Herzegovina, only
confirmed Strossmayer’s and Racki’s pragmatism.
Unlike its Croatian and, to some degree, Slovenian counterparts, on
the other side of the border between the two empires, the Serbian elite
perceived the rise of Yugoslavism from a different perspective (Prpa-
Jovanovic 2000, p. 46; Udovicki, 2000a, p. 25). In a time when Illyrians
and later Yugoslavs in Croatia just dreamt of a national state with a
Slavic majority, Serbia had gained a significant degree of national inde-
pendence. In 1830, forced by two Serbian military upheavals against the
Ottomans’ rule and pressure from Russia and France, the sultan granted
Serbia a broad degree of autonomy. More than forty years later, in 1878,
Serbia gained complete independence from the Ottoman Empire. As the
degree of political power dictated the level of political aspirations, the
Serb position towards a united South Slavic state was significantly dif-
ferent from the stance imagined in Croatian-Yugoslavism. Rather than
perceiving Yugoslavia as the common state for several different South
Slavic identities, the Serbian elite viewed Yugoslavism ‘only as a means
to the reconstruction of a strong Serbian state’ (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000,
p. 46). Prpa-Jovanovic’s remark had been further confirmed by the

events that followed the final unification of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and
the other Slavs into a single national state in the aftermath of World
War I.
In 1844 Ilija Garasanin, a leading Serbian political figure of the time,
developed a memorandum which amounted to a blueprint for an
expanded Serbia. In the memorandum, Garasanin advocated the expan-
sion of Serbian rule into Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia,
Kosovo and parts of Croatia as essential for Serbia’s national survival
(Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p.46). The successful cooperative military ven-
ture of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia against the remains of
the Ottomans on the Balkan Peninsula in the early years of the 20th
century gave further confidence to the political elite in Serbia that
Garasanin’s project was within reach; if the Ottomans were so easily
defeated, why not the Habsburgs as well (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000)?
In 1912, during the first campaign of the 20th century against the
Ottomans, known as the First Balkan War, Serbia extended its territory
into Kosovo, the centre of the medieval Serbian kingdom. In 1913, dur-
ing what is in now known as the Second Balkan War, Serbia annexed
the territory of Vardar Macedonia. Unlike in the First Balkan War, in
which the newly established national states in the Balkans fought the
Ottomans, the Second Balkan War was an inter-Balkan affair. Bulgaria,
Greece and Serbia fought each other in a set of imperial wars on a
miniature scale. Each of these three countries tried to conquer as much
as possible of the territories left behind by the Ottomans. During this
period, the aspirations of the other national identities such as Kosovo’s
Albanians, Slavic Macedonians or Slavic Muslims, for instance, were
either ignored or militarily crushed. In the attempt to create ethnically
distinctive boundaries on behalf of their political elites, all national
armies involved in conflict committed ethnic cleansing or observed
human relocations. The massive expulsion of the Greeks from contem-
porary Turkey and Turks and others Muslims from contemporary Greece
is the most quoted, but was not the only act of forced migration based
along ethnic lines in the Balkans on the eve of World War I. A cynic
would say that these events were nothing new in Europe. Most of the
new national borders in Europe had been established in a similar way
some fifty to a hundred years earlier.
Although filmmaking in the Western Balkans existed and was appre-
ciated to some extent before 1912, it was briefly revolutionised during
the two Balkan Wars and World War I. The reason behind this was
the fact that many European filmmakers had arrived on the Balkan
Peninsula with the desire to visualise the war (Djeric 2008, p. 105). For
Kosanovic (1985, cited in Djeric 2008, p. 106), it was no surprise because
the Balkan wars were the first conflicts on European soil in the epoch of
cinematography. More than 7,000 metres of filmstrip from this period
were preserved and kept in Belgrade’s cinema archive (Djeric 2008,
p. 105). Somehow, unconsciously, a moving image—one of the great-
est inventions of modernism—significantly contributed to creating the
myth of the Balkans as the powder keg of Europe; and the myth of the
Balkan man as synonymous with war and violence.
Yet, the most famous moving image of the time from the region
was filmed in Sarajevo. According to film scholar Zoran Djeric (2008,
p. 103), the filmmaker and the owner of first cinema in Sarajevo, Anton
Valic, recorded the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand almost
by a chance. The ill-fated Habsburg king-in-waiting was killed on 28
June 1914, in Sarajevo, in a coup organised by the members of the
nationalist revolutionary organisation Mlada Bosna (Youthful Bosnia),
which had an ideological base and logistical support in Serbia (Malcolm
1994; Udovicki 2000a). The Archduke’s pregnant wife was also killed.
Contemporary military terminology would describe her death as collat-
eral damage. Nevertheless, Valic’s film record became an instant sensa-
tion throughout the world. While excited cinemagoers lined up in front
of film-theatres throughout Europe to see the real drama-documentary
that had happened on the outskirts of Europe, political minds of the
greatest powers in Europe used the Archduke’s assassination as an ideal
trigger for the beginning of the long-predicted conflict over disputed
territories in Europe, Africa and Asia (Henig 2002). World War I, the war
to end all wars, had begun.
In the case of the Balkans, Ferdinand’s assassination provided the
Austro-Hungarian Empire with the opportunity to halt Serbia’s aspira-
tions for its provinces of Bosnia and Croatia once and for all. Moreover,
the assassination was a perfect chance for the Habsburg rulers to expand
their territories further east. In the four years of brutal trench war that
followed, South Slavs found themselves on opposite sides. Slovenes,
Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia and Hungary
were drafted into the trenches of the Habsburg forces, while Serbs,
Montenegrins and Macedonians fought against them (Mitrovic 2007).
The global outcome of World War I is well-known and there is no need
to repeat it here. In the case of the Western Balkans, however, the out-
come of World War I meant the imminent collapse of the empire under
the Habsburg crown. The decision of the victorious Alliance to disman-
tle the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire gave crucial geo-political
momentum to the creation of a new state in the Balkans (Matkovic

1998, p. 58). The South Slavs, finally, were able to create a national
state. Yugoslavia was thus born from the chaos and blood of World War
I. Some pieces of the utopian national dream, which the members of
Illyrian movement had dreamt almost a century before, had become
reality.
Yugoslavia was not Yugoslavia from the beginning. From 1918 until
1929, the newly born South Slav national state was called the kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SCS) and it was ruled by the Serbian
royal family of Karadjordjevic from Belgrade. The first constitution of
the new national state in the Western Balkans provided the heir of the
royal family with almost undisputed despotic power (Matkovic 1998,
p. 97). It is significant that only three distinctive Slavic tribes were recog-
nised in the newborn states: Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Montenegrins,
Macedonians and Bosnian Muslims were simply considered to be Serbs.
Albanians from Kosovo, however, were neither recognised as one of
the ‘constitutive “tribes”, as the Slovenians and the Croats eventually
were, nor were they seen as potentially “assimilable” into the Serbian
nation, like the Macedonians and the Slavonic Muslims’ (Stefanovic
2005, p. 485). Basically, the Albanian population of Kosovo was ignored
(Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 50). The SCS kingdom, furthermore, avoided
international obligations in regard to the Albanians in Kosovo; despite
the ‘proclaimed constitutional provisions on the protection of minori-
ties Albanians were subjected to national and cultural oppression’
(Matkovic 1998, p. 118). Unlike Slavic Muslims, for instance, who—
even though they were perceived as ethnically Serb—were allowed to
form political parties based on their religious affiliation, the Albanians
were not allowed to create political affiliations or to put their demands
forward for cultural or national equality (Matkovic 1998, p. 118). While
not rigorously studied, there is a strong assumption that the socio-
cultural rights of the Romani—another large non-Slavic group in the
land of the SCS kingdom—were also ignored or suppressed (Fraser 1995;
Crowe 1996). At the same time, Crowe (1996, p. 214) writes about the
appreciation of Roma music throughout the kingdom for the hedonistic
purposes of the Slavic majority. During this era, the Roma people were
also visualised by filmmakers and I will return to this fact in more detail
in Chapter 6.
In 1929, the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes became the king-
dom of Yugoslavia. Except for the name, nothing changed. Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes were the only three distinctive national identities recog-
nised by the new constitution. The fragile democratic system was then
more often overshadowed by the authoritarian rule of the Serbian royal

family. It was not too long before Croatian and Slovenian political rep-
resentatives expressed their dissatisfaction with the Serbian dominance
in all aspects of political life in the Yugoslav kingdom. On their behalf,
the Serbian king and most of the Serbian political parties either ignored
or politically suppressed Croatian and Slovenian proposals for more
socio-economic autonomy within the kingdom. ‘We have not thought
they [Croats] should be just servants, but it has to be known who is the
boss’, is the infamous line in the correspondence between the two most
influential Serbian politicians of the time, Nikola Pasic and Stojan Protic
(Perovic, cited in Milosavljevic 2010, p. 12).
Ninety years later, in a Serbian blockbuster filmic melodrama
Montevideo, bog te video/Montevideo, God Bless You (Bjelogrlic 2010) set in
the 1930s, while arguing with his son-in-law over the fate of the first
Yugoslav football team, a wealthy Serbian businessman, Atanas Bozic,
gives a lament on Pasic’s observation about the servants and superiors
in the Yugoslav kingdom: ‘Karadjordjevic [the king] has screwed us all.
He wanted to be an emperor. Croats and Slovenes are not blacks; they
cannot be colonised and we [Serbs] are not Englishmen’. By following
contemporary cinema theory, Zizek (2010) argues that a true revolu-
tion in cinema is not located in ‘eccentric shots or camera movements’
(p. 274). Rather, according to Zizek, the revolutionary potential in
cinema involves the filming of ‘an everyday conversation between two
characters’ (2010, p. 274). If Zizek’s argument is insightful, then the
above-mentioned dialogue between a Serbian businessman and his son-
in-law in Bjelogrlic’s Montevideo revolutionised dramatic visualisation of
this particular part of Yugoslav history. Yet, even the best-intentioned
revolution bears some innocent casualties. The dialogue quoted above,
from the film Montevideo, also reveals the racist mind-set among the
western Balkan nations: while the Serbs are not the Brits, the very fact
that Croats and Slovenes are not black makes them un-colonisable.
However, with this brief yet significant acknowledgement of the
Serbian hegemonic political stance towards the other Yugoslav nations
during the existence of the Yugoslav kingdom, Bjelogrlic revolutionises
Serbian (historical) cinema in general by spicing it with traces of the
straightforward political reference to the national state of Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes ruled by the king. And the political discourse in the
kingdom of the time, according to Prpa-Jovanovic (2000, p. 53), was
dominated by misunderstanding, distrust and intolerance. Although
the newly formed state was a victory for pan-Slavism, many Croats and
Slovenes regarded the establishment of a highly centralised federation
as a sign of growing Serbian hegemony. The nation’s new constitu-

tion, drawing from the liberal European mode of one man, one vote,
meant that the Serbs, who outnumbered any other group, controlled
most of the political decisions in parliament, even though two-thirds
of Yugoslav assets came from Slovenia and Croatia. While the Slovenes
and Croats expected increased political power based on their economic
power, the Serbs expected and gained economic power as a result of
their political power, as Serbia made up three-quarters to four-fifths of
the government workforce (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 54).
Yet, it was not an economic but rather a radical political act which
became a critical turning point that seriously challenged the future of
the Yugoslav kingdom. The assassination of Stjepan Radic, a popular
leader of the Croatian Peasant Party and two other Croatian deputies in
the parliament by a member of Serbian Radical Party deeply radicalised
the Croatian national movement and irreparably aggravated the pre-
World War II Serbo-Croatian split (Pribicevic 1952, cited in Udovicki
2000a, p. 23). The years that followed brought nothing prosperous
in the first state of the South Slavs. In 1934, the exiled Croatian and
Macedonian extreme nationalists assassinated the king, Aleksandar
Karadjordjevic, during his official visit to France.
Despite further pressure on the Croatian national movement, the
demands for Croatian autonomy within Yugoslavia had continued
to grow in the years following the assassinations. Finally, in 1939, an
agreement between Croatian and Serbian politicians was reached for
reordering the political map of the Yugoslav kingdom. With this agree-
ment, Croatia gained a special status within the kingdom. The main
territorial achievement for the Croatian politicians was the inclusion
of some Bosnian territory into Croatian geo-political sphere. Another,
larger, part of today’s Bosnia was linked to the provinces with a clear
Serbian majority. Many would argue that it was a clear beginning
of the separation between Serbs and Croats to the cost of all other
nations except Slovenians in the western Balkans (Malcolm 1994; Prpa-
Jovanovic 2000; Udovicki 2000a). Only the Nazi-led Axis invasion of
the Yugoslav kingdom in April 1941 had prevented the gradual disin-
tegration of the Yugoslav kingdom into three parts: the Great Serbia,
somewhat smaller Croatia, and very small Slovenia.
The swift Axis victory over the Yugoslav Royal Army resulted in a
very different geo-political redistribution of the Yugoslav lands than that
imagined by the Serbian and Croatian nationalists in the late 1930s.
Nazi Germany expanded to include most of what is nowadays Slovenia.
The rest of Slovenia was added to the fascist Italian state. Italy also
occupied and annexed most of the Croatian and Montenegrin coasts.

Bulgaria added southern Serbia and most of present-day FYR Macedonia
to its territory. The Italian puppet state of Albania annexed Kosovo and
the western parts of Macedonia. From the north, Hungary’s jurisdic-
tion penetrated deep into land which is nowadays Serbia and Croatia.
The state of Montenegro under the Italian protectorate was re-created
in the south. What remained of Serbia was officially occupied by Nazi
Germany. The official territories also included a dual German-Italian
occupation of the infamous Croatian state led by the Italian-backed
Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelic. The Independent State of Croatia,
as Pavelic and the Ustasa movement named their creation, included
non-annexed parts of Croatia and the entire territory of today’s
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
With such geo-political redistribution of the territories, the first
Yugoslav state ceased to exist. Born from the still-warm ashes of World
War I, the first South Slavic state perished in the flames of World War II.
Imagined in the aftermath of the broader European national awakening
as the liberated national space for the South Slavs, the first Yugoslavia
did not provide socio-cultural prosperity for the vast majority of its
inhabitants. Economic stagnation and permanent political unrest were
overarching axioms almost from the very day the first Yugoslavia was
created.
In such socio-political circumstances, there is a little surprise that
those who ruled Yugoslavia showed no interest in film art. The socio-
economic logic of the first Yugoslavia understood film primarily as a
trade commodity (Kosanovic 2002–2003, p. 216). Furthermore, even
those who imagined film as a commercial product failed to make any
impact. The number of seats in cinematic theatres per capita showed
that the Yugoslavia of that time was at the very bottom of European
countries demonstrating an interest in film (Kosanovic 2002–2003,
p. 216). Dejan Kosanovic (2000, p. 160) speaks about not more than
twenty feature films of limited aesthetic significance made within the
Yugoslav kingdom prior to World War II. Rare, yet enthusiastic individu-
als made most of these films. According to Kosanovic (2000, p. 161), the
vast majority of these films were not preserved.
For the cultural establishment in the Yugoslav kingdom, the only
moving images worth preserving were film journals made on and
around the battlefields of the two Balkan Wars and World War I (Djeric
2008, p. 105). It seemed that the visual glorification of the mainly
Serbian militarily past for historical purposes was the only reason for
preserving those film strips. In the local, South Slavic, context, the
moving images clearly distinguished the Serbian man from other men
from the Balkans. Looked at from a universal or global framework, how-
ever, the quantity and obliqueness of the images may signify nothing
more than a supplementation of the established discourse about violent
men from the Western Balkans.
Importantly, besides the effort to preserve the visualised military
past for its own deifying aim, the political elite responsible for the first
Yugoslavia’s internal affairs found no other valuable socio-political
purpose for the moving image. Unlike the Bolsheviks in Russia, or the
Nazis in Germany, the rulers of the first Yugoslavia did not recognise
the further potential of film as a tool for propaganda. And those who
might have perceived film as an art, with educational and enlightening
potential in which the notions of ethics and empathy have a central
place, were either on the margins of the first Yugoslav society or were
yet to come.
Nevertheless, some rare aesthetically significant and non-militant
moving images from that time have been saved. Daniel Goulding (2002,
p. 233), the most cited English-speaking scholar on cinema from the
Western Balkans, briefly mentions the Manaki brothers: Milton and
Janaki. According to Goulding, the Manaki brothers created the most
aesthetically significant images of the time in the land dominated by
the South Slavs. Throughout their dynamic lifetimes, Milton and Janaki
Manaki shot an impressive series of visual documents on everyday rural
and urban life. In 1905, in the very first shot produced by the brothers,
an old woman is recorded weaving wool in her home in one high-angle
shot. The scene’s opening cut was made at the precise moment the old
woman spins on the spinning wheel. This is a pioneering yet striking
aesthetic synchronisation between the camera and filmed subject. The
next scene was filmed outside the house in a static, wide shot. We see a
group of eight women dressed in the rural robes of the time. They, too,
are occupied in the weaving process.1
What the Manaki brothers memorialised in these images is in salient
contrast to the dominant perception about the Balkans. One may feel
simultaneously excitement and calmness while gazing at the energetic
old woman dressed in a presumably black robe. The brothers’ focus
on the productive and peaceful activities of rural women showed that
another, non-militant, western Balkans existed. Greek director Theo
Angelopoulos included those two Manaki shots in the opening scene of
his film Ulysses’ Gaze (1995). From that point in Ulysses’ Gaze, its main
character ‘A’ gets himself involved in the fictional and metaphoric quest
for a lost, undeveloped reel of film taken by the Manaki brothers. The
symbolic Manaki reels, which ‘A’ is desperate to find, will prove to the
world that a peaceful Balkans existed before it was split by the forces of
nationalism.2
The Western Balkans indeed had its peaceable phases in which its
numerous ethnicities lived in harmony with each other and their
broader surroundings. There were also times when the Balkans’ peo-
ple were involved in conflicts between each other or their neighbours
from both the East and West. However, quantitatively, both peaceful
and violent epochs of the Balkans’ history are in consonance with the
broader European militant and pacific phases (Todorova 2009). The
most flourishing phase of peace and prosperity in the Western Balkans
would not come until the second half of the 20th century. It did not
begin before the horror of World War II was in full swing for its inhabit-
ants. The Nazi attack on the Yugoslav kingdom in April 1941 brought
to the western Balkans a misery that many parts of Europe had been
experiencing since 1939.
Yugoslavia: from ashes to ashes and in between (1941–1989)
In regard to an up-to-date filmic narrative, Kusturica’s Podzemnje: Bila

jednom jedna zemlja/Underground: Once Upon a Time There Was a Country
(1995)3 is the filmic reflection on Yugoslav history most discussed by
scholars. There are few places on the planet in which Underground d is
not examined throughout various discourses by authors interested in
Kusturica’s film and the milieu from which it comes. From Europe and
the Americas to Asia and Australia, Underground d is celebrated, discussed,
elaborated, and criticised. Among others, Daniel Goulding (2002),
Dina Iordanova (1999; 2001; 2002), Goran Gocic (2001), James Gow
(2006), Judith Keene (2001), Marcos Farias Ferreira (2006), Pavle Levi
(2001), Sean Homer (2009) and Slavoj Zizek (1997; 2008b) have either
focused on Underground, or used Kusturica and his film as a reference in
discussing post-Yugoslav geo-political as well as socio-cultural space(s).
Another film with a focus on the causes and consequences of the con-
flict in the Western Balkans at the end of 20th century attracting such
unprecedented attention has yet to be made.
In June 1995, after winning the Palme d’Or for Underground in Cannes,
its director, Emir Kusturica, found it necessary to explain the still ongo-
ing conflict in the former Yugoslavia at that time as a natural disaster:
In this region, war is a natural phenomenon. It is like a natural catas-

trophe, like an earthquake which explodes from time to time. In my
film, I tried to clarify the state of things in this chaotic part of the
world. It seems that nobody is able to locate the roots of this terrible
conflict. (cited in Žižek 1997, p. 38)
For both Zizek (1997) and Iordanova (2001), Kusturica’s natural

explanation is nothing more than a strategic concession for the west
European formulation of the [western] Balkans. For Zizek (1997),
Kusturica’s remark is an archetypal ‘example of “Balkanism” which
functions in a similar way to ‘Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism”:
the Balkans as the timeless space onto which the West projects its phan-
tasmatic content’ (p. 38). In other words, according to Zizek, Kusturica
gives to the West what the West wants to know about the war in former
Yugoslavia in 1995. It was the war caused by the ‘timeless, incompre-
hensible, mythical cycle of passions’ (Zizek 1997, p. 38). It was the war
in which no clear political agenda or militaristic strategy was employed.
It was pure, intact madness deeply implanted in the psyche of the
human beings destined to inhabit territories once called Yugoslavia.
Nevertheless, as Iordanova (1999, p. 72) argues, in his post-premiere
interviews, Kusturica, perhaps, strategically decided to describe the
1990s wars in the Western Balkans as a natural phenomenon. The initial
film critics and the general audience from the West indeed perceived
Underground d as a ‘gargantuan metaphor of the messy state of Balkan
affairs’ (Iordanova 1999, p. 83). Only in the years that followed, with
the rise of scholarly interest in the film, did it become relatively clear
what Kusturica had in mind while making Underground. Once the care-
fully crafted visual aesthetic in Undergroundd is left behind, it becomes
obvious that Kusturica co-wrote and visualised the Yugoslav historical
narrative from his particular political perspective. He began his narra-
tive with the beginning of World War II in Yugoslavia and finished in
the midst of 1990s war somewhere in Croatia or Bosnia.
With the vicious air raid on Belgrade in the early hours on 6 April
1941, the Nazis began their attack on Yugoslavia. Kusturica opens
Underground’s narrative just a few hours before the bombing. A Roma
orchestral troupe accompanies, on foot, its two-horse-drawn cart and
drunken men into the Belgrade night. From that point until the very
last scene in the film, the dialogue-less Roma men from the tuba
orchestra continue their live accompaniment to the main protagonists
in Underground d and serve simply as a prop to keep the film’s rhythm.
The two drunken men accompanied by the Roma musicians are Marko
and Blacky. Blacky has just joined the Communist Party and the pair is
celebrating this in style. Both Blacky and Marko are portrayed as fearless
and reckless street brawlers and macho men who live their lives as
though there is no tomorrow. Marko, however, has an additional char-
acteristic; he is a manipulative cynic. Underground is also centred on the
third protagonist, Natalia. She is an opportunistic theatrical actress and
starlet. Both men fall for Natalia and many of their further activities in
the narrative are determined by their amorous competition.
At dawn, in the scene that follows the boisterous drunken night, the
Belgrade zoo is bombed and the wild animals are on the loose. Once free,
the larger beasts begin to devour the smaller ones. This astonishing alle-
gory is a remarkable lament on the universal chaos caused by a military
conflict. The zoo scene is just one of many elaborate and evocative scenes
in the film. Still, if one manages to leave aside its ‘visual particularities’,
writes Iordanova (1999), ‘Underground d is a historical film … set in clearly
defined historical time, with a linear narrative’ (p. 72). The narrative
spans five decades, highlighting particular moments in the 1940s, 1960s
and 1990s. Kusturica names these three periods as ‘War’, ‘Cold War’ and
‘War’. Expediently selected documentary footage of Yugoslav history is
also used as the elements which predetermine the film’s storyline.
Figure 3.1 Blacky, Marko and Natalia in the cellar (still, Underground)
d
The first of two archival sequences consists of documentary foot-

age in which the viewer is able to see the entry of German troops into
Maribor and Zagreb. The crowd in both cities cheerfully welcomes the
Nazi invaders. Those welcoming crowds are in direct contrast to the
documentary footage that gazes over bombed and destroyed Belgrade
streets. The occupying forces entering Belgrade are also shown; this time
in different circumstances. Germany’s armoured vehicles are moving
throughout Belgrade’s deserted streets. The deployment of the archival
footage in this way is at once ‘accurate and disingenuous’ (Gow 2006,
p. 400). Its accuracy lies in the authenticity of these images. In terms
of detail, however, it does not show that Maribor was a predominantly
ethnic German town in Slovenia, nor that the Slav population else-
where in Slovenia and Croatia did not welcome the occupation. Nor
does it illuminate the areas of Serbian collaboration with the German
powers (Gow 2006, p. 400). It should not be hard to understand the
message embedded in those sequences for anyone who has satisfactory
knowledge about the conflict that came fifty years after the beginning
of World War II. Its two primary functions, writes Pavle Levi (2001),
are to ‘reinforce the discourse about “Serbian victimhood”, a key pillar
of the contemporary Serbian nationalist resentment’, and to ‘discredit
other South Slavic nations’ (np). When the narrative of this chapter
reaches the events in the 1980s, which led into the conflicts in the
1990s, I will further elaborate Levi’s argument. For now, however, it is
necessary to pay further attention to the events in former Yugoslavia
during World War II and their interpretation in Underground.
The pro-Axis forces that emerged to rule the ruins of the first Yugoslavia
included the Ustase, the extremist wing of the Croatian nationalist
movement, which had gained the patronage of Italy and Hungary in the
period before the outbreak of war. The Ustase, although a small minority
of the Croatian population, were also recruited from the Slavic Muslims
of Bosnia for a programme of brutal repression of the Communists as
well as outright genocide against the Serbian, Jewish and Roma popula-
tions within the territory they were allowed to control by the German
and Italian occupying forces. In Serbia, a collaborationist regime was also
set up and run by military and police officers, with the primary task of
fighting potential rebels against the Axis occupiers and exterminating
the Jewish population on the behalf of Nazi masters (Prpa-Jovanovic
2000). Even though initially formed to fight Germans, Italians and other
occupiers, the Serbian ultranationalist formations, Chetniks, soon began
pursuing the brutal and organised killing of Slavic Muslims, Croats and
Communists (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 58; Perisic 2011a).
In such circumstances, the decision was taken in July 1941 by the

Yugoslav Communist Party to raise an armed struggle against the occu-
pying forces and their local collaborationists, Vuk Perisic (2011a), one of
the most prolific cultural critics in the Western Balkans, called this the
‘most important project ever commenced on the Yugoslav territories’.
Perisic continues:
It never happened that so many individuals organised in an effi-

cient group had decided to do something of such great importance
and determination. No other Yugoslav or South Slavic project has
been aligned with the crucial needs of the world … only a several
thousand of them in the midst of terrified Europe … they bound
their destiny with the fate of antifascism in the moment when
Britain was burning under the Luftwaffe’s bombs and the Soviets’
defence was collapsing … they opted for humanity … they were part
of the world. (2011a, np)
Unlike the Yugoslav Communists, their local nationalist opponents

perceived World War II and the occupation of the Yugoslav kingdom as
the opportunity to achieve their own ‘provincial goals’ (Perisic 2011a,
np). The nationalists made an appeal and recruited people based on
their nationality, ethnicity or religion. The Communists, on the other
hand, urged all Yugoslavs to join their cause regardless of their ethnic
or religious identities (Perisic 2011a).
In such circumstances, the Communists were joined by some frag-
ments of the old, pre-war political establishment as well as politically
non-affiliated individuals. Besides the Serbian and Montenegrin peas-
antry and the working classes—whose members made up the initial
foundation group in the first months of the uprising—the plea for
resistance by the multinational Yugoslav Communist Party under
Tito’s leadership found its followers amongst many different political
groups and individuals. In Slovenia, the Communists allied themselves
with the Christian Democrats; in Croatia they recruited followers of
the Croatian Peasant Party and many Croats living on the Dalmatian
coast. They also attracted Serbs from Croatia who had suffered under
the Ustase regime. In Bosnia, the Communists brought together Croats,
Serbs, Muslims, Jews and others unwilling to participate in the Ustase
and Chetnik war crimes committed in the name of one or the other
South Slavic nation (Prpa- Jovanovic, pp. 58–59). The poets Vladimir
Nazor and Ivan-Goran Kovacic are the two most prominent amongst
many other artists who chose to join the resistance movement.
In giving the account on this particular moment in Yugoslav history,

Perisic (2011a) rhetorically asks:
What did the Communists want to achieve in July 1941? Perhaps

governance was their ultimate goal, but in July 1941 the Communists
did not have time to think about the unlimited hedonistic pleasure
that political power might bring to them if they were raised up as the
victorious side after the war was finished … in July 1941, they were
just brave and part of the free world. (np)
In Underground, however, Kusturica represents this historical moment

in a very different light. The Communist leadership, signified in Blacky
and Marko, as well as the group of three crooks to whom the previ-
ous two relate in the first part of the film, is more or less a group of
war-profiteers.
Yet, a spectator from a Western Balkan audience should be able to
grasp a further reading from the correlation between Marko, Blacky and
their three sleazy and unreliable party comrades and criminal partners
named ‘Janez’, ‘Tomislav’ and ‘Mustafa’. These three names perhaps
mean nothing to a film critic without the ethnographic knowledge
of the people living in the region. In the western Balkans, however,
Janez, Tomislav and Mustafa signify distinct yet stereotypical names
for Slovene, Croat and Bosnian Muslim men. The trio does not have
any moral standards and norms—unlike Marko and Blacky who at least
possess raw courage and a level of empathy for their family members.
On realising that the non-Serb trio is stealing the money that is col-
lected for a ‘revolutionary purpose’, Marko and Blacky initiate a brawl.
This betrayal of the common transnational goals is directly attributed
to the Muslim, Croat and Slovene, whose treachery clearly shows all
one needs to know about the ‘characterology of the anti-Serb coalition
conspirators’ (Levi 2001, np). For Kusturica, according to Levi (2001), in
World War II, the Yugoslav Communists were a group of scum. Yet the
worst of them all were Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian Communists.
This message is echoed in the 1990s when Underground d was made. In
the 1990s, Yugoslavia was overwhelmed by radical nationalists. One
may presume that the worst of them all were Slovenian, Croatian
and Bosnian nationalists. The macho response to their nasty business
arrives in the form of a fist. Driven by the rhythm of the ever-present
Roma orchestra and starlets’ lustful glances, Marko and Blacky give
a physical lesson to their Yugoslav brethren. In 1995 Belgrade, this
visual explanation of the ongoing conflict in former Yugoslavia was
highly appreciated by the nationalist elite. At Underground’s premiere in

Belgrade, the warlord Arkan4 and other high-profile nationalists close to
Slobodan Milosevic were invited guests (Horton 2000, p. 38).
In contrast to Kusturica’s portrayal, the anti-fascist Communist resist-
ance was by and large a dedicated and disciplined movement. From
small groups committed to desperate subversive actions in 1941, Tito’s
National Liberation Army grew to become a force of 800,000 fighters
in 1945 (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000, p. 60). During this time, as the univo-
cal supporters of the federalist Yugoslavia, the Communists reshaped
the Yugoslav geo-political map. In 1943, the Communist political
leadership decided to recognise Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia as federal units within Yugoslavia.
National status was granted for the first time within Yugoslavia to the
Macedonians, Montenegrins and, implicitly, through recognition of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Bosnian Muslims. The purpose of creating
the federation was to establish a national equilibrium and prevent any
one nation from dominating the others. Together with the insistence
on class and gender equality and undeniable successes on the battle-
field, the political platform, which granted equality for all South Slavic
nations, was one of the crucial reasons for the Communists enjoying
widespread support all over occupied Yugoslavia (Prpa-Jovanovic 2000).
Thus, a national state for all South Slavs was again reborn out of World
War flames and ashes. By insisting on a more just world for the poor
and women, as well as equality between nations, the Communists
hoped not to repeat the errors of their predecessors.
Nevertheless, the Communists did make errors, if one speaks about
national equality. The status of the Albanians5—the largest non-Slavic
group of people within Yugoslavia proper—was left unmentioned dur-
ing the discussion about the Yugoslav constitution in the Bosnian town
of Jajce in 1943. Somehow this Communist disregard for the Albanians
(and other non-Slavic peoples) made a large proportion of the Yugoslav
inhabitants invisible. Symbolically, one might say, they remained
underground. And needless to say, the Roma people stayed absent from
the minds of emerging Yugoslav rulers.
In Kusturica’s Underground, however, the humans who symbolically
disappeared from the earth’s surface were not Albanians. At least they
are not amongst those who were given the possibility of dialogue in the
screenplay. Instead, Marko’s priority is to lock up South Slavs. Under
the initial promise of protecting them from the Nazis, Marko and
Blacky first take their family members and friends to the basement of
Marko’s house. As time passes, the cellar is filled with more people. By
clearly representing Christian-Orthodox, Roman-Catholic and Muslim

priests speaking South Slavic language(s), Kusturica intentionally indi-
cates that they are members of South Slavic nations in Yugoslavia. The
Communists tricked and trapped them all.
Marko soon persuades wounded Blacky to go and hide in the cel-
lar. However, this is a strategic exclusion of the main rival for Natalia
on Marko’s behalf. With Blacky in the cellar, Marko is able to claim
Natalia, the object of affection for both men, for himself. Natalia, too,
is seduced by Marko; and soon, she takes an active part in the further
manipulation of people trapped in the darkness of the basement. From
that moment, despite the many challenges she faces while participat-
ing in Marko’s charade, Natalia will stay with him until they both, as a
very old couple, perish in the flames of the wars of the 1900s in former
Yugoslavia. ‘You lie so beautifully’, says Natalia to Marko during their
intimate exchange.
All the trapped people, including Blacky, will stay underground long
after World War II has finished. Blacky’s son is born and married in the
cellar. Marko tricks them into thinking that the war goes on by play-
ing soundtracks of Nazi bombings and Hitler’s speeches. Occasionally,
Marko or Natalia use make-up to appear in the cellar as if they have
just escaped the torturers at the local Gestapo headquarters. Marko
also has his accomplice in the basement embodied in the character of
an old man. The old man’s role is to turn the clock’s hands six hours
backwards per day. ‘For twenty years, I’ve decreased five years to them’,
the old man whispers proudly into Marko’s ear. As the film progresses,
it becomes clear that Marko does not keep all these people in the cellar
purely for the sake of a Communist political ideology. On the contrary,
the people in the cellar are used as slave labour. They manufacture arms
which Marko promptly exports to a network of international customers.
Deceived by the cunning Marko, who makes them believe their struggle
is needed for the final victory over fascism, they work enthusiastically
in a mixture of claustrophobic darkness and poor artificial light. They
work and sing songs dedicated to Tito. ‘Comrade Tito, we promise you
that from your path we will not turn’, resounds throughout the cellar.
One may rhetorically ask, did Tito really keep the South Slavs in
cultural, social, economic or national darkness for all these years? One
by one, the emerging post-Tito nationalist elites in the 1980s almost
unanimously accused him of being a ruthless, calculating ruler who
coercively kept them in Yugoslavia. In Underground, Kusturica eagerly
repeats this claim. The film’s setting is comparable to the state of the
Yugoslav people who, under Tito’s rule, were kept in the subterranean
vault of Communism. As Iordanova (1999) argues, Underground’s main

intention is to show that the roots of the 1990s war are to be found
in the ‘moral nihilism that prevailed under Communism’ (p. 86). In
the same way as the South Slavs related with gratitude to Tito, the
enslaved inhabitants of Underground d look up to their saviour Marko,
who is nothing more than a crock on an international scale (Iordanova
1999, p. 85).
There is no doubt that Tito’s era was an undemocratic one. The fact
that his rule over Yugoslavia was unchallenged for almost forty years
only underlines the totalitarian nature of the political establishment in
the former Yugoslavia from the end of World War II. In the end, as Perisic
(2011b) argues, ‘Tito was Communist [trained in the Soviet Union] and
not a liberal-democrat’ (np). However, continues Perisic (2011b), the
insistence that liberal democracy is superior to Communism is unhelp-
ful in the Yugoslav case, because such an argument makes it difficult to
recognise the historical circumstances during Tito’s era and the histori-
cal determinations made by Tito himself.
In the immediately post-World War II political redistribution of
Europe between the United States, the Soviet Union and the United
Kingdom, Yugoslavia was allocated to the Soviet communist bloc. It
clearly meant that Yugoslavia was destined to become and remain an
undemocratic, totalitarian society, as was the case with any communist
country in Eastern Europe until the collapse of Soviet Union in 1989.
The Tito-Stalin split of 1948,6 however, provided a significant buffer to
the consequences of the Soviet version of Communism in Yugoslavia.
For the essayist and cultural critic Ivan Lovrenovic (2010), Yugoslavia
in Tito’s time became a ‘unique political and ideological structure and
place for living’. He continues:
[F]or the [Communist] East, it was simultaneously an ideological

thorn in the eye and object of desire. The West perceived Yugoslavia
as the crack in the Soviet monolith and tolerable picture of the ‘soft
dictatorship’ and ‘socialism with human face’. (Lovrenovic 2010, np)
Furthermore, the historian Latinka Perovic, who, once a liberal politi-

cian, became a victim of Tito’s regime in 1974, underlines that Tito and
his establishment were the Yugoslav ‘historical maximum’ during the
Cold War era (Perovic, cited in Milosavljevic 2010, p. 84).
In the decades to come, the Yugoslavs enjoyed unprecedented free-
dom of movement for any totalitarian regime of the time. From the
late 1950s until the late 1970s, Yugoslavia became, according to Perisic
(2011b), an economically prosperous society in which the vast major-
ity of its citizens lived better lives, compared with the pre-World War II
Yugoslavia. Moreover, Perisic (2011b) argues that the first civic society
on the territories of the Western Balkans was created by the Yugoslav
Communist regime. It was done by ‘urbanisation’ and the creation
of a ‘first city-class’ in the western Balkans, free and broad education,
and freedom to travel and return from abroad. In such circumstances,
concludes Perisic (2011b), ‘many people in Yugoslavia had begun to
think’ (np).7
Perhaps a fragment of this thought development among Yugoslavs is
closely related to cinema and film art. By and large inspired by Soviet
cinema and Lenin’s alleged proclamation that cinema is the most impor-
tant art, the newly-formed Yugoslav film industry conceived cinema as
the ‘the richest resource among all the artistic media for reaching and
informing all levels of society’ (Goulding 2002, p. 8). The logic behind
these politics was a simple one. As the film scholar Tomislav Sakic
(2009, p. 18) explains, visual images in the form of newsreels, docu-
mentary, advertising, educational and feature films were able to reach
out to places where the traditional educational system had difficulties
establishing itself. For the traditional, rural, sparsely industrialised and
generally illiterate societies of the USSR in 1918, and Yugoslavia in the
post-World War II period, moving images were perceived and used as
the most reliable tool for spreading particular ideas and knowledge
(Sakic 2009, p. 18).
Very often, such ideas are nothing less than the manifestation of pure
propaganda. The first organised film institution was established as a
section in the department of propaganda of the high command of the
Yugoslav liberation forces in the last days of October 1944 (Goulding
2002, p. 3). These temporary wartime arrangements for the organisation
of film activities in Yugoslavia were supplanted in July 1945 with the
formation of the Yugoslav Film Enterprise. In 1946, Aleksandar Vuco,
the first director of the federal committee for cinematography, outlined
the structure to guide the early development of film production. For
Vuco (cited in Goulding 2002), the new Yugoslav cinema should serve
as the index for the ‘nature of our state and the internal nature of its
historical process’ (p. 8). Vuco also indicates that film should avoid
‘abstract experimentation’ and instead should be based on ‘principles
of socialist realism’ and should be ‘orientated toward clear and effective
communication with the masses of viewers’ (Goulding 2002, p. 9).
From the very beginning, it became clear that the new Communist
rulers of Yugoslavia had great expectations from the ‘seventh art’. The
moving images on the big screen should spread their messages to the
masses in the most effective way. Consequently, there was nothing
that would stand as a serious barrier to an eruption of filmmaking.
In 1951, the Yugoslav federal ministry responsible for film invited an
international delegation to a special presentation of its film industry.
One of these guests, John Driscoll,8 left a written record of this cultural
exchange. Driscoll (1952) had no doubt that the Yugoslav government
was in complete control of the entire film production and was ready
to employ it to the ‘fullest extent as propaganda’ (p. 134). Still he was
startled by the quantity of Yugoslav film production. Driscoll (1952)
indicates that in the year he visited Yugoslavia there were twenty-eight
features in production, ‘whereas prior to World War II Yugoslavia practi-
cally had no organised filmmaking’ (p. 130).
Furthermore, more than 200 documentaries had been made since
the end of World War II (Driscoll 1952, p. 130). The growing number
of film-theatres, the vast increase in mobile cinemas, and the introduc-
tion of 16mm cameras throughout Yugoslavia ‘provided local Marxian
theorists with opportunities to show glowing examples of expanding
productivity under a planned system’ (Driscoll 1952, p. 130). People in
remote parts, who had never even seen a silent motion picture, ‘sud-
denly found themselves looking in awed wonder at people talking and
singing on a silver screen or on an old white piece of cloth put up in
one corner of the village meeting house’ (Driscoll 1952, p. 131). What
people were able to see on the silver screen or old white piece of sheet
at that time was mostly ‘idealistic glorification and confirmation of the
revolutionary past—from the ‘War of Liberation’, to the ‘heroic strug-
gle to construct a new socialism built on the shattered ruins of war’
(Goulding 2002, p. xi).
From the mid-1950s, Goulding (2002, pp. 38–42) recognises a new
dimension in the development of Yugoslav film and its surround-
ings. The new wave of trained film professionals and film critics alike
started a polemic, either stretching or breaking the narrow propagan-
distic mould, which characterised the post-World War II filmmaking
(Goulding 2002, p. 40). As the events of World War II grew distant, the
unifying heroism of the Communist party no longer sufficed and a criti-
cal dialogue between the past and present became a prominent motif in
many films of the period.
In Partizanske Price/Partisan Stories (1960), the Serbian director Stole
Jankovic explored the tragic dimension of the War of Liberation. In the
second part of Partisan Stories named Crveni Sal/The Red Shawl, a teenage
partisan fighter is executed by his commander for stealing a shawl from
the peasant woman. The Belgrade based director Purisa Djordjevic made
Jutro/Morningg (1967), in which he intentionally depicted the execution
of the fascist collaborators in the last days of World War II. It is time for
revenge and settling of old accounts: ‘We must complete killing today
because after peace there will be more hearings, juridical proceedings,
and investigations than executions’, says one partisan cynically. With
Morning,g Djordjevic won the top prize at the 1967 International Film
Festival in Venice. In the same year, Morningg was also recognised as the
best film at the most prestigious Yugoslav film festival in Pula. A debate
about the film followed. Some critics, whom Goulding (2002, p. 93)
describes as the ‘guardians of Partisan war tradition’, accused Djordjevic
of misrepresenting the War of Liberation. Djordjevic, who joined the
partisans at the age of seventeen and was captured and sent to a con-
centration camp, responded to his critics by observing: ‘in 1945 there
were more brutality and more tenderness than I succeeded in showing’
(cited in Goulding 2002, p. 93).
The 1960s also witnessed the emergence of the Yugoslav New Wave
movement or ‘Black Wave’ as it was pejoratively labelled by the
Communist hardliners who were displeased by this artistic perspective
on everyday Yugoslavia. The Black Wave, however, initiated a creative
momentum across theatre, literature, painting, music and cinema.
Cinematography of the time was inspired by Italian neo-realism and
various new waves in European cinema. Black Wave filmmakers rejected
the dominant style of realism with its officially-supported optimism
and patriotic education of the masses, opting instead for exposing
the darker side of the socialist state with its corruption and hypocrisy
(DeCuir 2011). In a nutshell, this movement was not a liberal attempt
to break the Yugoslav political order. Rather, it was a harsh criticism of
the Yugoslav version of Communism from a leftist position.9
Zelimir Zilnik’s first feature film Rani Radovi/Early Works (1969) is per-
haps the classic example of a leftist critique which targeted the Yugoslav
Communist regime. The film’s title, Early Works, is a clear-cut allusion to
Karl Marx’s earlier writings (Mann 2010, p. 38). In the film, three young
men and a woman armed with Marx’s quotes attempt to put revolution-
ary theory into practice. They travel through the country on a mission
to educate the masses about the true revolutionary spirit. This group
of nomadic youth spend their time living free love, working in a fac-
tory, instructing rural women in sex-education and proclaiming general
emancipation. However, spreading revolutionary ideas is not without
problems. Being in the countryside they face primitivism and squalor.

The group of youths also shows their own weaknesses, incapacities
and jealousies. Frustrated because the planned revolution has not been
realised, the three young men decide to eliminate the woman; a witness
of their impotence. They shoot her, cover her with the party flag, and
burn her body; a dark pillar of smoke going up into the sky is the only
thing that remains of the intended revolution. The lead female charac-
ter, intentionally named Yugoslava, was played by the extraordinarily
beautiful actress Milja Vujanovic. Gocic (2003) argues that the actress
was chosen strategically as she signified the revolutionary spin. In other
words, ‘revolution is a beautiful woman—exploited, abused and finally
massacred by cold social facts’ (Gocic 2003, p. 97).
Early Works was successfully screened throughout Yugoslavia for a
couple of months before Zilnik and the producer were ordered to stop
distribution (Mann 2010, p. 42). Absurdly, it was not Zilnik or the
producer who were sent to court but the film Early Works itself. The
prosecutor accused the film of devaluating ‘ideological and political
relations’ and being ‘grossly ironic of the symbols and the emanation
of the progressive past, in our country and in the world’ (Joncic 2002,
cited in Mann 2010, p. 42).
Zilnik somehow successfully defended his film in court. According
to Mann (2010, p. 42), the judge watched the film and found that it
was a bit anarchistic and wild, but not a threat to the functioning of
the socialist system. The film was acquitted. Soon after, Zilnik was able
to send Early Works to the 1969 Berlin Film Festival, where it won first
prize; the Golden Bear. The only reason for the award in Berlin, accord-
ing to Yugoslav official critics, was the film’s ‘political dimension’ and
its ‘sharp criticism of the Yugoslav political and social reality’ (Mann
2010, p. 44). In times to come, Zilnik was dropped from membership
of the Communist Party and most of his films were blacklisted, put in
bunkers and forbidden from being shown (Mann 2010, p. 46).
Zelimir Zilnik was the most prolific, but not the only filmmaker who
was harassed by the official censors, for his eloquent critique of the
way in which Yugoslav socialism was heading. Despite steady general
improvement in all spheres of people’s lives, Yugoslav society in the
1960s still had socio-economic/political issues worthy of critique. And
that is exactly what Zilnik and other filmmakers who were members of
the Black Wave did.
The majority of Black Wave directors had begun their careers in the
early 1960s, which Goulding (2002, p. 62) describes as the richest and
most complex period in the development of Yugoslav film. 1961 was the
time when the central section, the ‘Cold War’, of the film Underground
begins. 1961 was also the year the Berlin Wall was built. Kusturica and
Underground’s co-scriptwriter Kovacevic clearly had in mind the symbol-
ism of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War era while developing the
script. In that very year, the unaware hostages of Marko’s cellar would
run away during a drunken wedding party in the cellar attended by
Marko and Natalia as the guests of honour. The explosion which made
an exit hole from the cellar was triggered by a chimpanzee who had sur-
vived the bombing of Belgrade zoo in 1941. Some people from the cellar
find their way out through the busy network of underground tunnels
below Europe that suddenly appear behind the cellar’s damaged wall.
Those who do not escape are killed in an explosion initiated by Marko
which blows up the cellar and the house. After destroying the evidence
of his crime he escapes with Natalia.
Blacky and his son Jovan do not follow other people into the network
of underground highways. Instead, they climb above the ground, only
to end up on the site where a World War II related film is being shot.
The audience of Underground knows from the previous scenes that the
film is a partisan movie entitled Spring Comes on a White Horse, and
is based on Marko’s own ‘memoirs’. Mistaking the set for reality and
believing that World War II is still going on, Blacky kills all the actors
wearing German uniforms. The White Horse director is at first impressed
with the exceptional acting of the killed actors. Yet a moment later he is
on the edge of a nervous breakdown and demands protection from the
police, who soon arrive at the scene.
There is little doubt, as Homer (2009) stresses, that Kusturica tried,
with the ‘film’ within Underground, to emphasise the place of film narra-
tive within the ‘broader socio-political history of the former Yugoslavia’
(np). While doing so, Kusturica chose to ridicule the partisan film or
‘red western’, as Nevena Dakovic (2000) labels this genre due its con-
ceptual similarity with the spaghetti western.10 However, for the sake
of bridging the particular moment in Yugoslav history and the cinema-
tography of the time, there is a need to further elaborate Kusturica’s
perspective on filmmaking in Yugoslavia, which is represented in
Underground d as myth-making on an atavistic scale. There is no doubt,
as I have explained above, that Yugoslav cinematography immediately
after World War II was employed for propagandist purposes. However,
as I also detailed above, filmmaking in the 1960s had shifted signifi-
cantly from the worshipping of Communism into critical observation
of Communist rule. In spite of Underground’s representation of the
1960s, Yugoslav film artists in the 1960s had begun to ‘think’ (Perisic
2011b). In addition, as I stressed in the case of Zelimir Zilnik, the visual

representation of such intellectual imagination was considered as an
attack on the Communist order.
Yet, Kusturica’s ‘film director’ in Underground has a flunky and sleazy
persona and is doing his best to please his political masters. Perhaps,
Kusturica is making an ironic homage to Veljko Bulajic, the best-known
director of partisan film in the West.11 Or, unconsciously, Kusturica was
having a good laugh at the expense of his mentor and family friend Siba
Krvavac,12 who directed Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972)—the film I men-
tioned in the previous chapter and the film in which seventeen-year-old
Emir Kusturica had an episodic role. Krvavac died in 1992 in Sarajevo.
In spite of weak health he refused to be evacuated from the besieged
city and chose to stay with his fellow Sarajevans in times of starvation,
water and electricity shortages, heavy shelling, and random, widespread
deaths (Sesic 2006, p. 115).
With its ironic homage to the film directors of Tito’s era in the ‘film
within the film’ scene, Underground almost closes its central section,
‘Cold War’. What remains in this part of the film is a sentence on
screen which informs the audience that Marko’s disappearance made
Comrade Tito so ill that he died twenty years later. The sentence is
followed by archival footage of Tito’s funeral with a range of incom-
patible political figures ranging from the British ‘iron lady’ Margaret
Thatcher and Romanian dictator Nikolae Causescu, to the King of Saudi
Arabia. For a moment, Tito’s burial ceremony looked to be a meeting
place where ‘West’, ‘East’, ‘First’, ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ worlds met. This
archival footage is accompanied by the song ‘Lili Marlene’, a song with
Nazi overtones which is overlaid on the image of the foremost icon
of Yugoslav socialism, Tito himself (Homer 2009, np). With the Nazi
burden of Tito’s legacy, Underground d makes more than a decade-long
jump to 1992.
Apart from Tito’s funeral, what Underground completely overlooks is
the Yugoslav historical period between 1970 and 1991. Broadly speak-
ing, in the 1970s, the state of the South Slavs entered its most prolific
decade. For Tepavac (2000, p. 71), Yugoslavia became a ‘showcase of
socialism’ surpassing Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which had been
much more developed before World War II. Young and old had begun
to travel abroad. Old and young from abroad visited Yugoslavia, too.
The first generation of film artists returned to Yugoslavia after the com-
pletion of studies at the prestigious Film Academy in Prague. A second
generation followed. Among them was a young Kusturica. These artists
left a significant mark on Yugoslav culture in the years that followed.
The city culture flourished. Inter-ethnic friendships, romances and

marriages among South Slavs were not an exception any more, but
rather a norm. Generally, the 1970s were a good time for the majority
of South Slavs.
Paradoxically, even though significant socio-economic progress had
been achieved, the socio-economical interests of individuals were not a
priority for the Communist rulers. Instead, the fundamental principle
of Yugoslavia in the time of the undemocratic Communist system was
national equality. The horrifying crimes committed in the name of
nationalism(s) during World War II made egalitarianism and reciprocity
between the Yugoslav nations a primary task for Tito’s establishment. At
the time, the Yugoslav constitution of 1974 seemed the climax of such a
policy. It gave great autonomy to all six republics and two autonomous
provinces within Serbia (Kosovo and Vojvodina). The new constitution
confirmed the status of Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenians,
Macedonians and Montenegrins as the Yugoslav constitutive nations.
The labels of Albanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Romani,
Italians, Romanians, Slovaks and Turks were reconsidered as referring
to ‘nationality’, which was, in the hierarchy of Yugoslav ethnicities,
a more privileged position than was the status of national or ethnic
minorities. The vision behind the term ‘nationality’ lay in a hope that
no national or ethnic group would feel they were a minority within
Yugoslavia (Perisic 2011b, np).
Kosovo’s Albanians profited most from the 1974 constitution. Self-
government replaced the almost permanent state of emergency to
which the Albanian population had been subject for most of the post-
war period (Magas 1989, p. 9). Being treated as a colonised, foreign
body, first within pre-World War I Serbia, then as part of both Yugoslav
states, the Albanians in Yugoslavia had never achieved the minimum
socio-political rights that had been guaranteed to all other (South
Slavic) nations (Pavlica 2011). However, from 1974, Serbs lost the status
of the ruling minority in Kosovo, as the new constitution guaranteed
political and bureaucratic rule based on ethnic reciprocity. As the abso-
lute majority (77.4 per cent in the 1981 census) in Kosovo, Albanians
for the first time achieved political control over the province.
For a moment, it seemed that Yugoslavia had become as egalitarian as
possible within an undemocratic society. The new constitution guaran-
teed to all eight units within the Yugoslav federation their ‘sovereignty
and equality in perpetuity’ (Banac 2009, p. 463). However, the constitu-
tion, as Banac (2009) underlines, had one ‘structural weakness’ (p. 463).
It was foreseen in the context of the permanent rule of the centralist
Communist Party, which would oblige all of Yugoslavia’s Communists

to stick with Tito’s brand of federalism.
Tito lived for six more years. As soon as Tito died in 1980, not pleased
from the beginning with the partial loss of sovereignty over Vojvodina
and Kosovo, some members of the Serbian Communists started a
quiet yet steady campaign against the 1974 constitution (Banac 2009,
p. 463). According to Pavlica (2011), this raised fear among Albanians in
Kosovo. They believed that Kosovo might again fall under direct Serbian
jurisdiction. Prevailing opinion was that this could only be prevented if
Albanians were recognised as a sovereign nation and if the province of
Kosovo gained the status equivalent to all other republics in Yugoslavia
(Pavlica 2011).
Students of the University of Pristina in March 1981 began peaceful
protests, which soon spread throughout all the spheres and classes of
the Albanian population. The protesters demanded equal treatment
with other constitutive nations in Yugoslavia. With the slogan ‘Kosovo
Republic’, they asked for Kosovo to become the seventh republic in the
Yugoslav federation. The Yugoslav government responded by sending
in the army and tanks to stop the demonstrators. In the riots that fol-
lowed, the army and police forces killed ‘dozens of Albanian pupils and
students’ (Pavlica 2011, np). After the bloody suppression of demonstra-
tions, the division between Serbs and Albanians became even deeper
than it had been prior to the 1974 constitutional changes. Serbs from
Kosovo demanded the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy. But Albanians
persisted with the demand for republic status for the province. A state
of emergency was introduced. Albanians were subjected to repression
and mass arrests. The violence against Serbs also increased (Pavlica
2011, np).
The ethnic tensions in Kosovo were not the only problems that
Yugoslavia faced in the 1980s. By the middle of the decade, the Yugoslav
leadership had acknowledged that the country was facing an eco-
nomic crisis. A $20 billion foreign debt was disclosed, inflation soared,
and gross fixed investment was cut back sharply (Magas 1989, p. 6).
However, as Perisic (2010a) insists, the problems Yugoslav society faced
were not irreparable, as in the 1980s Yugoslavia began a slow yet steady
process towards the liberalisation of society. The bigger cities became
centres of the ‘individualistic way of life’ (Perisic 2010a, np). All sorts of
arts, including film, prospered.
Communication and cooperation between Belgrade, Ljubljana,
Zagreb, Sarajevo and Skopje had intensified and was organised through
a non-nationalist, cosmopolitan prism. All urban collaborations, Perisic
(2010a) argues, were achieved without the influence of political groups.

Freedom of speech became evident in the media. Terms such as rule
of law, free market, European integration and individual freedom had
become visible in the public discourse. In general, ‘Yugoslav citizens,
except in Kosovo, enjoyed a legal protection equivalent to those in
Western Europe’ (Perisic 2010a, np). Furthermore, ‘the broad public
perceived nationalism as a fad important only to marginal lunatics, tal-
entless writers and rabble from the peripheries’ (Perisic 2010a, np). For a
moment, it seemed that Yugoslavia might overcome all socio-economic
problems faced in the 1980s and enter a new prosperous phase. That
moment would diminish with the arrival of Slobodan Milosevic on the
political scene in Serbia in 1987. He had risen to power as the direct
consequence of political turmoil on Kosovo. His appearance on the
political arena somehow cemented the fate of Yugoslavia.
For the ambitious Serbian Communist party bureaucrat Slobodan
Milosevic, Kosovo was the chance of a lifetime. In the ambiguity
surrounding the Kosovo problem, Milosevic took control of Serbia’s
Communist Party. He achieved this in 1987 by promising to reinstate
Serbian domination in Kosovo (Pesic 1996, p. vi). This was a symbolic
turning point in the history of Yugoslavia. Further secession of Slovenia,
wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and finally the disintegration of
the Yugoslav Federation are processes that began when the Serbian lead-
ership pursued a nationalist ideology (Pesic 1996).
The emerging Serbian nationalism had woken up, one by one, all
the other South Slavic nationalisms in the Yugoslav federation. While
criticising Israeli militarism towards Palestinians and its consequent
triggering of a violent and brutal response by Palestinians militants,
Butler (2004b) stresses a point that might be usefully incorporated in
the political discourse of power and violence in former Yugoslavia. Of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict she writes that there is a ‘clearly circular
reasoning which does not see that the militarization of the state can
only and always leads to further militarization’ (np). The wars during
the 1990s in the territories of the former Yugoslavia were brutal, and
no political, religious or military authorities of Yugoslav republics were
entirely innocent or without responsibility for the atrocities that those
wars brought upon innocent people. However, the ideology that materi-
alised in Milosevic’s leadership requires particular attention and critique
concerning the days in which he had absolute control over Serbia and
enormous political influence on Serbs all over the former Yugoslavia.
On 28 June, 1989—on the most important saint’s day in the Serbian
Christian Orthodox Church calendar, St. Vitus day—Slobodan Milosevic
gave a speech that would, more than symbolically, decide the fate of the
Western Balkans. By marking the 600th anniversary of the battle with
the Ottomans on a flat field named ‘Blackbird’, near Pristina, Milosevic
approached a 1.5 million strong crowd. Among other points he makes,
he says: ‘After six centuries we [Serbs] are again engaged in battles and
quarrels. They are not armed battles, but this cannot be excluded yet’
(Malcolm 1994, p. 132). For the first time in post-World War II Yugoslav
history, a leader had explicitly mentioned the possibility of war. The
crowd roared its approval. On the stage Milosevic was accompanied
by high-ranking priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church and a chil-
dren’s orchestra dressed in traditional Serbian folk costume (Malcolm
1994). ‘In the courtyard of the nearby monastery’, Malcolm continues
in his description of the event, ‘stalls sold icon-style posters of Jesus
Christ, Prince Lazar [the Serbian monarch who had died in the battle]
and Slobodan Milosevic side by side’ (p. 132). Milan Milosevic (2000)
describes this event, broadcast live all over the former Yugoslavia, as
having ‘all the trappings of a coronation staged as a Hollywood extrava-
ganza’ (p. 111). Milosevic himself ‘descended by helicopter from the
heavens into the cheering crowd’ (Milosevic 2000, p. 111).
In 2011, uploaded archival footage from the Serbian state television
on YouTube does not show Milosevic’s landing on the Blackbird field
by helicopter. Instead, the most striking image is an unimaginable huge
mass of human bodies. More than one million people chanted suc-
cessively as one: ‘Serbia’, ‘Kosovo is Serbia’ and ‘Slobodan [Milosevic]
means freedom’. If the view were not troubled by weaving flags and
sporadic banners, this incredible, large crowd would look like a living
ocean. One of those large banners was of particular interest to a camera-
person, zooming in on it many times. Positioned, perhaps strategically,
twenty to thirty metres from the stage, the white sheet was inscribed
with the Serbian Cyrillic script which, translated into English, said:
‘Europe, bear in mind, in Kosovo we were defending you as well’. The
cunning creator of this banner had a frank message to [Western] Europe.
It was Serbia and Serbs who stood first against an Islamic invasion.
Perhaps he should have written it in English, French or at least German;
as a spoiled, ordinary European was not very familiar with the Serbian
language and its script in 1989.
In the night hours on that day, as a cultural gift to the nation, the
entire television audience in Yugoslavia was able to watch a première of
the feature film Bitka na Kosovu/The Battle of Kosovo (Sotra 1989). Sotra’s
film was a complete visual replica of the narrative that, historically, has
the most significant place in Serbian cultural mythology. The battle that
happened 600 years ago marked the beginning of Ottoman rule in the
region, a rule that lasted for five centuries. In the film, the Serb national
hero, Milos Obilic, sacrifices his own life but manages to kill the Turkish
sultan. Over his bleeding body, Obilic gravely declares: ‘Serbia is not a
rug, and not a silk cushion to sit on … Serbia is not a bowl of rice for
every crow to feed on!’
On that very day in 1989, Slobodan Milosevic, explicitly, and Sotra’s
film implicitly, underlined the danger of an Islamic upsurge that needed
to be avoided at any cost. The loss of the Kosovo battle in 1389 was
the pillar on which the mythology of Serbian victimhood was built. As
Iordanova writes: ‘The reiteration of numerous experiences of defeat
becomes a solid background sustaining the ideology of preventive
aggressiveness’ (2001, p. 169).
In 1988, Zelimir Zilnik made a TV film Stara Masina/The Old Timer, r
a rare example of a film that openly seeks to expose, discredit and
to audio-visually deconstruct the so-called ‘anti-bureaucratic revolu-
tion’. This is the skilfully orchestrated ethno-nationalist campaign also
known as ‘the happening of the people’, which served as the populist
backbone for Milosevic’s total usurpation of political power in Serbia,
Kosovo, Vojvodina and Serbian populated parts of Croatia and Bosnia.13
The Old Timerr is a low-cost road-movie, filmed in the ascetic style that
Zilnik has preferred since his film Early Works. The main character in
Old Timerr is a free-spirited Slovenian rock critic who travels throughout
Yugoslavia. His journey through Yugoslavia is presented with regular
structural breaks in the form of potted documentary material show-
ing the ‘happening of the people’ and organised rallies in support of
Milosevic’s political campaign (Levi & Zilnik 2010, p. 109).
Ironically, while filming The Old Timerr in Serbia, Zilnik and his team
met regularly with the ‘cast and crew’ of these political spectacles. Part
of the documentary material that has entered the movie was actually
filmed by Zilnik’s cameraman, and a part of it even shows the protago-
nist of The Old Timerr and Zilnik himself, directly interacting with the
ecstatic masses. These are key historical events that are not only filmed
but also immortalised through being directly introduced into the narra-
tive (Levi & Zilnik 2010). Zilnik took further advantage of the accidental
status of the protagonist-observers to develop the subtle pedagogical les-
son on the analysis of the political picture, namely: how to read the sim-
ulated spontaneity of Milosevic’s anti-bureaucratic revolution (Levi &
Zilnik 2010, pp. 109–110).
Zilnik says that he made The Old Timerr out of desire to document
a part of this masquerade. In the process of making the film, Zilnik
also directly witnessed the vital role of modern media technologies in

promoting these rallies. Around this time, according to Zilnik, Belgrade
Television had just acquired beta video cameras, which drastically
improved production schedules. Events could now be taped in the
course of an afternoon and broadcast the same evening. Thanks to this
technology, the entire ethno-nationalist ‘revolution’, and the ‘awaken-
ing’ of the Serbian people, actually began to resemble an accurately-
directed film. Groups of people were driven from one city to another;
they would change their costumes on the go, and within a single day
one group of protesters could appear in up to four ‘performances’:
They were the real movie extras! As a filmmaker I was extremely inter-
ested in the language of images and the repertory of nationalist slo-
gans that were being used at the rallies—everything revolved around
topics of Serb resentments, territorial expansion, the ‘ reclaiming’
of Kosovo and the personality cult of Slobodan Milosevic. (Zilnik in
Levi & Zilnik 2010, pp. 111–112)
Benedict Anderson (1993) argues that the homogenisation of one nation

requires time and cannot be prepared overnight and used for a one-day
presentation of power and unity. His book Imagined Communities (1993)
brings into focus the crucial cultural work that needs to be done before
people begin to feel a part of large political and community units such
as a nation. Vesna Pesic (1996, p. 23), a Serbian intellectual who opposed
the Milosevic regime from its beginning, writes that the responsibility of
‘redefining the Serbian nation’ was firstly undertaken by the influential
group of Serbian intellectuals within the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts (SANU) and the Serbian Orthodox Church. The collaboration of
two elite cultural institutions inside the Serbian national corpus manoeu-
vred the reawakening of Serbian national consciousness by using the
typical procedure of ‘nation-building, including descriptions of national
treasures and cultural uniqueness’ (Pesic 1996, p. 23). For the full exer-
cise of national awakening, however, the intellectual and religious elite
needed collaboration with the political leadership, since the latter had
control over the mass media. Having managed to take control over the
Serbian Communist Party, Milosevic’s position helped the intelligentsia
and the church to form a powerful alliance that consequently provided
them all with uncritical access to mainstream media. Butler (1999) writes
that a single account of construction is not enough and that different
‘categories always work as background for one another, and they often
find their most powerful articulation through one another’ (p. xvi). Pesic
(1996) explains how it worked in the Serbian case:
Although their motives were different, the members of this ‘nation-

alist-communist’ coalition complemented each other and jointly
pursued an aggressive policy of tearing down Yugoslavia and recast-
ing it in their own mould: either Yugoslavia would become a country
according to Serbian (i.e., Serbian Communist party) standards, or
else Serbia would embark on the path toward creating a ‘Greater
Serbia’ by force. (p. 22)
One year or so before the anniversary of the Kosovo battle in 1989, the
Serbian Orthodox Church took up the task of carrying the 600-year-old
remains of Prince Lazar through Serb-populated villages, towns and
monasteries from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia and Kosovo
(Sofos 1996, p. 84). The Serbian press and television regularly pro-
vided their audience with images of people dressed in black who had
turned out to mourn him. For Boose (2002), it was an effort to revive
‘the aggression built into the cultural memory of the Kosovo defeat
and imbue them with an immediacy’ (p. 80). Together with revival of
Serbian cultural memory, this (not strictly) religious spectacle through-
out Yugoslavia had the aim of marking new borders for the ‘Greater
Serbian’ state.
Bartov (2002) claims that scholars have often performed a principal
role in preparing the ‘mindset, providing rationale, and supplying the
know-how and personnel for the implementation of state-directed mass
violence’ (np). While church authorities were engaged in recalling the
last medieval Serbian ruler in the memory of average men and women,
Serbian intellectuals put their efforts into the protection of the average
man in Kosovo. The so-called ‘Martinovic case’ initiated the first public
action by Serbian intellectuals.
Djordje Martinovic was a Serbian farmer from Gjilane in Kosovo.
In May 1985 he was hospitalised, first in Pristina and after that in
Belgrade, with internal injuries caused by the insertion of a glass bottle
into his rectum. Initially, Martinovic claimed that a group of masked
Albanian men had attacked him. When taken to the hospital, however,
Martinovic admitted he hurt himself during an act of masturbation
(Boose 2002, p. 85). The first version, however, gained much more
popularity in Serbia, and Martinovic became a symbol of new Serbian
suffering. In January 1986, 212 prominent Belgrade intellectuals wrote
the so-called ‘Genocide petition’ to the Federal and Serbian parliaments

accusing Albanians in Kosovo of genocidal activities against Serbs. The
petition, among others, stated that ‘the case of Djordje Martinovic has
come to symbolise the predicament of all Serbs in Kosovo’ (Boose 2002,
p. 86). As Martinovic was allegedly raped, so was the entire Serbian
nation (Diken & Lausten 2005, p. 114).
In addition, the Belgrade media broadcast news on Albanian rapes of
Serbian women, including Orthodox nuns (Kesic 2003, p. 316). Once
more the emphasis was immediately placed on the ethnic dimension
of these rapes; facts were neglected and numbers exaggerated. In fact,
as official documents of Kosovo police showed, there was only one reg-
istered rape in Kosovo that crossed ethnic lines (Pesic 1996). However,
even when subsequent research showed that rapes in Kosovo did not
normally cross ethnic lines, the allegations of inter-ethnic rape gener-
ated fear and helped form the basis of the future culture of terror (Kesic
2003, p. 317). A few years after the saga of Djordje Martinovic had
become the reason for the awakening of the intellectuals’ patriotism
and ‘social solidarity’ with the Serbian people, the grim statistics of the
mass rapes during the Bosnian conflict showed that almost all the vic-
tims were of a different ethnicity from the perpetrators (Albanese 2001).
Widely publicised in the Serbian media, the Martinovic case
received further authority from the acclaimed Serbian painter Mica
Popovic. Popovic depicted Martinovic in a Christ-like crucifixion
pose surrounded by men wearing traditional Albanian headgear. In
the painting, the victim and perpetrators were accompanied by a
single police officer who presided over the event. There is no doubt
that Popovic was inspired and used parts of the narrative from the
New Testament for his painting. For Popovic, Martinovic is Jesus and
the Albanians are Jews. The police officer is doubtless a representative
of the Romans who allowed and supported the crucifixion. In the
1930s, Walter Benjamin (1973) argued that painting ‘is in no posi-
tion to present an object for simulations of collective experiences’
(p. 237). In normal circumstances, Benjamin’s observation about
painting as an individual experience seems rational and logi-
cal. However, not many things were based on reason in the
Yugoslav capital at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once
used for nationalist purposes, even a painting may can become an
object of collective desire. While on display in a prominent Belgrade
gallery, people ‘came by busloads and stood in lines to be enraged
by the painting’s spectacular fusion of Christ’s suffering and Djordje
Martinovic’s mythologised impalement on a beer bottle’ (Boose 2002,
p. 86). In a short period of time, according to Boose (2002), well over

a million people saw Popovic’s painting. Even a couple years later
the Martinovic case had not been abandoned. In 1989, a journalist,
Zivorad Mihajlovic, wrote an entire book on the incident. And in
January 1991, only a year before the conflict started in Bosnia, Serbia’s
newspaper Politika Express dealt with the Martinovic case in the text
titled ‘Crime Like in the Time of Turks’ (Mertus, cited in Boose 2002,
p. 87).
From the historical distance of almost three decades, it is possible
to argue that the Serbian mainstream cultural interpretation of the
‘Martinovic case’ significantly helped in justifying revenge over ‘imag-
ined Turks’ and set the arena for the conflict. Slobodan Milosevic, as
the personification of rigid nationalism, made those wars possible and
indirectly set Yugoslavia on the road to rape and other crimes (Diken &
Lausten 2005, p. 123). Those who used Martinovic and other imaginary
acts of rape in the first place to set their political goals implicitly encour-
aged the rapists during the Yugoslav wars.
Furthermore, for those who lived in the political/cultural environ-
ment in and around Serbia of that time, ‘sexual violence’ against a
male peasant became a powerful and collective symbol of the most
extreme form of humiliation and a ‘metaphor for five centuries … of
Turkish oppression’ (Letica 1996, p. 95). In the absence of real Turks,
who had withdrawn from the Balkans a century before, Serbian nation-
alist discourse ‘rediscovered’ them in Albanian and Bosnian Muslims.
In 1995, when the tragic conflict in Bosnia had nearly come to its
end, the Serbian army surrounded the town of Srebrenica in Eastern
Bosnia. General Ratko Mladic, the military leader of the Bosnian Serbs,
monumentalised the day for the TV audience by saying, ‘Here we are
in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. On the eve of yet another great Serb
holiday. We present this city to the Serbian people as a gift. Finally,
the time has come to take revenge on the Turks’ (Boose 2002, p. 79).
In Srebrenica’s case, that revenge meant the planned and efficiently
executed killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
The genocide in Srebrenica was the most horrific but not the last
act of human madness in the former Yugoslavia. In August 1995, a
Croatian army offensive on Serb rebels prompted the exodus of some
200,000 Serbs from Croatia. In 1999, under the excuse of fighting
Kosovo’s Albanian rebellious militia, the Serbian army expelled more
than 800,000 Albanians from Kosovo into neighbouring Albania and
Macedonia (Pavlica 2011). Unlike in the Bosnian or Croatian conflicts,
the international community decided to directly intervene. NATO
forces bombed Serbian targets until the moment Milosevic’s regime

was cornered and forced to pull out all military personal from Kosovo.
In fear of retaliation, Serbian civilians, 100,000 of them, left Kosovo
together with the Serbian army. Soon, almost all expelled Albanians
returned to Kosovo. In the months that followed, the number of Serbs,
Roma and other non-Albanians forcibly displaced from Kosovo had
risen to 200,000. Many of the non-Albanians who stayed in Kosovo
faced death or abduction (Udovicki 2000b; Pavlica 2011). For the time
being, the Yugoslav tragedy at the end of 20th century closed d its circle
at the place where it had all symbolically begun, with Milosevic’s 1989
speech on St. Vitus day in front of a 1.5 million-strong crowd who
cheered his name.
In the second-to-last scene of Underground, Kusturica clearly laments
the inhumanity that war brought to people all over Yugoslavia. All the
film’s protagonists are either killed or commit suicide in a scene set in
the scorched landscape of a destroyed village, whose square is domi-
nated with a crucifix turned on its head. The inverted crucifix undoubt-
edly symbolises the absence of moral norms in a time when weapons
roar and the muses are quiet.
However, while Kusturica weeps over the brutality that a military
conflict, he totally avoids giving the audience a single allusion to the
events in 1980s that, arguably, were the major trigger for the chain of
disastrous conflicts in 1990s. In an effort to expose ‘Tito’s era’ as the
primary cause of the Yugoslav demise, Kusturica ‘grossly abuses histori-
cal time’ (Iordanova 1999, p. 74). With the jump of over thirty years
between the second and the third part of Underground, Kusturica, (un)
consciously avoids examining the reinvention of nationalist discourse
in 1980s Serbia which, in a connected system, had stimulated other
nationalisms in Yugoslavia.
In its seventy years of existence, Yugoslavia was ruled either by
nationalists or Communists. Pre-World War II nationalist and post-
World War II Communists tried to politically conceptualise the land
for South Slavs as a monarchy, a centralised or a decentralised state.
‘What no one ever tried’, argues Tepavac (2000), ‘is a sincere democracy’
(p. 77). And ‘only as genuine democracy’ continues Tepavac (2000),
‘could Yugoslavia have held together or, if proven a failure, dissolved
honourably’ (p. 77). Yet, in the absence of egalitarian democracy, there
were only two options: one either chooses Communism or nationalism.
‘I do not like a choice forced upon me’, insists Vuk Perisic—a public
intellectual from the Western Balkans whose discursive stance is clearly
in favour of liberal democracy. Yet, ‘if the selection between nationalism
and Communism is necessary, then I will choose Communism. The

choice is easy, yet humiliating’ (Perisic 2010b, np).
Kusturica, with Underground, decides not to choose Communism.
On the contrary, his entire rage over the Yugoslav disappearance was
directed towards Tito and his establishment. If, as Iordanova (1999)
indicates, Underground’s message about the Communist sin gets lost
in translation amongst its international audience, due to the lack of
knowledge of basic signifiers from Yugoslav history, then, for Kusturica,
there is always a secondary explanation which describes the 1990s con-
flict in Yugoslavia as a ‘natural phenomenon’, a phenomenon which
is an expression for an ancient hatred. If the myth about the endemic
1,000-year-old hatred is true and Tito managed to suppress such natu-
ralised instincts for almost half a century, as Frederic Jameson (2004)
ironically examines, ‘one can only conclude … he [Tito] did a good
thing’ (p. 241).
The conceptual error that the post-Tito Communist establish-
ment in Yugoslavia made is also ironic. As the political scientist from
Sarajevo, Nerzuk Curak (2005) argues, it was the social openness of
Yugoslav Communism in the 1980s that allowed the public exposure
of ‘suppressed political eschatology’ and ‘breakthrough of the exclusive
nationalist ideologies on the political scene’ (p. 32). The national-
ists took advantage of this historic opportunity: ‘they’ ethnicised and
nationalised the supranational Communist ideology and turned it into
particular national ideologies. Slobodan Milosevic was the pioneer who
first rediscovered the conceptual closeness between Communist and
nationalist ideologies. The others followed.
Post-Yugoslavia in the 21st century: the ongoing epilogue
On 6 February, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic died in a prison cell of the

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague,
the Netherlands. His unexpected death was the final part that this man
played before the only certainty in human life paid him its final visit.
When his death became news, media responses included rumours that
Milosevic died of poisoning. The post-mortem, which was apparently
filmed, with the number of cameras equivalent to the number of record-
ing devices used in filming an important football match, showed that
Milosevic died of nothing more than a heart attack. In the following
week, the funeral that took place in his hometown of Pozarevac, south-
east of Belgrade, attracted about 80,000 of his supporters. However, an
assembled 80,000 is an insignificant number in contrast to the crowds
that Milosevic was able to magnetise at the time he was the Serbian
president, at the peak of his popularity. Times have changed.
The biggest positive change is that the western Balkans has entered
a phase of fragile peace. The necessary, yet belated involvement of
the international community resulted in peace agreements in Croatia
(1995), Bosnia (1995), Kosovo (1999) and Macedonia (2001). The
United Nations International Criminal Court (ICJ) and International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague—as
the first indication of a cosmopolitan law that has yet to come—have
begun to prosecute those responsible for the atrocities. The (in)volun-
tary recognition and acceptance of the ICTY jurisdiction over the war-
crimes committed during the Yugoslav conflicts was the first sign of
weakness amongst the nationalist political elites all across the western
Balkans.
Besides being morally intolerable, a national state based on a hysteri-
cal and undemocratic political model is also unsustainable in the long
term (Perisic 2011c). In the past, even countries with huge material
and cultural resources such as Nazi Germany, let alone political and
economic provinces in the western Balkans, failed to cope with the
persistent promotion of insanity and crime in the name of a supranatu-
ral state or social and intellectual virtues (Perisic 2011c). The existing
nationalists in the Yugoslav successor states would rather prefer a return
to the 1990s: times when media freedom and human rights were threat-
ened to an extent comparable to classical fascism. Their only hope, as
Perisic explains in his lucid scrutiny of nationalist ideology, lies in a
new historical twist, a political cataclysm of planetary proportions, or
at least, a crisis or the total collapse of the European Union. This is why
post-Yugoslav nationalists follow and cherish every imperfection in
the Hague Tribunal, the Greek financial crisis, the possible collapse of
the European economy, Euro-scepticism in Britain, the strengthening
of xenophobia in France and the Netherlands, and the ambitions of
Vladimir Putin (Perisic 2011c). The ongoing conflict in Ukraine repre-
sents yet another hope for the post-Yugoslav nationalists for the return
of ‘their’ times.
Only the ongoing democratisation of the Yugoslav successor states,
followed by their cultural and economic cooperation, would fur-
ther expose the epochal historical absurdity of nationalist projects.
Currently, it seems that this can be achieved only by the accession of
all post-Yugoslav space into the European Union which, even though
imperfect itself, would guarantee a new quality of mutual cooperation
that meets the need d for separate national states and cultural cooperation.
Presently, as Savic (2008) argues, civic societies in the western Balkans

face a critical problem:
… how to prepare the public of the western Balkans for the decisive
event; the integration in European Union? The crucial idea is how to
promote the idea of Cosmopolitan Europe—Europe that has yet to
come even though we [Western Balkans] are still not ready for her!
(Savic 2008, p. 18)
If the human rights of the Other(s) are cosmopolitan principles of justice

(Hannerz 1990; Derrida 2001), then, I would contend, the prospect of a
peaceful future in the former Yugoslavia depends on such recognition.
4
Ordinary Men at War
As already elaborated, the war in the former Yugoslavia did not begin
suddenly. Throughout the 1980s, it was the symbiosis of nationalisti-
cally-oriented intellectuals, clergy and obedient media that paved the
road to the disaster. At the summit of the conflict, however, it would be
six men—the presidents of six Yugoslav republics—that would become
the real masters of war and peace. For more than a year, these six men
moved from one city to another, from one palace to another, and from
one tourist resort to another. They discussed a future for people living
in Yugoslavia. Instead of peace at any cost, they opted for the war(s) in
which young men were asked to kill and to be killed in the name of
their leader and in the name of the society they came from.
Nothing new; a cynic may say. ‘Since the Middle Ages, since Rome
and Greece‘, as Foucault (1994, p. 231) intones, the leaders of our socie-
ties ‘have never been able to integrate‘ and ‘never been able to subdue‘
the youth (Foucault 1994, p. 231). Once these young men are equipped
with the weaponry, it is up to a leader what to do with them. Adrien
Jaulmes, a French journalist who previously served as a legionnaire, sees
this dilemma in the following terms:
You can tell a soldier to burn a village and he will do it and commit
a war crime. Or you can tell him to rescue people and he will do that
and he is a humanitarian hero. Isn’t that extraordinary.
Jaulmes, cited in Fisk 2007, np
The chain of armed conflicts at the end of the 20th century on the
territories in the Western Balkans that once were called Yugoslavia
were indeed a horrifying experience for many; especially women, chil-
dren and the elderly. Yet, in their comprehensive written account that
74
Ordinary Men att War 75
accompanies the major BBC television series The Death of Yugoslavia

(1995), Laura Silber and Allan Little pronounce that for the men it
was worse still. While the policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ included forcible
removal of the entire population with the ‘wrong’ ethnicity and the
systematic use of rape as a tool of war, physical extermination was by
and large practiced on men. Armed men destroyed each other on the
battlefields from Croatia to Kosovo very often and very successfully.
Furthermore, since unarmed men were easier prey, the militias and
regular armed forces slaughtered them mercilessly. The culmination
of such acts was the organised mass execution of over 7,000 Bosnian
Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica over the period of a
few days in July 1995.
Many argue (Magas 1989; Malcolm 1994; Pesic 1996; Perisic 2010a)
that the brutality of one man toward another has its foundation in
unleashed nationalism(s). Together with (re)creating motherhood as the
primal role for women, nationalist ideology promotes and celebrates
the figure of the male warrior who selflessly defends the nation’s future.
In the case of the former Yugoslavia, this was not a difficult task, due
to the widespread myth of the war hero in nationalistic literature and
school curricula in all six Yugoslav republics (Zanic 1998; Albanese
2001). ‘This mythology’, argues Albanese (2001), ‘was characterized by
the willingness of devotees to lay down their lives on the battlefields—
and many did’ (p. 1009).
According to the cultural anthropologist Ivo Zanic (1998), the cult of
rebellious warriors has existed in the Western Balkans for centuries and
was especially strong in rural areas. The violent, yet victorious, libera-
tion of the Slavic national subject from the political and juridical influ-
ence of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires accentuated the
privileged status of the warrior in the majority of South Slavic cultures.
Folk poetry was the most common way of initiating, spreading and
preserving this warrior mythology. By and large these poems were sung
by a singer who would simultaneously play a single-stringed fiddle;
the gusle.1 In an anthropological documentary, Serbian Epicc (1992), the
director Pawel Pawlikowski skilfully frames the use and appreciation
of this instrument by focusing on Radovan Karadzic, the war leader of
Bosnian Serbs. In one scene, the ‘poet and psychiatrist’, as Pawlikowski
defines Karadzic, is about to visit the birthplace of Vuk Stefanovic
Karadzic2 in Montenegro. Once in the house, we see Karadzic light the
candle in front of Saint Michael the Archangel icons. He then faces the
camera and pronounces that Saint Michael is the ‘progenitor’ of the
Karadzic family. In the next shot, we see Karadzic, who plays the gusle
and begins to sing the poem with following opening lyrics: ‘There
were thirty chieftains drinking wine, in some freezing cave, amongst
the vast crags of the Romania mountain. Amongst them was Chief
Mitar’. The director, Pawlikowski, makes a cut here; thus the audience
is left without the further build-up of the lyric’s narrative. However,
based on a plot common to folk poems, which depicts the bravery
of Serbian men engaged in a never-ending battle with the Ottoman
invaders and rulers, the audience would not be wrong to assume that
the above-mentioned chieftains would drink several gallons of wine
before heading towards an Ottoman fortress or another settlement
inhabited by the Turks or Slavic Muslims. There, in a bloodthirsty bat-
tle, the chieftains would kill numerous men, take their property and
eventually retreat into their hideouts deep in the forests. Very often,
according to these verses, Muslim women were an integral part of the
loot. They would become the enslaved servants, mistress and some-
times even legitimate spouses of their kidnappers. Nevertheless, some
Croatian and Bosnian Muslim traditional folk ballads have similar nar-
ratives. The only difference is in the ethnic or religious identities of the
rebels, enemies and women.
Once in a struggle for power and its continuation, the Yugoslav
Communists did not need to put a significant amount of energy into
the formal enlistment of the masses to their revolutionary and antifas-
cist project. The Communists only needed to follow up some impor-
tant elements of folk and patriarchal tradition and epic narratives.
Some aspects of these folk stories were subjected to transformation and
adaptation, with the intention of becoming closer to the Communist
ideology. For instance, the Communist version excluded looting and
women’s enslavement. Yet, as Ivo Zanic argues, this transformation
was by no means radical. Thus, many aspects of the Communist epic
narrative have kept a viable link to its original roots in folk and patri-
archal traditions. In the early 1980s, the ‘codex of heroism and radical
egalitarianism’ were still significant segments of the Yugoslav normative
system (Zanic 1998, p. 63).
Yugoslav cinema significantly helped spread and preserve the image
of a mythic warrior. In a post-WWII political system based on ‘peo-
ple’s self-rule’, as the Yugoslav Communist party liked to define their
one-party system, film was conceived as ‘the richest resource among
all the artistic media for reaching and informing all levels of society’
(Goulding 2002, p. 8). As the National War of Liberation waged by the
Communist-commanded partisans during WWII was the central found-
ing myth upon which the Yugoslav Federation was built, the partisan
film—a sub-genre of the war movie—was particularly favoured (Sesic

2006, p. 109). In ‘red westerns’, as Nevena Dakovic describes the parti-
san film, the narrative was overwhelmed with action scenes portraying
the devotion and bravery of partisan guerrillas (cited in Sesic 2006,
pp. 109–110). Opposed to the freedom warrior, according to Sesic, the
image of the enemy was ‘pictured in the darkest tone available’ (2006,
p. 110). In the forty-five years of Communist rule, several generations
of its inhabitants had grown up with such imaginary. Generation after
generation of school children were deliberately taken into the cinema
halls to watch partisan movies. For those who missed such films on the
theatrical screen, there was always one of the innumerable replays on
television. An intergenerational anthropological study led by Natalija
Basic found that the prevalence of partisan visual imaginary during the
Communist rule reached the point where the ‘historical memory’ of
Yugoslav citizens was shaped not by textbooks but rather by partisan
films (Jakisa 2012, p. 111).
Ordinary people in no man’s land
In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall triggered political changes through-
out Eastern Europe. When, in 1990, the democratically elected nation-
alists in Yugoslav’s republics wiped out the Communists from political
power, the image of the fighter with the red star on his cap somehow
suddenly disappeared from the big and small screen. Yet, the centuries-
old grand narrative about the male warrior had been preserved, to be
reinserted in everyday discourse, but with nationalist and religious
insignia. What followed was the very opposite of what free Europe had
pledged to itself in the aftermath of World War II: never again.
Filmmaking is a time-consuming art that requires significant human
and technical resources. Accordingly, very few feature films were made
during the most violent period in the Western Balkans (1991–1995).
The visualisation of a warrior, instead, persisted in propagandist patri-
otic music videos and television footage from and around the combat
zones. Moreover, as there were no resources or time for the ‘seventh
art’, those who worked on war propaganda had begun to illustrate
the warrior in the ‘eighth art’ (comics). In Belgrade, a comic named
Kninje, written and illustrated in honour of the military, was pub-
lished by Politika—the most influential newspaper in Serbia. Kninje is
an interplay between the word ‘Knin’, the capital of the now defunct
autonomous region of Serbs from Croatia, and the word ‘ninja’.
Croats and Bosnians had their own comic heroes. Super Hrvoje—an
ordinary Croatian man—has the capability of transforming himself

into a stone-like super human. Bosman, a Bosnian hero, was a ‘spit-
ting image’ of Superman. However, unlike Superman, Bosman was not
able to fly. Still, his militaristic capabilities were close, if not equal, to
those possessed by the characters played by Chuck Norris at the peak
of his career.
On the battlefield, due to the lack of an authentic movie hero who
had their own national insignia, some soldiers relied on Hollywood
in general and on Rambo-like affectation in particular. Rambo or the
‘Republican icon’—as Kellner (1995, p. 68) profoundly describes this
effort of the Reagan administration to revive the militaristic spirit
among US citizens—became a defining image for many soldiers in the
Yugoslav wars. Numerous warriors nicknamed ‘Rambo’ existed on each
side in Yugoslav conflicts. What is more, as Mueller (2000) reports, an
entire Serbian paramilitary unit called itself ‘Rambovci’ (Rambo’s sol-
diers) and went around in ‘webbed masks and black gloves with black
ribbons fetchingly tied around their foreheads’ (p. 52). Furthermore,
according to Sarhandi and Bob (2001), the Bosnian Serb army pub-
lished an entire calendar of images of an officer nicknamed Rambo and
his unit.3 Further still, influenced perhaps by another ‘cult’ creation
in Hollywood, one Sarajevo-based paramilitary unit in the Bosnian
Army called itself the ‘Green Berets’ (Zelene Beretke). This affection for
‘Hollywood on the Vietnam war’ lasted as long as the war in the former
Yugoslavia itself.
Once the guns had become quiet, the muses began to sing again. One
by one, between 1995 and 1999, the large-scale armed conflicts in the
Western Balkans came to an uncertain end. And one by one, all the
cinematic centres of the former-Yugoslavia revived their film produc-
tion. The revitalisation was most noticeable for Zagreb, Sarajevo and
Skopje. Belgrade and Ljubljana, which were more or less outside the
war zone, had managed to keep a low level of production even during
the most turbulent times. Somehow, pictures whose central theme was
the recent wars within the post-Yugoslav space came to the fore. The
choice of topic(s) was hardly a surprise. On the one hand, local cinema
artists had craved an opportunity to reflect on the unfortunate events
which were, for most of them, a lived and intimate experience. On the
other hand, the world, and most noticeably Europe, already captivated
by the spectacle of the ‘Balkans wars’ brought to them by the news
media, were more than ready to gain some insightt into the Yugoslav
disintegration by watching it on the most aristocratic of media screens,
the cinema.
It was production companies from Western Europe, therefore, who

financially supported the majority of the features coming from the
region (Iordanova 2001, p. 11). This merging of artistic inspiration and
financial enthusiasm resulted in numerous filmic narratives that had
either a partial or complete focus on a combatant life and activities in
a war zone. In the now established genre of the ‘Balkan war film’ (Kreft
2003, p. 350), the most noticeable films are Underground d (Kusturica
1995), Kako je rat poceo na mom otoku/How the War Started on My Island
(Bresan 1996), Lepa sela lepo gore/Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Dragojevic
1996), Beautiful People (Dizdar 1999), Nicija Zemlja/No Man’s Land
(Tanovic 2001), Nafaka (Dukarkovic 2006), Zivi i mrtvi/The Living and the
Dead d (Milic 2007), Crnci/The Blacks (Devic & Juric 2009) and Ordinary
People (Perisic 2009).
Unlike the partisan features which—while insisting on the total vic-
tory over fascism and the mythical bravery of the guerrillas led by the
Communists—had overwhelmingly ignored the horrifying aspects of a
military conflict even for the victorious side, the vast majority of newer
films on the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia have an anti-war
stance. The reasons for such an approach may vary from artistic sen-
sitivity and the overall democratisation of the Western Balkans, to the
international producers’ insistence on a more balanced point of view
on the conflicts.
However, an anti-war narrative does not always signify pacifism. If
we approach these films through Zizek’s (2009) framework, which dis-
tinguishes ‘constituted ideology’ from ‘constituent ideology’, we may
find that, for instance, both Kusturica’s (1995) Underground d and Milic’s
(2007) The Living and the Dead insist on presentations of the (Western)
Balkans as a spectacle of a timeless, incomprehensible, mythical cycle
of passion. It is the place where a man, in between hedonistic orgies,
in an almost natural manner, is ready to slaughter another man. Both
films focus on the demon of place (the Balkans), and are a mishmash
of scenes from the past and current wars; violence is like a sleeping
ogre whose occasional awakening spreads the terror in the village. Also,
Srdjan Dragojevic’s film Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996), although
critical of ‘his own’ Serbian war-effort, almost as much as that of the
‘opposite’ Bosnian counterparts, still manages to create an almost ideal
model of a brave and morally-superior Serbian warrior named Milan,
who is the main protagonist of the film.
Unlike Dragojevic, who never personally experienced what it is to be
a soldier in a combat zone, Danis Tanovic, the screenwriter and director
of No Man’s Land (2001), actively participated in the Bosnian conflict.
In the first two years of war, while living in besieged Sarajevo, Tanovic
followed and filmed the Bosnian Army. And since being reinstated as a
film director, his art has offered no room for militaristic heroism. There
is no space for epic courage or masculine moralityy for anybody; not even
for his own, Bosnian, side.
Tanovic’s feature debut, No Man’s Land, tells the tragicomic tale of
three soldiers who, by a twist of cinematic destiny, get trapped in a
deserted trench between Bosnian and Serbian lines. Two of them, Ciki
and Cera, are Bosnians. The third warrior is Nino—a freshly drafted
Serbian soldier. While unconscious, Cera’s body had been dragged over
a jumping mine. It was a trap. The intention was that those who would
eventually come to retrieve his body would die with him. Ciki knows
that, Nino too. So, Cera must stay still until help arrives. All of them
want to survive. In order to do so, they need to get out of the trench.
And getting out of the trench is only possible, as both Nino and Ciki
soon realise, through their collaboration. Cera cannot do too much
anyway. He is entirely dependent on Ciki’s goodwill. Meanwhile, UN
peacekeeping forces (UNPROFOR) are called by both Serb and Bosnian
officials to get involved in the rescue.
Several news media crews join the UN officials. Despite their desire
to film as much as they can, the photojournalists are more or less suc-
cessfully restrained by UNPROFOR. In these circumstances, the press
fails to witness the occasional friendly encounters between Nino and
Ciki. The worldwide audience to the news they provide is not able to
see that the sworn enemies share cigarettes and have macho talks about
mutual female acquaintances. However, what the media do manage to
record and spread into the world are the occasional brutalities that Ciki
and Nino act out on each other. Eventually, the media and the world
witness the fatal shooting of Nino by Ciki. A moment later Ciki is killed
by a UN soldier. With the death of Ciki and Nino, the film reaches its
culmination. Yet Cera, strategically forgotten by the UN officials, who
were not able to dismantle the mine under his body, is left to die alone.
An overhead shot of Cera’s body fades in the darkness before the film’s
credit begins to roll. Instead of the likely detonation, the No Man’s audi-
ence hears a traditional Bosnian lullaby performed by a haunting female
voice (Figure 4.1).
If Tanovic did not create a hero model based on Ciki’s character, he
also did not make a villain of the Serbian soldier, Nino. Rather, Nino is
a naïve, honest young man who is only participating in the war because
the state apparatus forced him to do so.
Figure 4.1 Bosnian soldier Cera abandoned in the trench (still, No Man’s Land)
d
Cera, however, is not just a Bosnian soldier abandoned by all. He is

a powerful metaphor for Bosnia-Herzegovina; a nobody country with a
dark present and gloomy future. Nino’s attempt to desert Cera/Bosnia
cost him his life. Ciki’s rage and resulting martyrdom were pointless
too, as Cera/Bosnia was not rescued. Only death, hopelessness, and the
short-term ‘war porn’ fantasy for the ‘image consumer of the West tak-
ing comfort in the media projection of atavistic violence’ (Watson 2008,
p. 58) are what remain.
Nino and Ciki from No Man’s Land d are fictional characters. Drazen
Erdemovic is not. During the conflict in Bosnia, Erdemovic served in
the 10th Sabotage Detachment; a part of the Bosnian Serb army. In
1996, he was the first person who voluntarily gave himself up to the
justice system and entered a guilty plea at the ICTY. According to his
confession, he was forced, under threat of his own execution, to partici-
pate in the execution of unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys from
the town of Srebrenica. Erdemovic himself executed seventy people in
the course of one day. ‘Because of everything that happened I feel ter-
ribly sorry, but I could not do anything. When I could do something,
I did it’, was the concluding part of Erdemovic’s guilty plea statement
that he read in front of the ICTY judges (ICTY 2000, p. 3).
It would be Erdemovic’s confession that most inspired Vladimir

Perisic, a young Serbian director, in writing and directing Ordinary People
(2009). The film depicts a day in the life of a soldier’s life named Johnny.
Almost beardless, Johnny looks like an average, well-behaved boy from
the neighbourhood. Johnny’s day in an army barracks begins routinely.
In early morning, his room is inspected by an officer. Soon after, Johnny
is seen eating his breakfast in the canteen. The routine is suddenly inter-
rupted by the officer who orders Johnny and other soldiers from the
‘third unit’ to get themselves ready for a combat mission. Seven men,
including Johnny, are asked to board the bus. The soldiers have no idea
where or why they are going. Johnny’s anxiety begins to build. During
the trip, a radio transmits news bulletins about ‘a state of emergency’
and a ‘terrorist attack’.
They soon arrive at an abandoned collection of buildings in the
countryside. Soldiers escape the heat of a hot summer day by sitting
under trees, splashing themselves with water, smoking and wonder-
ing what they are waiting for. Very soon their conjecture comes to an
end. Johnny and others are ordered to execute civilian men with a rifle
shot to the back. By the end of the day, Johnny will have transformed
himself from being a subject with feelings of social responsibility and
the will for resistance, into an object. In the evening Johnny is nothing
more than a lethal weapon in service of military drills and nationalist
rhetoric. By taking an active involvement in killing, Johnny also gains
a level of banal power in the eyes of his fellow soldiers and the officer.
At the end of the day, it is Johnny who steps in front the officer and
says that they (the soldiers) are tired and will not continue the execu-
tion of civilians until they rest overnight. The officer agrees to give his
unit a rest.
In one prolonged scene, this officer is seen talking on a military wire-
less communication device with somebody from the other side of the
conflict. The conversation is polite. Through their dialogue, it becomes
certain that the two men know each other very well. They respectfully
ask each other about their families. The conversation between the two
officers explicitly shows that the wars in the former Yugoslavia were
not only brutal but vicious as well. According to Mueller (2000), dur-
ing the Bosnian war, for instance, segments of the Serbian Army would
rent weaponry to the Bosnian Army when Bosnians were engaged
in a war with the Croatian Army. This rental business did not stop,
even though, as is well known, Bosnians and Serbs were arch enemies
throughout the Bosnian war. If renting was insufficient or unprofitable
enough, then the warring sides would sell equipment to each other.
Since Serbs were in possession of most of the weaponry once owned by

the former Yugoslav Army, they were most often the ones selling, while
Croats and Bosnians were buying. The fact that these same weapons
were later used by either Bosnians or Croats in their attacks on Serbian
positions was no barrier to business (Mueller 2000, p. 58). As long as
the ‘trade’ did not damage the essential nationalist objectives set up
by those at the top, the military and civilian leaders were allowed to
make a profit for themselves. Once this aspect of the war is revealed,
the tragic involvement of ordinary men in the conflict becomes even
more futile.
There should be little surprise, then, that in Ordinary People, Perisic
insists on a dispassionate style. Dialogue is at a bare minimum. The
camera is static almost all the time and the shots are very long, almost
endless. The space between the camera and the filmed bodies is always
kept at the same distance. Any activity—regardless of whether it is
brushing teeth in the barracks bathroom, eating breakfast in the can-
teen, smoking a cigarette under a tree, or executing civilians—is filmed
from an identical angle and distance. The director’s aim in using this
technique is clear. Mass killing has nothing to do with emotions or
human nature. It is the particular policy that creates the particular
social environment in which the particular crime against humanity can
take place. There is a formal and patterned distance.
Despite being shot entirely in the Serbian language, Ordinary People
became ‘Ordinary People’ after Perisic offered his script to French
producers. The director has a simplistic yet reflective explanation for
his decision. For him, the English language is not an instrument with
which the Anglo-Saxon culture dominates the world. He understands
English simply as the universal communicative tool. The universality
of the English language gives universal meaning to Johnny’s particular
circumstances and behavioural patterns. ‘We may understand some
particular phenomena’, as Perisic explains himself, ‘only if we approach
them as if they are universal’ (cited in Djuricic 2009). The insistence
on universality leads Perisic to remove all insignia from the soldiers in
Ordinary People. Furthermore, the protagonists’ names are ethnically
unrecognisable even from a South Slavic perspective. Yet, very few if
any people from the former Yugoslavia have a problem recognising
who are the ordinary perpetrators and who are the ordinary victims in
Perisic’s film. ‘It is true that Perisic’s killers do not have any emblems
on their uniforms’, writes Jergovic (2010), ‘yet it is hard to imagine any
Serb nationalist who would believe that these soldiers are not Serbs or
the film itself is not an insult to them’.
In the film’s very last scene, Johnny takes pleasure in an evening

coffee and cigarette. He is on his own. The night is quiet; Johnny too. He
looks exactly the same as he looked that morning. He is an ordinary,
beardless, young man from a neighbourhood. It is in the everydayness
that the tragedy lies. In Johnny we see what Hannah Arendt names
the ‘banality of evil’—the comprehension that the perpetrators of the
worst crimes against humanity are not psychopaths or sociopaths
but so-called ‘ordinary’ people (Arendt 1963). By treating Johnny as
something other than human, to paraphrase Drakulic (2005), we put
him in a different class of human that we could never be a part of. As
a result, we refuse to believe that such acts could be committed by us,
our neighbours, co-workers, etc.; thus allowing such things to happen
again. (Figure 4.2)
Nowadays, ‘[n]o one, not even pacifists’, writes Sontag (2003, p. 5),
‘believes that war can be abolished’. ‘We hope only’, continues Sontag,
‘to stop genocide and to bring to justice those who commit gross viola-
tion of the laws of war … and to be able to stop specific wars by impos-
ing negotiated alternatives’ (p. 5). Even if it is going to be possible one
day, the wars cannot and will not be eradicated with or by the arts only.
As the British director Ken Loach observes, ‘film is only part of the noise
that surrounds us’ (cited in Radevic 2006, np). Film-art is only one of
Figure 4.2 Johnny drinks coffee alone (still, Ordinary People)

the numerous practices that are needed in building the eclecticism of

humankind and sustaining our collective universal rights to live and
exist in a peace. Somehow, Ordinary People and No Man’s Land are doing
exactly that. These two films should be seen as part of the particular
peace-building strategy imagined, but not only exclusively, for the
Western Balkans. The recognition of No Man’s Land and Ordinary People
for their aesthetic and narrative values at prestigious film festivals4 will,
hopefully, set the standard for filmmakers from the region in regard to
the aesthetics and ethics that govern the rendering of military conflicts
and combatants. In the end, though, it is an interaction between criti-
cal thought, artistic praxis, education and socio-political action that is
necessary for a meaningful and possibly affective engagement in the
demilitarisation of humankind. For now, there is only hope that the
symbolic texture of the cinematic imaginary that Perisic and Tanovic
created will influence a young man to reject a call to arms in a conflict
to come.
5
Women Speak after the War
Two canonical Balkan films and a woman
The absence of women’s voices presents a significant emptiness in

European filmic and general historiography. Post-Yugoslav territories fit
perfectly with the ‘Old Continent’s’ paradigm of the distant and even
recent past. With a few exceptions, which only confirm the rule of gen-
eral absence, women’s perspectives and discursive stances on the Western
Balkans are blurred, not taken into account due to their ‘irrelevance’, or
simply ignored. Consequently, no-one should be surprised at my stating
that the absence of women’s perspectives in creating knowledgee about
the Western Balkans is both ethically and epistemologically problematic.
Without knowing the role of women in the post-Yugoslav past and pre-
sent, we are not in position to create a valid epistemological knowledge
(Slapsak 2009). And only with plural perceptions of an event may we
strive towards the ‘universal’ (Balibar 2007).
This need to pluralise of the universal, using particular gender-based
outlooks on knowledge, is a valid reason to open up the space and articu-
late the perspectives of women in regard to Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav
socio-cultural affairs. In the end, by taking into account women’s roles
in and perceptions of the history of Socialist Yugoslavia, its violent
disintegration, and post-war ambiguity, it is evident that it was largely
women who represented the anti-national, cosmopolitan alternatives in
post-Yugoslav socio-cultural spaces.
Such alternatives are not imagined in Kusturica’s Underground.
Considering its overwhelming significance, it is worth returning to this
film one more time and briefly revisiting its gender conventions. Apart
from Natalia, who is a femme fatale, there is no other significant female
character in Underground. As a stereotypical deadly seductress, Natalia
86
Women Speak after the War 87
to some extent controls the passions of the men who are in love with
her. Yet, her deadliness does not prevail, as the character of Natalia does
not possess her own voice in the development of the film’s narrative.
Rather, she is a precious object possessed by the most powerful man
of the moment. Other female characters in Underground d are uniformly
inconsequential and include a blunt but obedient housewife, a flying
bride, and a prostitute whose exposed bottom cheeks, in one apparently
entertaining scene, serve as a holder for a single flower.
In Underground, a woman is either seductive and consequently a
fatalist subject, or she is an irrelevant signifier pushed into the scene’s
frame only for the partial fulfilment of a (West European) aesthetic
fetish, which Jameson (2004) ironically baptises the ‘Yugoslavian wild
man’ (p. 240). With the persistent and irresistible visualisation of the
hyper-masculine man, with whom both the Balkans and the West have
become familiar, one might (cynically) ask: who needs a fascinating
female character from the Western Balkans anyway?
The film Underground, however, was not the only historical parable
about the Balkans that had its world premiere at the Cannes Film
Festival in 1995. Ulysses’ Gaze (Angelopoulos 1995) was another film
preoccupied with the historical reconstruction of the Balkans. The
narrative in Angelopoulos’ film is centred on a Greek-American film
director named ‘A’ who returns to Greece after a successful career in
Hollywood. His return, nevertheless, coincides with the raging conflict
in neighbouring Yugoslavia. Appalled by the level of intolerance in the
contemporary Balkans, ‘A’ begins a search for missing film reels shot at
the beginning of 20th century by the Manaki brothers.1 Apparently, as
explained in the prologue to Ulysses’ Gaze, the first ever filmed images
from the Balkans bear evidence of a peaceful and harmonious life
on the Balkan Peninsula. ‘A’ believes that confirmation of coexistence
in the past may contribute to pacifying the contemporary Balkans.
During the search for the Manakis’ lost footage, ‘A’ takes a journey all
over the Balkans. Either literarily or metaphorically, his road crosses
borders between Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia
and Bosnia. His almost-complete search for the reels finishes in vain in
1990s worn-torn Sarajevo.
The most remarkable character in Ulysses’ Gaze is not ‘A’, but rather an
unnamed, mystical woman. Wherever ‘A’ goes in pursuit of the Balkan
past, as supposedly seen through the lenses of the Manaki’s cameras, he
is always met, followed, and nurtured by the same young woman who
appears in different parts of the Balkans and in different historic peri-
ods. Whenever she meets ‘A’, she speaks a different language from the
Balkans. She is a mute figure in a Greek town where ‘A’ was born; she
is a church curator in Macedonia; she is an Albanian widow expelled
from Greece. She also accompanies ‘A’ while he travels to Romania.
Eventually, she dies in Sarajevo, causing ‘A’ to stop his quest for the past
as the means to intervene into the present. According to Slapsak (2007),
in Ulysses’ Gaze, Angelopoulos clearly indicates that the ‘history of the
Balkans is … stored in women’s memory’ (p. 39). ‘This re-appearing
woman’, argues Slapsak (2002), ‘is a symbolic collective Balkan memory,
oral, repressed, marginalized, victimized, excluded from the leading
(male) politics and ideologies’ (p. 95). As the whole film is constructed
as a search for reminiscence, the multifaceted, but single, female char-
acter in Ulysses’ Gaze signifies a bearer of suppressed memory in which
the destiny of women is marked by the violence and patriarchal norms
produced by the official history of the Balkans.
Although it was shortlisted for the 1995 Palme d’Or, Angelopoulos’
vision of the Balkans did not win (Iordanova 2001, p. 111). Instead,
the 1995 Cannes jury preferred the Balkan machismo of Underground
(Slapsak 2002, p. 95). Nonetheless, as I will argue further, the former
Yugoslavia, as well as the rest of the Balkans, is constituted of and
defined by men only. If the duo of director Kusturica and screenwriter
Kovacevic had wanted it, they could easily have found a decent role for
a woman in Underground. Yugoslav women both actively participated in
and witnessed the rise and fall of Yugoslavia—the land forr the Southern
Slavs.
Yugoslavia, 1945–1989: a woman who went

with Communism
Milka Planinc, the ‘Iron Lady’ of post-Tito Yugoslavia, died on 7 October

2010. She was eighty-six. When World War II engulfed the Yugoslav
kingdom in 1941, the young Planinc was just old enough to actively
participate in the antifascist war against the Nazi occupying forces and
their local collaborators, as the Yugoslav Communists used to sum-
marise their armed struggle. Planinc survived the war while becoming a
prominent member of the Communist establishment. From 1959 until
the collapse of the Croatian Communist Party at the end of 1980s,
Planinc served as a professional politician. Her first significant post was
as the Minister of Education in the Croatian government. During the
1970s Planinc served as the leader of the Croatian Communist Party. In
1982, when it was the Croats turn to preside over the federal govern-
ment, Planinc became the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia.
Prior to Planinc’s prime ministership, two other Yugoslav women had

temporarily risen up through the political hierarchy. The first, Savka
Dabcevic-Kucar, was the leader of the Croatian Communists from 1967
until 1969 when she was dismissed by the party’s hardliners for being too
liberal. Latinka Perovic was also too liberal for the party disciplinarians—
the second woman to have touched one of the Yugoslav seats of power
when she served as Chief Secretary of the Serbian Communists in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1972, she was asked to resign. Luckily for
Perovic, she was not sent to prison. Dabcevic-Kucar, on the other hand,
was imprisoned for two years for her alleged counter-revolutionary
activities.
Milka Planinc, on the contrary, had never had liberal political ten-
dencies. She was both a revolutionary idealist and a pragmatic party
apparatchik, who, I assume, honestly believed in the idea of a just
society to come, under the guidance of (totalitarian) Communism. In
1941, at the time when she had chosen to join the antifascist strug-
gle, the Yugoslav Communist Party was the only socio-political body
willing to fight Nazism and its allies across Yugoslavia. That was her
idealism. Planinc’s pragmatism, I assume again, was built gradually.
Thirty-five years of direct and high-ranking involvement in a totali-
tarian political system was long enough to understand that there was
a clear distinction between, on one side, the antifascist revolution in
World War II and the early teachings Marx, and, on the other, the
hypocrisy of the post-World War II Yugoslav Communist Party she
faithfully served.
Nonetheless, it would have been problematic for anyone to preside
over the Yugoslav government in 1982. The national economy was near
to collapse, with massive international debt. Yugoslavia was incapable
of paying back its old debts and the IMF refused further loans. Planinc’s
newly-elected government responded with strict saving measures and
her premiership is remembered for its long-term plan for economic
stabilisation. On the ground, this meant denying everyone luxury, and
saving to the level of an ascetic. If, during the late 1960s and through-
out the 1970s, the average Yugoslav citizen lacked nothing—except
free access to self-expression in a critical political discourse—now this
spoiled population had to cope with hyperinflation and significant
devaluation of salaries. Worse still, an average Yugoslav faced a chronic
shortage of basic items such as coffee beans and washing powder. There
were restrictions on the use of electricity. The controlled use of private
vehicles was also introduced. Not surprisingly, Yugoslav citizens did not
like these measures introduced by Planinc’s government. As the front
person behind this strict economic method, Milka Planinc became

increasingly unpopular.
Planinc, however, was far from being the most responsible for the fate
of the Yugoslav economy and the sudden devaluation in living stan-
dards. As Zizek (2010) remarks, the Yugoslav leadership around Tito had
been aware of Yugoslavia’s dire economic situation. However, as Zizek
continues:
[S]ince Tito was nearing death, they made a collective decision to

postpone the inevitable crisis until after his death—the price paid was
the reckless accumulation of external debt in the last years of Tito’s
life, when Yugoslavia was, in effect, and to quote the rich bank client
from Hitchcock’s Psycho, buying off its unhappiness. When, in 1980,
Tito finally died, the economic crisis struck with vengeance, leading
to a 40 percent fall in standards of living … all because the moment
for confronting the crisis successfully had been missed. (p. 133)
Yet, somehow, the strict regime of saving imposed by the Planinc gov-
ernment did manage to partially stabilise the country’s economy and
provide a basis for the economic revival of the late 1980s. Planinc’s
prime ministership came to an end in 1986. Her death was insignificant
news for the Western Balkans’ media. Beyond a basic biography, a few
obituaries also mentioned that she had been the only female prime
minister in the history of totalitarian socialism.
But back in the 1980s, having the first woman to preside over a
Communist government was significant news amongst feminists from
the West. In 1987, Cal Clark and Janet Clark described Planinc’s choice as
the first amongst Yugoslavs as ‘spectacular’ (p. 414). Still, those authors
were well aware of the circumstances that had paved the way for Milka
Planinc. As they argue, from World War II until the Yugoslav disintegra-
tion, women constituted a higher proportion of political office-holders
than was case in most Western countries (Clark & Clark 1987, p. 414).
The data that comes from Serbia clearly indicates this trend. As Milicevic
(2006, p. 271) emphasises, prior to the first Serbian multi-party election
in December 1990, the proportion of women in the Serbian parliament
was almost twenty-four per cent.2 Moreover, as Hunt (2004, p. 302)
indicates, pre-war Yugoslavia had more women PhDs per capita than
any other country in Europe. In such a setting, then, having a woman
as prime minister seemed logical for Yugoslav socio-cultural progress.
One may pause here and ask, for instance, what was the historical
prerequisite for the rise of women in the Yugoslav political hierarchy?
Slapsak (2009) answers this question by pointing to Communist ide-

ology, which had a ‘friendly tendency’ towards women. In fact, the
Yugoslav Communists, having been outlawed in the Yugoslav Kingdom
as a party since 1921, and having been ruthlessly hunted down and
exterminated by the Nazis and their local collaborators in World War II,
owed their very survival to women. Tito’s guerrilla movement would
not have survived the initial years of their armed struggle without the
help of the women who hid and fed them. Furthermore, a large num-
ber had been actively involved in combat. According to Batinic (2001,
p. 4), approximately 100,000 women participated in the partisan-led
resistance. In the midst of guerrilla struggle, in December 1943, parti-
san women created the Anti-Fascist Front of Women (AFZ). Based on
Marxist principles, the AFZ propagated not only class-consciousness but
also equality between sexes. Women responded positively to the AFZ
doctrine. At the end of World War II, according to Slapsak (2009), the
AFZ had more than a million female members.
It was not only the Communist party that had developed strategies
and programmes for the inclusion of women in their armed and/or
ideological struggle. The Ustase and the Chetniks,3 too, had their own
methods and politics dedicated to women only. As far as the ‘women
policy’ of the Ustase is concerned, writes Miskovska-Kajevska (2006),
they complied with the ‘Nazis’ 3K-ideology of Kinder (children), Kirche
(church) and Küche (kitchen)’ (p. 14). Without giving further explana-
tion, Jancar-Webster (1999) suggests that the Ustase tried unsuccessfully
to create a self-sufficient women’s movement. The Chetniks’ understand-
ing of the position and role of women was almost, if not completely,
identical to the politics of the Ustase. According to Miskovska-Kajevska,
the Chetniks asked women to return to Serbian religious and patriarchal
traditions. The Chetniks also expected women to be ‘decent, caring and
self-sacrificing wives and mother-educators’ (Miskovska-Kajevska 2006,
p. 15). As with the Ustase’s effort, the Chetniks’ attempt to organise
women’s groups for the purpose of involving them in humanitarian
and religious activities as well as educating them in how to be good
wives, ended in vain (Miskovska-Kajevska 2006, p. 15). We should not
be surprised that the large majority of Yugoslav women during World
War II dismissed patriarchal norms and, instead, chose the political
platform that promoted gender equality. With such a choice, the socio-
cultural-political gains for women appeared to be quite significant.
As Jancar-Webster (1999) argues, active participation in the National
Liberation War moved women ‘in five years from a “feudal” condition
of dependency to “modern” legal and civil equality’ (pp. 86–87).
Due to the crucial engagement of women in the partisan movement,

and in line with a Marxist concept of ‘working women’, gender equal-
ity received a prominent place in Yugoslavia immediately after the
end of war. In terms of law, in 1946, the first post-war constitution of
Yugoslavia granted formal equality between men and women (Milicevic
2006, p. 271). In addition, special legislation guaranteed equal access for
women to education, political participation and employment, as well
as equal pay for equal work. Progressive family laws were also passed
in order to transform the status of women in the family—women and
men were given equal rights with regard to divorce, inheritance, and
the custody of children (Djuric-Kuzmanovic et al. 2008, pp. 267–268).
Compared with the backwardness of patriarchal arrangements in the
Yugoslav kingdom, women in Communist Yugoslavia seemed to have
made significant strides forward. It is telling here to note that while the
notion of ‘gender equality’ was regarded positively, homosexuality for
women and men was treated as a criminal act in every Yugoslav consti-
tution from World War II until the disintegration of the federal state.
It was no surprise that contribution of women to the liberation was
honoured in the first feature films after the war. Slavica (1947), written
and directed by Vjekoslav Afric, represents the entire span of the war
in Split, a city on the Dalmatian coast. Being made in a ‘naïve, epic
mould’ (Goulding 2002, p. 20), Slavica in a nutshell gives an ideological
salute to the partisan guerrilla actions against the Italian and German
occupying forces. Slavica’s narrative focuses on a young and courageous
woman of the same name. Before the war she works in a fish factory.
With the beginning of occupation, Slavica joins the partisan guerrillas
together with her husband Marin, a fellow factory-worker. A couple
years later, in a decisive battle with the Germans, she is killed while try-
ing to defend a partisan boat that will have a central role in the libera-
tion of Split. Later, in the liberated Split, her body is laid to rest wrapped
in the Yugoslav flag. In spite of the obvious mourning, her parents join
the crowd celebrating the victory, as described by Goulding, ‘heroi-
cally transforming grief into exalted victory—facing resolutely forward,
against time and grief, to form a new nation … of all the nations and
nationalities’ (Goulding 2002, p. 17). Finally, the military vessel Slavica
died defending is named after her.
There is a little, if any, doubt that Afric fetishised the body of the main
actress in the film while simultaneously using it for the national(istic)
agenda. She embodies a ‘character who is over determined as national’
(Galt 2006, p. 167). Slavica is not just an average woman destined to
become a national hero on the silver screen. Her role goes beyond an
individual portrait of a woman in turbulent times. ‘Slavica, as her name

suggests, is the embodiment of [Southern] Slav patriotism’ (Galt 2006,
p. 167). Her forename clearly reflects the Slavic focus of the Yugoslav
state and points to the iconic nature of Slav(s)ica.
Even though serving as a signifier for pan-Slavic nationalism and class
struggle, Slavica still possesses stereotypical feminine characteristics,
including an extraordinary physical attractiveness as well as nurturing
instinct. Yet, characteristics too often attributed to a conventional male
war hero prevail in the depiction of Slavica’s personality. She has no
personal fear and as such she is the role model for her male comrades.
Her ethical and moral choices make her an almost divine character in
the atheist context of her milieu. In mentioning Slavica in his analysis
of partisan film from Yugoslavia, Horton (1987–1988, p. 20) stresses
its distinctiveness compared with Hollywood war films with World
War II themes. There is no representation of a ‘bi-gendered’ army in
Hollywood that takes on World War II and, furthermore, there is no
trace of a woman in any of the numerous main roles (Horton 1987–
1988, p. 21). Slavica is a particularly strong female character, who has
not been replicated in any other war film (Horton 1987–1988); not even
in a Yugoslav one. Although still visible in public discourse, Yugoslav
women in the socialist narrative never again reached the same iconic
status in their cinematic representation.
The principal reason, according to Slapsak (2009), was the break
between the Yugoslav Communist establishment and Stalin’s mode of
socialism.4 The leadership of the Yugoslav Communists believed that
women, identified as mass supporters of the AFZ, might reject the split
with the Soviets and turn against them. As part of the inner struggle
between the factions of the Yugoslav Communist Party, many women
were sent to concentration camps as Soviet sympathisers (Slapsak 2009).
Besides the accusation of alignment with Stalin, AFZ members were
also blamed for a bourgeois feminist propensity (Miskovska-Kajevska
2006, p. 25). Subsequently, the AFZ was quietly abolished at its fourth
and final Congress in 1952. A new organisation, the Union of Women
Association (SZD), was created, and included approximately 2,000 small
departments all over Yugoslavia (Batinic 2001, p. 7). Compared to the
AFZ, the SZD had reduced objectives. It focused on basic social work
and its primary role was to educate rural women. Consciousness-raising
activities—the main purpose for the existence of AFZ—were passed on
to the Socialist Alliance of Working People (SSRN).
According to a Resolution of the AFZ’s fourth Congress, its
‘self-abolition’ was necessary because the existence of women-only
organisations would signal the ‘wrong idea that the question of the
position of women is somehow a separate women’s question, instead
of a question of the [entire] community and all fighters for social-
ism’ (cited in Miskovska-Kajevska 2006, pp. 25–26). On one hand, as
Miskovska-Kajevska indicates, the resolution contains the acceptable
observation that the position of women in society should be a concern
for the entire society. On the other hand, however, the abolition of the
AFZ as a separate political body, and the supposed mainstreaming of
the female question was a cover-up by the Communist Party. There was
no space for an independent, massive and well-organised movement
in a totalitarian regime. Tito’s so-called ‘third way socialism’ was no
exception.
From that point onward, the Communist Party was the only execu-
tive political body that would decide on the level of visibilityy of women
in the Yugoslav socio-political scene. With the abolition of the AFZ, the
non-violent struggle for gender equality in the former Yugoslavia disap-
peared. Instead, a controlled and often obstructed evolutionary process
became the permanent reality in regard to gender policy. The shift
from rapid to slow process in the emancipation of Yugoslav women
was an utterly wrong decision on the part of the Communist regime. In
societies where patriarchy has been deeply entrenched in every aspect
of everyday life for centuries, evolution does not always generate the
expected results.
It is important to say here that the Communists, despite the abolition
of the AFZ in 1952, did not reduce the constitutional rights guaranteed
to women immediately after World War II. On the contrary, some addi-
tional rights were granted, such as higher rates of representation in local
and national politics, more equitable pay distribution, and access to
paid maternity leave and subsidised child care (Kunovich & Deitelbaum
2004, p. 1091). Additionally, rates of illiteracy among women decreased
sharply, from thirty-three per cent in 1961 to eleven per cent in 1991
(Milicevic 2006, p. 271). After 1952, however, the Yugoslav Communists
never again effectively addressed the fact that societies throughout the
world are patriarchal, regardless of their political and economic struc-
tures. This means that there are a number of unwritten rules and regula-
tions, implicit in many cultures, which explicitly disadvantage women,
and which Slapsak (1996) has called the ‘spirit of patriarchy’.
Consequently, this ‘spirit’, strongly criticised and suppressed dur-
ing and immediately after World War II, slipped through the grid of
Communist protective measures. In regard to the media, it meant the
return of ‘two images: motherr and whore: two strictly divided aspects of
female representation within the patriarchal discourse’ (Jankovic-Piljic

2009, np). While both images discreetly entered the media space, the
latter, the image of the whore, soon became the norm.
This continuous media insistence on women’s degradation that
lasted until the Yugoslav collapse and beyond, led to the point where a
naturalisedd misogyny was the dominant message within a screened nar-
rative. A vast number of films immortalised those tendencies quite accu-
rately. Even in the dissident films of the late 1960s and early 1970s—the
so-called Black Wave, which the regime attacked and often banned for
its critique of Yugoslav social reality—there was a gallery female char-
acters who were either a ‘prostitute that denounces, robs and deserts
the main male character or a woman who would make a man fragile by
revealing his social position or social past’ (Slapsak 2007, p. 37). With a
few exceptions, which I will mention later, the post-Black Wave phase
also maintained misogyny as the ‘essential characteristic’ (Slobodan
Sijan cited in Jankovic 2010, np) of the entire cinematography of the
Western Balkans.
The discriminatory neglect of the women characters in Yugoslav
film is adequately summarised by Mira Furlan—a leading Yugoslav film
actress throughout the 1980s. Once in exile in the US, Furlan reflected
on her pre-war career by saying that in ‘many Yugoslav films, I was
either raped or beaten up or humiliated in all kinds of ways, and you
just start thinking that is how it should be’ (cited in Green 1997, np).
One of the most memorable scenes of violence that Furlan performed
was depicted in Kusturica’s 1984 Palme d’Or-winner When Father was
Away on Business. In Father,r Furlan plays Ankica; an attractive mistress of
a member of the Communist establishment in Sarajevo, named Mesha.
At an early point in film, Mesha is accused of being a Stalinist sympa-
thiser and sent to a provincial border town between Bosnia and Serbia
for ‘rehabilitation’. It was Ankica’s jealousy in the first place that (un)
intentionally sent Mesha into the Yugoslav version of the Soviet Gulag.
Two years passed and a ‘reformed’ Mesha was allowed to return to
Sarajevo. At the end of the film, during a mise-en-scène depicting the
wedding of his brother-in-law, Mesha violently rapes Ankica in the base-
ment of his house as an act of revenge for her betrayal. At the begin-
ning of the ‘rape scene’, Kusturica clearly depicts Mesha’s action as a
brutal and forced penetration. In the midst of the violent intercourse,
however, Ankica somehow embraces Mesha’s alpha-animalistic behav-
iour and her body perceptibly begins to show the signs of passionate
enjoyment which soon bursts into a simultaneous climax. Immediately
after, Mesha silently leaves the basement and rejoins his pregnant wife
and the wedding party that continued in the courtyard. Left alone,
Ankica unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide by hanging herself in the
bathroom.
Ankica’s attempt on her own life looks somehow comical and con-
sequently insincere. In the concluding scene that follows, there is not
even a hint of punishment for Mesha’s felony. Instead, the ‘vulgar
macho attitude’ prevails, as Furlan (cited in Green 1997) summarises the
dominant representation of men in Yugoslav cinema. For her betrayal of
Mesha, Ankica gets what she deserves. Or, perhaps, she is not punished
at all, as Mesha’s charismatic machismo turns an ordinary rape into
pure enjoyment, not only for himself but for Ankica as well. With the
final outcome of Mesha’s sexually promiscuous behaviour, Kusturica
and the film’s co-scriptwriter, Sidran, invert the violence wrought on
the female body into a classical example of phallic desire; a man pen-
etrates and consequently tames a woman.
Without the decisive scene in the basement, Ankica’s character, per-
haps, would be perceived in a very different light. Her expression of
unstrained sexuality, for instance, could signify a clear break with her
patriarchal surroundings. And Ankica’s adventurous spirit, courage and
talent would do even more. In the film’s fifth sequence, set in 1949,
Ankica is introduced to the amused crowd of the aerial show as the first
ever Yugoslav woman glider pilot. Not many women piloted a plane in
the late 1940s, in Yugoslavia or elsewhere. Yet, two years later, in 1951,
Ankica was brutally grounded by male power while the audience was
asked to believe she both deserved and enjoyed her fall.
If the fictional Ankica had a profession unusual for a woman of the
time, a factual woman named Soja Jovanovic (1922–2002) had one too.
In her extraordinarily productive career, Jovanovic worked as theatrical,
TV and film director. Born in an artistic Belgrade family, Jovanovic is
remembered as the first Serbian and Yugoslavian female director, and
the only one for decades to come (Goulding 2002, p. 43). All eight of
the feature films she directed were based on classic literary comedies by
Serbian writers from the end of 19th and beginning of 20th centuries.
The two best known of these writers were Branislav Nusic and Stevan
Sremac.
It would be Sremac’s ‘Dickensian imagination and wit’ (Slapsak 2007,
p. 37) that inspired Jovanovic to make the first Yugoslav film shot in
colour, Pop Cira i Pop Spira/Priests Cira and Spira (1957). Cira and Spira
are Orthodox Christian priests from the same Serbian village. As the vil-
lage’s only elites, the two priests and their families live in harmony and
close friendship until the moment a young male teacher is appointed
to work in a local school. As he can only marry one of the two charm-
ing daughters in the priests’ families, the friendship between the priests
vanishes, as both families desperately want the teacher to be their
son-in-law.
With Priests, Jovanovic was awarded the most prestigious individual
film award in the Former Yugoslavia—the Golden Arena for Best
Director at the 1957 Pula Film Festival. Besides artistic recognition,
Jovanovic’s film also attracted a huge audience all over Yugoslavia
(Goulding 2002, p. 44). Even though it was not a ‘woman’s film’, but
rather a male-dominated lavish comedy, a woman’s signature in Priests
Cira and Spira was still visible as Jovanovic successfully turned upside
down Sremac’s otherwise conservative views on the ‘education of girls
by making both priests’ daughters glamorous and much funnier in their
differences’ (Slapsak 2007, p. 37).
Jovanovic, however, did not focus on issues that matter to most
women in Serbia or Yugoslavia. She focused entirely on classic Serbian
literature, while her style can be described as a mixture of ‘charm, sim-
plicity and self-ironising humour’ (Jankovic 2011, np).
But if the first female director never had a woman at the centre of
her narrative, some of her male colleagues did. Despite being accu-
rately characterised as a male-dominated creative industry driven by
discursive practices in which a blend of vulgar machismo and covert
patriarchal norms prevailed, pre-dissolution Yugoslav cinematography
still occasionally produced pictures that centred on women and their
concerns.
The first of those memorable films was Vladimir Pogacic’s Anikina
Vremena/Anika’s Times (1954). Based on Ivo Andric’s short novel of the
same title, Anika’s Times is set in the time of the Ottoman rule of Bosnia.
Anika is a young Bosnian-Serb woman who, after being prevented from
marrying the man she chose, turns into a rebellious prostitute who cre-
ates conflict amongst men in order to reveal her power. When her cur-
rent lover in one instance fails to show up, she gives herself to a Turkish
rebel who appears to be just an accidental onlooker. Later, the same
man, offended by Anika’s lack of interest in him, returns to her home
with the aim of killing her with a knife. Yet, Anika humiliates him in
front of other admirers and makes him drop the weapon. Anika’s home
is never empty and in most cases her guests are men. Slapsak (2007,
p. 38) observes that Pogacic’s film is a powerful reversal of the image of
the harem. Indeed, Anika organises a kind of male harem at her home,
where men of different cultural and class backgrounds are allowed to
come and stay as long as she wants them to, begging for her love and
attention. She infuriates each and every one of them, disregarding their
class, religion and ethnicity.
Anika’s rebellious spirit in a male-dominated society leads to the
only possible conclusion—she must be destroyed by the patriarchal sur-
roundings. A plot against Anika shows an astonishing degree of mobi-
lisation that puts aside all ethnic, religious and cultural differences.
Close to the end of the film, her manic and incestuous half-brother
kills Anika. The film ends with a series of flashbacks which show a
dejected group of Anika’s adorers gathered around her dead body. The
audience sees her half-brother, who is preparing to hang himself, a
Turkish bureaucrat, a Serbian rebel, and her incapable first lover. Anika’s
death, Slapsak (2007, p. 39) argues, is conceived as an accusation of the
patriarchal community rather than a condemnation of Anika’s auda-
cious rejection of the patriarchal order. This order, so deeply rooted
in Western Balkan mainstream society, survived the forty-five years of
totalitarian regime—the very regime that promised to build a society in
which women were equal to men.
Besides Pogacic’s challenging visual perspective on Andric’s story,
criticism of patriarchal norms in the Western Balkans is also clearly
manifest in films directed by Srdjan Karanovic. With only a few excep-
tions, his entire opus has been marked by empathy for female characters
(Kronja 2008, p. 78). Although his prolific career visualised urban life,
arguably his most outstanding film, Petrijin Venac/Petria’s Wreath (1980),
adapted from the novel written by Dragoslav Mihajlovic, offers a vision
of rural, peripheral, and under-developed Yugoslav/Serbian areas.
Petria’s Wreath depicts the adult life span of Petria; a Serbian woman
living in a semi-rural mining region close to the Bulgarian border.
Karanovic structured Wreath in three parts, in which a new man
in Petria’s life marks each part. The story begins in the late 1930s.
Petria, a young, illiterate peasant woman is about to get married to
Dobrivoje, a fellow peasant from the nearby village. The marriage,
however, turns out to be an archetypal example of severe patriarchal
oppression. While the bulk of World War II passes almost unnoticed
by the camera in Karanovic’s film, her husband and her mother-in-law
throw Petria out of her home. She is rejected mainly because she is
not successful in raising offspring, as both her children die. The son
dies minutes after birth. A toddler daughter, Milana, dies a few years
later from an illness.
In the film’s second part, Petria gets a job as a waitress in a local pub.
Ljubisha—the middle-aged pub’s owner—shows compassion for Petria
and soon they become lovers. This part of Petria’s life is marked by
her gradual emancipation. She visually confirms her definitive break

with the obedient existence of the patriarchal wife by changing her
appearance. Petria refuses to wear a scarf and the rest of the black robes
imposed upon a grieving woman in a traditional Christian family living
in the Balkans. Instead, she chooses to wear clothes typical of working-
class women from the fringes of Serbian society. Meanwhile, World War
II finishes and Ljubisha’s pub is nationalised by the new, Communist,
rulers. Ljubisha soon leaves the town and Petria is alone again.
In the final part, Petria falls in love and gets married to a local miner
named Misha, only to experience again physical and verbal abuse.
Unlike in her first marriage, where she kept silent and obedient regard-
less of the level or type of abuse, Petria talks back to Misha. Physically
and emotionally crippled due to an accident in a mineshaft, Misha dies
a few years later and Petria is once again on her own. The year is 1960.
Now, as a middle-aged woman, Petria lives a lonely life. She finds some
comfort in imaginary talks with the ghosts of her daughter and Misha.
One day she will be more than happy to join them. But not yet, as for
her, life is still worth living. ‘What I wanted, I had; and what I had,
that’s what I wanted!’, as Petria summarises her life in one evocative
voiceover near the end of the film.
With Petria’s Wreath, Karanovic gives an accurate retrospective of the
lives of rural women prior to and during Communist rule. In a matter of
years, Petria, an obedient and ghostly silent woman before World War
II, becomes aware of and speaks up against the injustice wrought upon
her by the man closest to her. Nevertheless, while she does indeed speak
back to a drunken and violent Misha, she never physically defends
herself from his slaps. He keeps being occasionally violent and abusive
until the last moment of his life, yet Petria persists in staying with him.
Once he is dead, Petria has no greater dream than joining him as soon
as her time comes. Regardless of whether it was rephrased, obvious, or
even an unintentional aim in Petria’s Wreath, the message is clear: the
character of Petria, as a symbol of Yugoslav women, has evidently made
a step forward in her emancipation, but the move is unfinished. Despite
the utopian pledge and legislative acts by the Communists, the patri-
archal norms within Yugoslav society had not vanished. Even though
they had been in defensive mode since World War II, patriarchal norms
quite easily survived Communism and, furthermore, made an infamous
return in the late 1980s.
Apart from Srdjan Karanovic, Zivko Nikolic is the only director from
former Yugoslavia who was adept at presenting women. Karanovic
and Nikolic’s work, furthermore, can be placed in a cinematic lineage
of worldwide male directors (Kenji Mizoguchi, Douglas Sirk, Lars von

Trier, Emil Loteanu, Pedro Almodóvar) who have challenged the exist-
ing social, ideological and aesthetic order through films that centre
on female characters (Mijovic 2006, p. 229). Unlike Karanovic, who
adapted or collaborated with other writers in developing scenarios,
Nikolic authored most of the scripts for his films. Jovana Lukina/Lukina’s
Jovana (1979), Cudo Nevidjeno/Unseen Wonderr (1984) and Lepota Proroka/
The Beauty of the Sin (1986) are his most important works. In all of
them, an extraordinarily beautiful woman is set in the midst of male-
dominated Montenegrin society. Unlike his bigoted male protagonists
who believe that such a woman is the reason for their jealousy, unhap-
piness and bad karma, Nikolic insists on giving the audience a very
different interpretation of women in society. For Nikolic, a woman is
the motivation for positive change. In this sense, a beautiful woman in
Nikolic’s film is not a femme fatale as depicted in the classic film noir
form from Hollywood. Rather, in Nikolic’s symbolism, a woman pos-
sesses the qualities of Mary Magdalene. The mob sees a sinner, but God
offers her heavenly status.
In contrast to his female characters, Nikolic did not show a bond
with, or empathy for, the majority of the male protagonists in his
films. The reason for his portrait of men, as Mijovic (2006) argues, lay
in Nikolic’s dedicated ‘human and artistic honesty, which allowed for
nothing less than the uncompromising clash with what he perceived as
the hypocrisy of his own [Montenegrin] culture’ (p. 230). Even when he
is not an obvious villain, a male protagonist in Nikolic’s films is a naïve,
comical fool and as such easily manipulated by other, more cunning
and, very often, pernicious men.
Djordje, for example, the main male protagonist in The Beauty of the
Sin, is a classic example of Nikolic’s sleazy Yugoslav/Montenegrin man.
While Djordje lives a comfortable life in an unnamed Montenegrin
coastal town in which he works as a human resource manager at a
nudist resort, his wife and three children live in a mountainous village
in appalling conditions. Once, when the pressure is put upon him to
provide additional unskilled female staff at the resort that is increas-
ingly popular with foreign tourists, Djordje uses any possible means to
recruit poor countrywomen who are mostly unwilling to work there
due to a patriarchal stigma. ‘Woman is a social being, and as such she
belongs to society to use her as it sees fit’, says Djordje to his cousin and
best man Luka who lives in his village of origin, while simultaneously
trying to recruit his wife to work in the resort. This distorted interpreta-
tion of the Marxist motto clearly ridicules the male perception of the
emancipation of women during Yugoslav socialism. Mijovic (2006)

memorably describes Djordje’s character as:
a monster, created in a freak collision between the two systems:

predatory patriarchy and collective socialism. Somewhere between
the two is also where women’s social progress remains suspended.
(p. 233)
Nikolic’s uncompromising collision with the backwardness of his own

Montenegrin society was seen by many as an unpatriotic act (Mijovic
2006, p. 230). While those in power tolerated his artistic vision during
the Communist era, their democratic successors did not. Nikolic would
direct no films in post-Communist Montenegro. According to Mijovic
(2006, p. 229), in the last few years of his life, which were marked by
illness and poverty, Zivko Nikolic—the most awarded ever Montenegrin
director—depended on the goodwill of a nearby grocery owner for
food. He died in 2001, aged sixty. A scholarly epilogue to his artistic
achievement was recorded in an astonishing essay written by fellow
Montenegrin filmmaker, Nikola Mijovic (2006), whom I quoted broadly
in the few paragraphs above. So far, it is the only available tribute to this
film director. Perhaps, in time to come, some new Montenegrin state
cultural elite will be prouder of a man who was not afraid or ashamed
to battle for gender equality, a struggle, announced so enthusiastically
by the Communist elite, which was supposed to be the backbone of
the development of the Yugoslav societies under the guidance of the
Communists.
Socialist Yugoslavia was described as a ‘just society with many irregu-
larities’ by one anonymous female participant in research focused on
Montenegrin women who experienced the entire span of Communist
rule (Kovacevic 2004, p. 14). This short, yet evocative quote from a first-
hand witness accurately characterises the politics of gender equality
during the Communist era in former Yugoslavia. In comparison to the
pre-World War II period, Yugoslav women under socialism benefited in
terms of reproductive rights, legal equality and education (Ramet 1999).
In terms of education for women, for instance, my own family comes
to mind. My grandmother was an illiterate peasant woman, completely
dependent on and obedient to my grandfather. Her oldest daughter,
born at the dawn of World War II, completed four years of compulsory
schooling instructed by the post-war Communist rulers. Her three other
daughters, including my mother, completed eight years of primary
school, as this was a new compulsory target. My grandfather, as the
undisputed patriarch of the family, was absolutely against the idea of

his daughters undertaking secondary schooling in the nearby town of
Visegrad, even though all three of them earned high marks. According
to his logic, such a move would require partially uncontrolled move-
ment on the part of my aunts and my mother. Consequently, tertiary
study in Sarajevo, which would either require an extended stay in a dor-
mitory, or with ‘urbanised’ and therefore ‘decadent’ relatives, was out
of the question. However, one generation later, each of my five female
cousins, born from the mid-sixties to early seventies, were pushed as
hard as possible by my aunties and the rest of family to undertake ter-
tiary studies. All but one earned undergraduate diplomas and two of
them later completed post-graduate degrees.
In 2008, many years after my grandfather had passed away, my
mother and I discussed his legacy in regard to the socio-economic qual-
ity of the lives of his four daughters. Despite being critical towards a
decision that would make their lives much harder than they could have
been for her and her sisters, my mother still expressed a level of empa-
thy for her father. ‘He was the product of his time and his surround-
ings’, my mother said. She concluded by saying that my grandfather did
not know, or could not imagine, better alternatives for his daughters.
Never achieving an affirmative imagination in regard to the rights
of women is one of the most regrettable failures of the Yugoslav
Communist establishment.
Under Communism, gender equality suffered from a ‘failure of
imagination’ (Magas 1999, p. 280). This failure is clearly visible in the
Yugoslav cinematic imagination of women. The concept of women as
integral to the National Liberation War, as seen in the first post-World
War II film, Slavica, was quickly replaced by endlessly repeated varia-
tions on the super-human male partisan. The bulk of other non-war
films with a focus on post-World War II Yugoslav social ‘realism’ grossly
underplayed the concerns of women. And yet, such visualisation was
under almost absolute control of the Communist regime. The invisible
censors, busy discovering anti-Communist elements in ever-popular
mass art, overlooked entirely the anti-women, misogynist aspects of
mainstream films. A few examples of the opposite, visible in films
directed by Karanovic and Nikolic for instance, were, perhaps, too little
and too late.
Too late, also, was the election of Milka Planinc to the highest execu-
tive political position in post-Tito Yugoslavia. Obligated by the IMF and
other financial institutions to repay the state’s massive debt, Planinc’s
strict saving measures were perceived as a lack of leadership skills on
her behalf. Instead of becoming a role model for Yugoslav women, the
first ever female socialist prime-minister became the object of grotesque
chauvinist jokes.
Nevertheless, even if it had happened at the worst possible time for
populist purposes, the election of a woman as the Yugoslav political leader
demonstrated a certain degree of improvement in the socio-economic
status of women during the forty-five-year reign of Communism. If the
democraticc changes in the Yugoslav territories in the late 1980s had come
about under different circumstances, no doubt the lives of women would
have improved even further. But it was not to be. The shift from totalitar-
ian communism into democratic nationalism and the wars that followed
changed everything.
Post-Yugoslavia: a woman with a hump
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as Zalewski (1995, p. 343) observes,
the reconstruction of eastern European states enabled the transition
process from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism which has allowed
the emergence of policies and practices that are pernicious for women,
specifically in the areas of the labour market and political representa-
tion. In Yugoslavia for instance, it has meant a drastic decline of female
parliamentarians. In the mid-1980s, women constituted an average
of twenty-four per cent of all members of the parliaments in all six
Yugoslav republics. In 1991, however, in the first post-World War II
freely-elected parliaments, women formed thirteen per cent of the
members in Slovenia, four per cent in Croatia and Montenegro, three
per cent in Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and less than two per
cent in Serbia (Papic 1994, p. 116). Moreover, not just any men took
political posts all across Yugoslavia. In most cases, they belonged to
and represented the most aggressive form of nationalism. Furthermore,
in most cases, their simplistic political programme was based on ‘open
xenophobic and patriarchal agendas’ (Papic 1999, p. 155). If absolute
political domination was not enough, those men also enjoyed unlim-
ited support from reinstated religious institutions.
There are three things, writes Ivanovic (2000), that 1990s
nationalism(s) ‘wanted’ from women: ‘biological preservation, cultural
continuity, and maintenance of moral standards and traditional val-
ues’ (p. 287). Interestingly enough, the three contemporary nationalist
wishes are almost identical to policies imposed upon women during
World War II by the genocidal Ustasa regime and its counterpart the
Chetniks. While giving an account of the gender relations in the
Western Balkans, Patricia Albanese argues that the nationalist politics

and practices in the former Yugoslavia ‘have flung women backwards
by at least half a century’ (2001, p. 1008). For most women, this back-
wardness manifested itself primarily in massive unemployment rate,
cuts in social benefits and the denial of abortion rights. Furthermore,
many women living in areas affected by the conflicts in the 1990s
became refugees. And many of these women faced the grim prospect
of being sexually abused. The case of war rape in Bosnia has become a
horrendous example of violence over women, in a conflict zone where
the ‘right mixture’ of patriarchy and war strategies stripped away the
entire population of the ethnic ‘other’ from a territory desired for
the ethnic ‘self’.
In 1993, United Nations Security Resolution 820 stated that the use
of rape in Bosnia was ‘massive, organized and systematic’ (Skjelsbaek
2006, p. 374). Since that time, the public discussion on rape has
lead to the conclusion that sexual violence against Bosnian women
on a mass scale was a project planned by the Serbian leadership as a
mechanism for the humiliation of the entire Bosnian nation. Parallel
to the attempts to document these crimes for legal and humanitar-
ian purposes, the estimated number of raped women has been used
daily for political purposes (Skjelsbaek 2006, p. 374). During the war,
this culturally taboo topic for Bosnian society was exploited as a tool
of propaganda—the Bosnian war government cited a total of up to
50,000 sexually abused women in an effort to provoke NATO military
intervention. In the end, the actual number of sexually abused women
will never be known (Olujic 1998). What is known, and is important
to note, is that while victims and perpetrators were from all military
sides involved in the conflict, most reports underline the fact that the
majority of perpetrators were members of Serb regular and irregular
forces and that most of victims were Bosnian-Muslim women (Boose
2002; Diken & Lausten 2005)
The documentary Calling the Ghosts: A Story about Rape, War and
Women (Jacobson & Jelincic 1996) was perhaps the first filmic attempt
to evaluate rape during the Bosnian conflict. The film gives a personal
account of two women from the Bosnian town of Prijedor. Jadranka
Cigeli and Nusreta Sivac, childhood friends who both worked as law-
yers, were taken to a Serb concentration camp at the beginning of the
conflict. Like all other Muslim and Croat women interned there, Cigelj
and Sivac were systematically sexually abused and humiliated by their
captors. Once released, they became human rights activists who tire-
lessly lobbied the UN tribunal at The Hague to define rape as a war
crime. Despite sporadic mentions in academic research focused on

gender relations during the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Sivac’s
and Cigelj’s brave public appearance passed almost unnoticed in Bosnia
and in the rest of the Western Balkans.
The reason for this ‘ignorance’ lies in the fact that the end of the
Bosnian war drew a veil of silence over this socially sensitive issue.
In the case of the Bosnian government, for instance, the suffering of
women had ceased to be a ‘politically current commodity’ (Stojic 2006,
np). For Bosnian society in general, significantly influenced by the
nationalist preaching that favoured the return of patriarchy over gender
equality, an insistence on keeping the issue of rape in the public arena
was unacceptable. The visibility of victims would be a reminder of the
inability of Bosnian men to defend their women/nation. The dominant
discourse of Bosnian society leaves women, their stories and the after-
math of war crimes as parts of private spheres of pain, despite the extent
to which it occurred—so extensive as to be ‘common’ (Erceg 2006, np).
In July 2005, almost a decade after the end of the conflict in Bosnia,
I witnessed the rage of a Bosnian man from Adelaide in Australia,
revolted by a female peace activist who mentioned raped women in an
address dedicated to the genocide of Bosnian boys and men in a town of
Srebrenica. ‘What is this stupid cow talking about? Why does she have
to talk about it? It’s not her business anyway’. The angry man’s comment
was loud enough to be heard by many who attended the commemora-
tion. The woman on the stage was unable to understand his anger. She
was, as the mainstream media in Australia would have described her, an
Australian with Middle-Eastern appearance, unable to speak or under-
stand the Bosnian variant of South Slavic languages. She continued her
speech while the man kept quiet for the rest of the lecture. The section
on the mass rape of Bosnian women was read anyway, and further sen-
tences in the address were related to the suffering of Bosnian Muslims in
general. But this man’s anger has stayed with me, haunting the erasures
and complexities of sexual violence during the Bosnian conflict. His fury
exemplifies vilification, bigotry, ignorance and unfettered rage—element
which are at the core of any war.
Seven months later, in February 2006, the angry man and probably
the majority of the people around the world who once called Bosnian
cities, towns and villages their homes, had the chance to read, see
or hear narratives with a focus on the victims and survivors of war
rape. The media in its multiple forms suddenly turned its attention
to the topic that the man at the rally had not wanted to hear. The
news came from Germany that the film Grbavica, the feature debut of
young writer-director Jasmila Zbanic, was announced as a winner of the

Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival (BFF). Short, agency-style
news proclaimed Zbanic’s film as the great discovery of the BFF 2006. In
addition to the Golden Bear, Grbavica was awarded with the BFF’s Peace
Film Award and with the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury—two awards
that go beyond the aesthetics of film and whose focus is on cinematic
promotion of human rights. The announcement was followed by a
brief synopsis of the film, which described Grbavica as a moving drama
which depicted the disturbing social and psychological aftermath for a
fictional woman named Esma living in present day Sarajevo who has
been the victim of war rape during the conflict in Bosnia. The news
concluded by commenting on Zbanic’s speech during the award cer-
emony, where she called for the capture of Ratko Mladic and Radovan
Karadzic because of their involvement in the tragedy of women that her
film talks about.
In Bosnia, immediately after the news from Berlin, Jasmila Zbanic
became a national hero. The audience reception of the film was euphoric
(Stojic 2006). In less than a month, more than 180,000 Bosnians saw
Zbanic’s film. It was a decent number of moviegoers for a country of
not more than four million residents. The surprise is even greater if one
knows that an illegal DVD copy of Grbavica started circulating on the
black street market simultaneously with the screening of Zbanic’s film
throughout cinema theatres.
Nevertheless, the national euphoria posed a paradox: Bosnian
citizens celebrated the success of a film that admonished them for
a trauma embodied in real victims who lived around them. Only a
year earlier, when Grbavica had been in the pre-production phase,
the Bosnian nationalist eliten represented by the right-wing intel-
lectual, essayist, and occasionally professional politician, Fatmir
Alispahic (2005, np), questioned Zbanic’s decision to offer Mirjana
Karanovic a main role in film. The ‘argument’ was about the ‘immo-
rality’ of choosing a Serbian actress to play a Bosnian rape victim.
‘By choosing that wench from Belgrade [Karanovic], Jasmila Zbanic
humiliated all raped Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] women’ (Alispahic
2005, np). After the award for Grbavica in Berlin and Zbanic’s speech,
Alispahic suddenly forgot his hostile stance toward Zbanic. Now he
praised Zbanic by proclaiming that Grbavica’s director had outgrown
the earthly life and had stepped into a heavenly realm. ‘It was God’s
will that provided her [Zbanic] with the festival star status and gave
her the opportunity to express her patriotic and humanitarian pride’
(Alispahic 2006, np).
During the initial weeks of screening throughout Bosnian cinemas in

February and March 2006, several non-governmental organisations col-
lected 50,000 signatures for a petition that asked for the constitutional
recognition of raped women. Most of the signatures were collected in
front of the film theatres where Grbavica was screened. Soon after, in June
2006, the Federal Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina adopted the relevant
legislation. Ironically, it seemed that democratic representatives of the
Bosnian State needed to ‘see’ a survivor of sexual violence on the cin-
ema screen before they accepted her existence and legally protected her
according to already established minimum standards of human rights.
Even if it had not been a powerful inspiration and driving force
behind the legislative change that acknowledged raped women as the
civilian victims of war, Grbavica would still have played an important
social, political and cultural role. On one hand, Zbanic’s feature debut
was a powerful, universal anti-war voice that dealt with lasting trauma
to the psyche of war survivors, and, on the other hand, it provided a
critical approach to gender relations in a post-war society dominated by
nationalist discourse.
While Grbavica was a surprising culmination, women’s experience
of war-related trauma had been of great interest for Zbanic since the
beginning of her career. In April 1992, as a seventeen-year old teenager
from Sarajevo, according to her own testimony, Zbanic was childishly
happy during the first days of the conflict as it meant, ultimately, the
cancellation of a fearful maths test (cited in Gonc 2008, p. 11). The
death and destruction that soon followed would change perceptions of
what was fearful, not only for the teenage Zbanic. In the midst of war,
in 1993, she enrolled in the Academy of Performing Arts at the Sarajevo
University. Zbanic depicts her first two years at the university as
‘absurd’, as her department did not have electricity or a functional cin-
ema. ‘We actually studied by imagining films’ (Zbanic, cited in Brooks
2007, np). Eventually, the light returned to Sarajevo in December 1995,
and in 1997 Zbanic first appeared to the public as a director with the
documentary video Poslije, Poslije/After,
/ After. The video focused on
the autistic world of a girl traumatised by war, who, once war finishes,
begins attending the school and re-socialising, while the symptoms of
her trauma still remain. A brief dialogue at the very end of the video
represents the most terrifying and the most painful picture of war
trauma. To Zbanic’s question: ‘Do you have any wishes? What do you
wish?’ the girl is silent for a while and then answers: ‘Nothing’.
In her second documentary film, Crvene Gumene Cizmice/Red Rubber
Boots (2000), Zbanic begins to follow a team of forensic experts
exhuming mass graves in their search for the remains of war victims.
Her camera soon focuses on a young woman. She is the mother of two
missing children who is searching for a pair of red rubber boots that
are the only thing belonging to one of her children she could recognise
among other human remains. In the end, the boots are not found.
Unlike many other filmmakers engaged in the grim topic of mass graves
in Bosnia, Zbanic remains almost completely distant from the ‘porno-
graphic’ fascination with the piles of human remains. A few years later,
in Grbavica, Zbanic avoided altogether visualising the rape that was the
initial cause of the ongoing trauma of the film’s main protagonist.
In 2003, while directing the short documentary film Images from the
Corner,r Zbanic for the first time had a chance to work with a 35mm
film camera. The film focuses on the experience of a girl named Biljana,
who is also Zbanic’s childhood friend. In 1992, Biljana was wounded
by some of the first bombs that fell on her neighbourhood. Due to the
scale of her injuries, one of her arms had to be amputated. Nevertheless,
Zbanic refused to reiterate the bloody scene. She even declined to use
the actual photos of Biljana taken the moment after the bomb’s shrap-
nel hit her. Instead, Zbanic decided to focus a fixed camera on the now
empty pavement where the incident happened. The emptiness of this
long, static shot was filled with the external sound that resonated with
the clicking and changing of film rolls on a photo camera. That was,
as explained later in the film, Zbanic’s ‘homage’ to the French photo-
journalist who happened to be on site and who, instead of helping the
wounded girl, decided to shoot, very professionally, the bloody scene,
for which he used three rolls of film.
Images from the Cornerr marked the beginning of Zbanic’s professional
affiliation with Austrian cinematographer Christine A. Maier. The two
young women first met in Sarajevo in 1995. Together with Barbara
Albert, a fellow film student from Vienna, Maier arrived in Sarajevo
with the ambition of documenting the aftermath of war in Bosnia and
its wider meaning for Europe (British Film Institute 2007, np). It was,
while searching for young Bosnians for their student film that Maier
and Albert met Zbanic for the first time. In the decade that followed,
all three of them left a significant mark on cinema. Albert founded a
production company in 1999. With Maier as the cinematographer, she
directed Northern Skirts—a film presented at the Venice Film Festival
in 1999. Maier also has become a well-respected name in European
cinematography. Eleven years later, Grbavica’s producer Barbara Albert,
Grbavica’s cinematographer Christine A. Maier, and Grbavica’s writer/
director Jasmila Zbanic stood proudly together on the central stage of
the 2006 Berlin Film Festival. In the years to come, the professional
connection of these three women would surpass the success of Grbavica.5
The success of Grbavica did not come suddenly and from nowhere.
On her own, Zbanic developed the script over a few years. By 2002,
she had done sufficient work on Grbavica that the project was admitted
to a Berlin Film Festival programme called Pitching Point—an event
at which young filmmakers present projects to seasoned professionals
and are offered feedback and guidance. In 2005, Zbanic was awarded
$15,000 by the Balkan Script Development Fund of the Thessaloniki
International Film Festival. The prize provided Zbanic with the ini-
tial fund for her film that later became an Austrian (forty per cent),
Bosnian (twenty-six per cent), German (twenty-three per cent), and
Croatian (eleven per cent) production with a budget of $700,000. ‘We
believed in this strong and passionate European project,’ says Roland
Teichmann (cited in the British Film Institute 2007, np), the director
of the Austrian Film Institute. He explains further the decision on the
behalf of the Austrian Film Institute to financially support a film with
a ‘Balkan’ topic, and in which actors speak a South Slavic language. For
Teichmann, Grbavica is:
about contemporary life in Europe, where we live, about the wounds

of war and the desire to know where we come from. The film tells
European history that needed to be told and seen. It is political but,
above all, human.
(cited in British Film Institute 2007, np)
Furthermore, the cast Zbanic chose underlined Grbavica’s cosmopolitan

composition. The leading actress, Mirjana Karanovic, is a well-known
Serbian theatre and film actress who debuted on the large screen as
young Petria in the previously mentioned film Petria’s Wreath. The most
prominent male role in the film was given to Croatian actor Leon Lucev.
The rest of the cast reflected the multiethnic nature of Bosnian society.
In an imagined democratic society, this information would be irrelevant
or taken for granted. However, in the context of contemporary Western
Balkans, where the overarching nationalist agenda prevails in insisting
on the distinct self,
f the idea of imagining, having and succeeding with
a multicultural project deserves particular attention.
From the director/writer, cinematographer and producer to the
leading-role actors, all the primary participants behind Grbavica were
women. For this reason, and because the film’s narrative depicts every-
day life for marginalised women in a post-war society, Grbavica could be
labelled a feminist project. The linkage of women’s issues to the prob-

lems that other subordinated groups face make its feminist tendencies
multifaceted; feminism is not just about women nor is it ‘simply’ against
men (Chaunduri 2006, p. 4). Rather, as Zizek argues, what is happen-
ing to women is a ‘symptom or signal that tells us something about
what’s wrong with the entirety of society’ (cited in Henwood 2002).
In Grbavica, Zbanic refuses to unify one particular gender against (an)
other(s). At the same time, however, she insists on the almost unbear-
able position of a particular group of women in the Western Balkans.
There are several reasons for Zbanic or any other artist with a feminist
agenda to avoid a one-dimensional representation of a particular gen-
der. Judith Butler (2004a, p. 41), for instance, warns about the ‘fore-
closure of alterity’ that can take place in the name of feminism. Butler
provides an example of what she terms the ‘feminist conversion’ on the
part of the US government under George W. Bush’s leadership, which
‘retroactively transformed the liberation of women into a rationale for
its military action against Afghanistan’ (p. 41). Under such circum-
stances, feminism becomes a theoretical trope of cultural and imperial-
ist exploitation.
Shifting Butler’s concern for the macro/micro level of politics to the
territories of former Yugoslavia, there is evidence of attempting to hide
a rigid nationalism ‘under the guise of feminism’ (Boose 2002, p. 72).
There are certain elements in contemporary Bosnian (Muslim) insti-
tutional power which may ‘experience’ and promote Zbanic’s film as
‘one avenue for entering into oneness with one’s group’ (Danto 1999,
p. 134). However, if they want to be honest with themselves and avoid
getting caught in proclaiming a blatant lie, the Bosnian-Muslim nation-
alists should never use Grbavica for the purpose of promoting their
political agendas. Grbavica’s narrative says nothing that the Bosnian-
Muslim nationalist elite should be proud of. Together with the main
story about the destiny of a war-raped woman, Grbavica gives a realistic
portrayal of contemporary Bosnia. Zbanic sees and depicts Bosnia as a
society of depression, difficult life, criminality and dreams of escaping
from such realities. In Grbavica, the masters in peacetime are identical
to those who ruled during the war.
The film’s name, Grbavica, has a twofold meaning. Grbavica is the
name of the Sarajevan suburb where Zbanic’s characters live, but she
finds the real meaning of the word in the etymological dictionary of
South Slavic language(s), which describes the word grbavica as ‘woman
with a hump’. This etymon is the key to her story. While Grbavica’s nar-
rative offers a palette of interesting and moving characters, the core of
the story follows a complex relationship between the sole parent Esma
and her twelve-year-old daughter Sara. Esma is a quiet person, obligated
to work hard to provide a decent lifestyle for herself and her daughter.
She earns some money by sewing at home and some by working as a
waitress in a nightclub. A little money also comes from the centre for
traumatised women that Esma visits on a regular basis. Her daughter
Sara lives in the belief that her father is a fallen Bosnian war hero whose
body was left on the battlefield and never recovered.
In contrast to her quiet mother, Sara is a tomboy pre-teen girl, will-
ing to play tough soccer games and fight with boys. The news about
an extended school trip upsets Sara’s emotions. The long-desired and
awaited school trip has had an iconic status among primary school
students in Sarajevo for many generations. For the first time in their
lives children are allowed to travel without parents. It is the first sign of
freedom, of being an adult, of becoming independent. When the school
offers to take pupils on the trip free of charge if they can prove they are
the children of the fallen Bosnian soldiers by bringing in a certificate,
Sara is even more excited. Isn’t she a child of a war martyr!? However,
when Sara asks her mother for the certificate Esma keeps avoiding the
issue. Gradually, Zbanic allows the viewer to find out that Esma was
repeatedly raped during the war and Sara is the consequence of that
very crime. In the end Grbavica offers hope, but does not promise happy
conclusions.
In terms of time, the narrative of Grbavica is set in contemporary
Sarajevo. The year is 2004 and the month is December. Although
this timeframe is not expressed with any obvious signifier, the South
Slavic-speaking audience of Grbavica at one stage was able to hear the
broadcast on the radio in Esma’s apartment which announced the
death of Susan Sontag,6 which orients the film to December 2004. Quite
discretely, Zbanic uses Sontag’s death to frame Grbavica in a particular
time. Moreover, she gives a symbolic homage to the artist and intel-
lectual who visited Sarajevo on two occasions during the war. In both
instances, Sontag used her role as a prominent public intellectual to
ask for a multilateral military intervention that would eventually break
the siege of the city and stop the Bosnian conflict.7 In 1993, during a
prolonged stay in Sarajevo, Sontag directed Samuel Becket’s Waiting for
Godot. Although, like Godot in Becket’s classic, the intervention that
would stop the war did not appear in 1993.
Images of Sarajevo are omnipresent in Grbavica. Throughout the
entire film, the camera constantly catches glimpses of the city’s streets
and buildings. It is a picture of a partly destroyed city that can be
read as a metaphor for the emotional wellbeing of its citizens. The

usage of Sarajevo and its winter as a ‘supporting actor’ fits intelli-
gently as a metaphor for Esma’s psychological condition. The winters
in the narrow valley where Sarajevo is built are cold, and a mixture
of dirty snow, fog and smog covers the city for three months every
year. The heavy fog creates the sense that humans and buildings are
unapproachable and cold. This natural lighting makes the colours of
the city more bleak and distant. Certainly, besides Esma’s emotional
scramble, Sarajevo’s winter is also a powerful symbol for the society’s
frigidity towards her concerns. Towards the end of the film, where
Zbanic’s narrative offers a certain level of hope to Esma and Sara,
spring is approaching and the background suddenly becomes green
while buildings ‘lose’ their uniformity. Their greyness is now tinted
with bright yellow, green and blue.
Sarajevo’s winter and the richness of the South Slavic languages are
not the only metaphors in Grbavica. For the first forty seconds of the
long, uncut opening scene in the film, the camera slowly moves from
a close-up of a colourful hand-made rug, typical of Bosnia, to a single,
human hand. Before we are able to see any faces, the camera focuses on
motionless, pale hands placed on female torsos. At a certain point, but
not before slowly rolling over a few weathered faces, the camera remains
on Esma. Unmoving, peaceful hands followed by female, sleepy, calm
faces urge us to remember those persons, to ask ourselves who they
are and why they are sitting so close to each other. Later in the film,
the audience learns that these women are part of a group counselling
session for war-traumatised women. With this strong, visceral opening
shot, we as observers suddenly realise that this is not a singular story.
Grbavica may be a common story for any of these women, their shared
past, gloomy present and uncertain future—the lowest and most tragic
of common denominators.
The impressive first scene fades from Esma’s face to a completely
white frame that lasts for a few seconds before a rough cut into the
second scene that takes us into the noisy night club ‘America’ where
Esma goes to ask for a job as a waitress. Zbanic makes, and wants us to
see, the dramatic contrast between the centre for traumatised women
that has healing power, and the culture of a nightclub that constantly
reminds Esma of the torture that she endured. The centre is an oasis
where the survivors of war rape get emotional, and occasionally finan-
cial, help that is mostly provided by international women’s organisa-
tions. ‘America’ is, however, the most offensive form of capitalism in
Bosnia. The nightclub is a metaphor for the power of men and money
and the fact that women are seen merely as objects. They may not be
literal slaves of capital, but men treat them that way.
Grbavica is free from the external sound track that most filmmakers
use for heightening the dramatic moments in a film, or to support the
pace and movement of filmed bodies. The sources of sound in Grbavica
are completely diegetic, yet music and songs play a very important
role in Zbanic’s film. A female patient from the therapy centre sings
Ilahijas—calm, sensible songs dedicated to God and love—when she
wants to express her or other women’s feelings. In contrast with the
calmness of Ilahijas, the rhythm and vulgar artlessness of ‘turbo-folk’
music performed live in the nightclub where Esma works, makes us feel
desolate and aware of the absurdity to which Esma is bound by the rules
of neo-capitalism. Turbo-folk is a music genre that is the mixture of fast
computer produced beats and traditional folk songs from the Western
Balkans. It is particularly popular in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia and such
music is commonly linked with the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, crimi-
nals and machismo.8 In the 1990s, the connection between turbo-folk
and thugs in the Balkans culminated in the marriage of a notorious war
criminal to a leading female turbo-folk star.
In ‘America’ the audience also meets a real villain. In a film without
any grotesque scenes of violence, but with a certain level of unconscious
freedom to foresee the fury in human behaviour, an explicit represen-
tation of a bad guy and potential rapist is Puska (translated in English
as gun or rifle)—a Mafia-style Bosnian businessman and former com-
mander in the Bosnian Army. Puska is the personification of Sarajevo’s
new elite that Bosnian nationalism brought to the surface. He proudly
represents himself as a Bosnian patriot by wearing a golden lily, a
national symbol of the Bosnian independent state, on a kitschy, large
chain around his neck.
For doing ‘business’, on two occasions, Puska chooses a safe location
with the new mosque in the background that stands in front of a large
complex of tall and gray apartments built in the socialist era for the
working class. As the only clearly recognisable Sarajevo building in the
entire film, the new mosque symbolises a marker of the ‘new Islamic’
borders and the political impact of religious institutions in a divided
Bosnian society. Perceived and treated as the ‘opiate of the people’
under the Communist regime, religious institutions were, for forty
years, pushed back from public places. Equally, with the rise of a nation-
alist ideology that suppressed Communism, ‘religious institutions have
gained political influence and have become permanently engaged with
the state’s power structures’ (Djordjevic 2006).
As was the case during the general awakeningg of a nationalist sen-

sibility among ethnic communities, religious institutions were sup-
portive of the old/new ethno-national projects designed to define the
roles of women in society. In such a society, women will be glorified,
but only in their role as mothers. The Serbian Orthodox and Croatian
Catholic churches, furthermore, treated women as ‘demographic reserv-
ists’ (Kesic 2002, p. 313). For their own religious and national goals,
Bosnian-Islamic institutions began to preach a role for women as breed-
ers of the nation. Ugresic (1998) quotes one Muslim spiritual leader who
proclaimed a fatwa, saying: ‘I have told my Muslim women: a minimum
of five children! Two for themselves, three for Bosnia!’ (p. 122). With
the prescribed role of mother, the woman is a ‘boundary-marker for
male-defined collective ethnic identity, and only enjoys her ethnicity as
long as she remains inside and adheres to the boundaries of ethnicity as
assessed by male ethnic leaders’ (Handrahan 2004, p. 438).
For the sake of border-building and its maintenance, all affordable
‘materials’ were appreciated, and even the bodies of women had sig-
nificance. During the ethnic conflict, Handrahan (2004) argues, scars
left on a female body represented expansion of ‘ethnic territory by the
male conqueror’ (p. 437). In one scene, while alone at her apartment,
Esma exposes her back to the audience, showing the marks of torture
stemming from when she was held in detention and raped. These marks
are not only a constant reminder for the victims of what they went
through, but also a message of humiliation for their fathers, brothers
and husbands.
A rudimentary patriarchal norm obliges man to protect his women
because they belong to him (Hromadzic 2002). Instead of protecting
them, this norm made women in Bosnia even more vulnerable during
the time of conflict. Boose (2002) summarises the relationship between
rape, patriarchy and the vulnerability of cultural identity by saying that:
despite its substitution of the targeted victim, it works to commen-

surate reciprocation, and it works precisely because, in constructing
women’s bodies as property signifying the honor of the male com-
munity, patriarchal culture has produced the equation that makes this
substitution possible. Through the tactical deployment of rape, Serb
aggressions during the Yugoslav wars made visible a bitter irony inher-
ent in the relationship among rape, patriarchy, and the vulnerability
of a culture to the devastation of its identity: the more patriarchal the
culture, the more vulnerable it becomes, because all the more likely
are the women within it to become targets for enemy rape. (pp. 93–94)
When the sexual violence over women is understood as a relevant

strategy for damaging the masculinity of the enemy’s men, women’s
bodies turn into a ‘communication device’ with a message that the
(male) enemy is weak, feminine, and consequently humiliated.
Once patriarchal norms among ethnic communities in the Western
Balkans are considered, the rage of the Bosnian man, as I described earlier
in this chapter, is more understandable. Bosnian women raped by Serbian
men are a constant reminder of the Serbs’ dominance and the incapabil-
ity of Bosnian men to protect their women or, better to say, property.
However, many Bosnian men, as well as men from other nationalities
in the Western Balkans, did not perceive or treat women as their prop-
erty. In Grbavica, Zbanic portrays a man indifferent to either patriarchal
or macho behaviour in the well-developed character Pelda, who works
as the bouncer in the nightclub ‘America’. The audience gets to know
that he studied Business at Sarajevo University before the war. He is
the only man Esma believes to some degree. Gradually, they develop
a friendship that could lead to a romance. Just before the film’s cli-
max, Pelda tells Esma he is leaving Sarajevo for good and will move to
Austria. To some degree, his decision to move to another country could
be understood as his final defeat, his incompetence in dealing with his
surroundings. Esma, in contrast, is destined to stay in Sarajevo. It is,
therefore, the women who take the burden of struggle for socio-cultural
justice in the Western Balkans. The character of Pelda is yet another
reminder that universal cannot be reached without plurality and there-
fore the man from the Balkans is multifaceted. Nevertheless, Grbavica is
first and foremost a narrative about women.
Besides Esma and Sara, Grbavica offers a significant number of female
characters. Sabina is a factory worker and Esma’s best friend. She is an
energetic and straightforward person who will not give up easily on
the challenge of life, regardless of the circumstances. On two occasions
the audience gets inside the shoe factory’s interior where Sabina works
and where all the workers are women. Jabolka is a sex worker from
the Ukraine and Esma becomes friendly with her in ‘America’, where
both women work. In one scene, the audience is introduced to Pelda’s
mother—a mentally ill woman who believes that the war is not over
and Sarajevans are still receiving food through the United Nations’
humanitarian program. Also, through three arresting scenes, the viewer
is able to remember the faces of unnamed women in the recovery cen-
tre and possibly to foresee their stories and destinies. With Esma as the
primary focus, Zbanic manages to provide a notable focus on feminine
workers and underclass inhabitants of Sarajevo.
What all these women have in common is their low status in the
existing power and social structures in contemporary Bosnian society.
On her only date with her co-worker Pelda, Esma tells him that before
the war she was a medical student at Sarajevo University—in post-war
Bosnia, a potential doctor of medicine works as a waitress in the bar
owned by a man who made a fortune through illegal food transactions
during the war in besieged Sarajevo.
In their first encounter, Jabolka says to Esma that being a Bosnian
woman is unfortunate—indeed, as hard as it is to be a woman in the
Ukraine. Unsaid explicitly in the film, but very imaginable for those
who have a basic knowledge of the sexual enslavement of women
from Eastern Europe, Jabolka may very possibly be a victim of human
trafficking. Sexual enslavement of women from the old Eastern Block
countries is common and Bosnia is on the route towards their further
destinations in Western European countries. In Grbavica, Jabolka’s des-
tiny moves in just such a direction. In the first two nightclub scenes
where she appears, Jabolka plays a sex-doll role for the Bosnian (crimi-
nal) elite. The last time we see Jabolka, her body is again an object of
raw and uncontrolled sexual desire. This time the only difference is the
man’s nationality. He is a drunken German soldier, a member of the
West-European peacekeeping force in Bosnia.
As is the case for the male characters in Grbavica, Zbanic refuses to give
one-dimensional portraits of women. In Bosnia-Herzegovina and the for-
mer Yugoslavia in general, nationalism and its turn to the hard-core tradi-
tional dogmas were not only men’s business. A moderate follower of the
Yugoslavian breakup, furthermore, might remember statements about
the ‘willingness to sacrifice one million Serbs for the creation of Greater
Serbia’ and ‘Serb babies thrown to lions in the zoo by the Islamists in
Sarajevo’—lines provided by Biljana Plavsic. During the war, she was a
deputy of Radovan Karadzic—a political leader of Bosnian Serbs.
Allen (2002, pp. 778–779) also writes about the difficulties she had
with a group of Croatian nationalist feminists during her stay in Bosnia
and Croatia in the 1990s. Across the border, in Bosnia, a Bosnian-
Muslim female attorney believes that the ‘fervent nationalism’ on
behalf of some Croatian feminists was caused by the fact that none of
them was a mother (Allen 2002, p. 779). For this educated, middle-class
Bosnian woman, being a mother is the prerequisite to being a perceptive
woman, ethically speaking. I imagine she also meant that women need
to get married before having children.
Aunt Safija, Esma’s only relative in Grbavica, remembers Esma’s late
mother and her sister: ‘Your mother thought you would be a doctor and
get married. She wanted a grandchild so much, but [Safija sighs] maybe
it’s good she didn’t live to see this one’. ‘This one’ is Sara—a child pre-
sumably not good enough to be loved by a grandparent. With ‘this one’,
Safija blatantly belittles Esma’s fate by directly indicating the way in
which Sara was conceived. As she is dressed in a robe typically designed
for a neo-rich Bosnian woman who insists on her distinct religious
(Muslim) identity, the viewer may assume that Safija is a financially
well-off person. However, the moment in the ‘Aunt scene’ when Safija
offers a bag of cheap confectioner’s candy, instead of the small amount
of money Esma requested for Sara’s school trip with a promise to return
it as soon as possible, is one of the most expressive ways of represent-
ing the inhumanity of the Bosnian-Muslim neo-rich elite towards the
genuine victims of war who live around them and with whom they rub
shoulders on a regular basis. In the end, 200 Euros, which Esma needs
for Sara’s school trip, is found somewhere else. The money is collected
through a group effort by female workers from the shoe factory where
Esma’s friend Sabina works.
Yet, the money that Esma brings to school to pay for Sara’s trip par-
tially clears some of the doubts about the girl’s knowledge about her
father. He was certainly not a member of the Bosnian Army and a mar-
tyr. Offspring of such fathers do not pay for a school trip. In a revolt-
ing scene that follows, Sara forces her mother to reveal the truth about
her father’s true identity. ‘You’re Chetniks’ bastard,’ says Esma, finally.
She is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She beats Sara. Sara cries
hysterically. ‘I’m not, I’m not’, she repeats through the uncontrolled
sobs. A rough cut follows. Esma is now in the trauma centre. She sobs.
A woman next to her with a divine voice sings an Ilahi9 song. After the
song is finished, Esma begins to talk. Sara, meanwhile, is at home alone.
She is in front of the mirror. She is shaving her head.
Nearly every time I read a review about Grbavica, I encounter a cer-
tain paradox. Most film critics in newspapers and popular magazines
stress that the film avoids the trap of being a ‘tear-jerking’ sentimental
melodrama, and praise Zbanic’s ability to depict the main characters
as humans without unnecessary ‘heavenly’ innocence or unneces-
sary and inappropriate victimisation. True, Esma regularly visits the
women’s centre, but not only for much needed therapy—also to get
the small amount of money provided to traumatised victims of war.
Esma does not hesitate to slap Sara over the face at moments when the
girl disobeys or shows a level of resistance to her. Sara is also not the
personification of a beautiful little girl with curly blond hair and big
innocent eyes. Rather, she is a rebellious child who bullies other girls in
school as a preventive, self-protecting measure. Yet, from the reports on

Grbavica’s premieres, from Berlin, Sarajevo and Belgrade to London and
Rotterdam, I read about audiences who cry, regardless of gender, and
standing ovations for the film’s protagonists.
There is one emotionally strong moment at the end of film in which
Esma publicly testifies about her suffering. For the first time in her life,
she speaks openly about her ordeal in the concentration camps where
she was systematically raped and kept locked up until an abortion was
impossible. Through an evocative monologue, Esma explains how she
boundlessly loves her child, even if that child is not the consequence of
love and happiness, but rather the product of violence and humiliation.
Sara’s exhausted mother explains that this child is the only beautiful
thing in her ugly and worthless existence. At this climatic moment in
the film, Esma’s long-suppressed emotions explode in an uncontrolled
eruption of feelings that the viewer identifies with. A bodily link is
formed between Esma’s character and bodies in the audience. With the
public confession that Sara is the consequence of a horrifying rape, Esma
begins an elaboration of her personal trauma. A viewer in the darkness of
the cinema feels and lives the pain of the hump-backed woman.
In the last scene, Esma accompanies her daughter to the bus stop. The
bus filled with excited children soon departs. Esma stays behind and
waves in the direction of the bus. Suddenly, the audience is able to rec-
ognise that spring has arrived in Sarajevo. The background behind Esma
is full of bright colours. It seems that Sarajevo’s winter has finally gone.
Yet, the very last shot in Grbavica is reserved for Sara. Inside a moving
bus, the audience sees her engaged in a friendly chat with another girl.
At that moment, other children begin to sing a still-popular song from
the 1970s, Sarajevo, My Love. The credits start to roll when Sara accepts
the song’s rhyme. She is smiling as the word ‘love’ passes her lips.
Post-Yugoslavia: a woman to come
Zbanic’s reference to alleged war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan

Karadzic in Berlin caused an unofficial ban on her film in the Serb
Republic—the Serb-governed political entity within post-war Bosnia-
Herzegovina. The AFP news agency cited Vlado Ljevar, the owner of
the only film distributor in the Serb Republic, who said that he decided
to block the film’s theatrical availability because of a possible revolt
from the Serb population after Zbanic’s speech in Berlin, and because
of a general lack of interest in the movie. According to Ljevar, a film-
maker should distance themselves from politics: ‘She is an artist and it
is not her job to arrest war crimes suspects’ (cited in Coop99-Grbavica
2006). However, while Grbavica was banned from cinemas in the Serb
Republic, Zbanic’s film was screened with full honours in the Serbian
capital Belgrade, at the end of the most important international film
festival (FEST)10 in Serbia, only a few weeks after its world premiere in
Berlin.
The screening took place in the festival’s main theatre. Its size enabled
more than 2,000 audience-members to see the film. According to the
media, a small group of youths from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS),11
dressed in t-shirts with pictures of Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and
Vojislav Seselj, tried to disrupt the projection by shouting ‘Serbia’ and
‘traitors’. This group, however, was quickly ejected. A standing ova-
tion that lasted a few minutes was the only reaction after the credits
started to roll and the director and lead actors arrived on stage. Zbanic
approached the audience, saying: ‘I hope that this screening of Grbavica
in Belgrade is the beginning of the closing of a circle, because the foun-
dation of this scenario was practically written here’ (cited in Jevic 2006).
Again, as had been the case in Berlin, Zbanic used the theatrical stage
and the focus of the media to express her political message to the world.
The audience followed her words with applause ( Jevic 2006). Still, the
strongest applause of the night was for Mirjana Karanovic. Somehow,
the screening in Belgrade did justice to this remarkable actress who,
since Grbavica’s premiere in Berlin, had been accused by the tabloid
press and right-wing politicians in Serbia of supporting ‘anti-Serbian
propaganda’ for her involvement in the film.12
Belgrade-based film critic Vladisava Vojnovic (2006) insists that
Zbanic’s remarks after the screening were unnecessary because the
majority of moviegoers on that night already knew the order of events
that inspired Zbanic to write and direct Grbavica. It might be true if one
supposes that the audience for the projection in Belgrade was a mixture
of open-minded filmgoers, artists and human rights activists whose
long-lasting struggle for human rights and peace in Serbia sometimes
seemed like Don Quixote’s battle against windmills.
One of the strongest pacifist Serbian voices comes from Women in
Black, an anti-war feminist organisation, who stood every Wednesday
morning on a square in Belgrade to protest silently against the war
in Bosnia. Very often they were abused and ridiculed by Belgrade’s
residents who disagreed with their anti-war stance (Milojevic 2003,
p. 29). Serbian film director Srdjan Dragojevic further humiliates these
women (and men to a lesser degree) in his highly praised film Pretty
Village, Pretty Flame (1996),13 by briefly presenting them as physically
unattractive people, insensitive to the suffering of their own (Serbian)
people. However, despite all the humiliation, Women in Black came out
onto the square every Wednesday until the war stopped. And they were
again on the street when the new conflict began in Kosovo in 1999.
Their protest did not exclusively stay silently on the street. Among
many anti-war statements, in October 1994, Women in Black wrote:
Women will remember; women are telling each other stories of the real-
ity we live in and we are witnesses of many crimes for which this regime
is responsible. Women, our friends from all parts and states of the for-
mer Yugoslavia are still telling us about the suffering they went through-
out and what is happening to them now. Nationalism didn’t separate all
of us; a stream of trust still exists between women of all names.
(cited in Mladjenovic & Hughes 1999, np)
There is a strong symbolic connection between this statement and the

extended scene in Grbavica, where Esma manages to collect money for
Sara’s school trip. The camera follows Esma’s friend Sabina while she
is collecting money from the manufacturing workers dressed in blue
pinafores. One woman gives ten Euros, one offers five, and another
mimics she is broke. Because of the noise from the factory machines, we
cannot hear the dialogue between Sabina and her co-workers. Instead
we direct our attention instantly to the performers’ faces. The next cut
brings tears of happiness and relief to Esma’s face, as Sabina gives her
the desired amount of money.
The above-mentioned scene skilfully visualises the symbolic celebra-
tion of support and understanding between fellow humans. Besides her
purely artistic engagement in human rights embodied in Grbavica’s nar-
rative, Zbanic uses the film director’s position and media attention to
back practical support for the survivors of war rape. The sexually abused
women organised into the Association of Camp Inmates-Canton Sarajevo
2006 talk with pride about their active participation in the Grbavica pro-
ject. ‘Thirty-four women from the organisation and seventeen of their
children participated in the film’ (The Association of Camp Inmates-
Canton Sarajevo 2006). Slavenka Drakulic (2001), a Croatian intellectual
with an address in New York, who has close professional and personal
contact with women’s associations from Bosnia-Herzegovina, points out
that the rape survivors want justice and their stories to be heard. All of
Zbanic’s public appearances are marked with a call for the improvement
of social and emotional conditions for the survivors of war rape.
Nevertheless, Zbanic, as an artist and filmmaker, is not the sole voice
supporting the struggle of war rape survivors. Long before Grbavica,
human rights activists, medical practitioners and women’s associations

from all over the world were engaged in struggles that supported rape
survivors. However, Grbavica provides such individuals and institutions
with unique power in relation to mainstream society. In Germany, dur-
ing the film’s regular screening, representatives of Medica Mondiale, a
women’s humanitarian organisation whose work with Bosnian victims
of rape significantly inspired Zbanic’s scenes in the therapy centre,
informed the audience about their work with women survivors of
sexual violence in Bosnia and other countries, asking all cinemagoers to
support traumatised women.
In Serbia, after the Grbavica’s screening in Belgrade, Natasa Kandic,
director of the Humanitarian Law Centre, said ‘We have won. War crimes
are no longer a taboo in Serbia’ (cited in Nikolic-Solomon & Katana
2006). In addition, intellectuals such as Sonja Biserko, Vesna Pesic, Natasa
Kandic and many other unknown women and men from Serbia who
stood against war and brutality, are a source of hope that reconciliation
between Serbs and Bosnians is possible. On her own, by choosing the
cast from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, Zbanic explicitly promotes cultural
closeness and pathways for collaborative practices among the Balkan
nations. Together, their example of resistance, solidarity and support for
victims of the ‘other’ nation, suggests to us, as Dimitrijevic (2002) points
out, that ‘no common past is exclusively conflictual’ (p. 250).
With the superb performance in Grbavica, Mirjana Karanovic once
more proved that she is the one of the best living stage and screen
actresses in the Western Balkans. For Esma’s role in Grbavica, Reykjavik
Festival awarded her the prize reserved for the best female actress, while
the European Film Academy nominated Karanovic for the best perfor-
mance award in 2006. But when Karanovic talks about the challenges
of playing Esma’s character, she does not stress her acting. Instead,
Karanovic verbalises the cultural similarities between Bosnian and Serbs
that enabled her to become Esma:
We Serbs and [Bosnian] Muslims are similar to each other, no matter

what people say. I didn’t have to transform my whole personality.
(Karanovic cited in Williams 2006, np)
Despite a strong, emotional scenario with an incredibly important story

to tell, and Zbanic’s apparent directorial abilities, Grbavica is without
doubt one actor’s film. When she accepted the offer to play the char-
acter of Esma, Mirjana Karanovic did not have any ‘national’ dilem-
mas. However, for the prospect of building peace and better cultural
understanding between two nations, it had to be a Serbian actress who

portrayed a Bosnian woman who has surrendered to life’s indignities,
while consciously affirming her existence through small triumphs.
Karanovic helps us to understand Grbavica as a:
film of immensely positive energy; a film about catharsis and it gets

across the noble message that reconciliation and coexistence are pos-
sible. This is a film about opportunities. It’s up to us whether we take
or ignore them.
(cited in Williams 2006, np)
The character of Sara, who in her puberty breaks the barrier of male-
female zones by not allowing anyone to limit her norms of behaviour,
offers one of these opportunities. At one stage in the film, Sara asks her
mother if she resembles her father. Esma tells Sara that she does not
look like her father, and only on Sara’s repeated insistence does she
mention that Sara has her father’s hair. After the truth about her bio-
logical father is revealed, Sara shaves her head as the symbolic break-up
with a violent man. (Figure 5.1)
Figure 5.1 Sara shaves her head (still, Grbavica)

In a patriarchal society, male authority has to be followed regardless

of its ethical stance. But Sara does not want to identify with her ‘father’.
She steps out from the common uncritical worshipping of the father
figure by not identifying with the wrongdoing of her male ancestors. In
her ‘real life’ engagement with a man, Sara succeeds in disarming her
wannabe boyfriend Samir in a moment when he is ready to use his gun
against another boy in school. Demilitarisation of men and their ability
to use weapons against the other, followed by further destabilisation
of patriarchal discourse, is a hope for women and consequently for all
other inhabitants in the territories once called Yugoslavia.
6
Roma: The Other in the Other
The chain of otheringg in the post-Yugoslav territories, according to Zizek

(2000), is heading from the east and south to the west and north. Zizek
begins this ironic chain with the Serbs. Their other(s) are Muslims from
Kosovo and Bosnia. Thus, the Serbs are defenders of the ‘Christian
civilisation against this Europe’s Other’ (Zizek 2000, p. 3). The Croats,
continues Zizek, safeguard Western democratic values from the ‘des-
potic and Byzantine Serbia’ (p. 3). Slovenes, however, watch Croats
carefully as they are considered a threat for ‘peaceful Mitteleuropa’
(Zizek 2000, p. 4). For the Austrians, nevertheless, the people from the
Western Balkans, all together, are the ‘Slavic hordes’ (Zizek 2000, p. 4).
In this chapter, however, I intend to argue that the Roma1 people are
the Other for all post-Yugoslavs, including Slavic Muslims from Bosnia
and Albanians from Kosovo; two of the lowest ranking Others in Zizek’s
sequence.
Despite the extraordinarily strong and continuous interest in Romani
subjects by film artists from the region, the Roma people, in most
cases, are not portrayed outside of a stereotypical representation. The
vast majority of these films, for decades, have persisted with the image
of either a deadly Roma woman or a careless, free-spirited, yet violent
Roma man. The two key films I will discuss here, Gypsy Magic (Popov
1997) and Crna Macka, Beli Macor/Black Cat, White Catt (Kusturica 1998),
are no exception.
Is it possible to say Roma and think Jew?
There are only two significant ethnic groups in the Western Balkans
without a national state: neither Jews nor Roma have ever asked
for a ‘sovereign’ and exclusive homeland on the Balkan Peninsula.
124
Roma: The Other in the Other 125
Yet both groups have been negatively positioned in a never-ending

process of othering humans. Although these two groups have not
threatened the South Slavic and Albanian majorities in any sense,
Jewish and Romani existence somehow challenged their quest for an
exclusive territory.
In the context of the Holocaust and the Porrajmos,2 there were not
many places in Third Reich-controlled Europe where the Nazi ‘final
solution’ policy was so willingly adopted as it was by the puppet fascist
regimes of all provenances in the territories once called Yugoslavia.
The atrocities committed on Jews, Roma and Serbs in Ustasa-controlled
Croatia and Bosnia were so brutal and systematic that even the ‘German
military authorities were appalled’ (Fraser 1992, p. 267).
In occupied Serbia, continues Fraser (1992), the systematic use of

Gypsies as hostages meant that they fell steadily to firing squads
(at the rate of 100 for each German killed by partisans, and 50 for
each German wounded), while others were dispatched by mobile gas-
sing vans in internment camps. By August 1942 Serbia was reported
to be the first country where the Jewish and Gypsy ‘questions’ were
considered to have been ‘solved’. (p. 267)
Later, an almost half-century-long Communist phase in the Western

Balkans saw Jews and Roma protected from mass killing, but there
was only a partial tribute to the victims of the Holocaust in the media
and in works of art. In general, the Yugoslav Communist state did not
succeed in providing an environment where Jewish equality with the
Slavic majority was possible; and the situation for the Roma was even
worse. Even now the disaggregated heirs to Yugoslav national identity
are unhurried in making progress toward equality for these minorities.
The most absurd situation is in Bosnia, where the current Constitution
does not allow Jews, Roma or any other minority groups to become
members of the upper parliament or to hold the post of president.
According to the current Bosnian Constitution, only Bosnian Muslims,
Bosnian Croats or Bosnian Serbs have the right to preside and rule in
a Bosnian government or became a member of the joint presidency.
The sporadic visibility of Roma or Jews in Bosnian political life is pos-
sible only through the mono-national parties that have dominated the
Bosnian political scene since the revival of democracy. Even this oppor-
tunity is partial as only those political parties dominated by Bosnian
Muslims are willing to give up ‘their’ parliamentarian or ministerial
posts in favour of the non-Slavic other.
Unlike the image of Roma which has persisted in Western Balkan

cinematography since its beginning, there is a noticeable lack of Jewish
visibility in films from the same region. In sharp contrast to Western
European cinema and Hollywood, which has produced numerous pic-
tures about the Holocaust, the Jewish tragedy during World War II has
not been a significant topic for Yugoslav filmmakers. However, it would
be more precise to say that Yugoslav cinematography had never been
preoccupied with the Holocaust as only a Jewish experience. Rather, as
was the case in The Scent of Quinces (Idrizovic 1982),3 the Jewish trag-
edy was incorporated into a larger, grand narrative of general suffering
of all nationalities, or members of the Communist party who had led
the antifascist movement. Only a few films were made in which the
Jewish tragedy in Yugoslavia was prominent. Deveti Krug/ g The Ninth
Circle (Stiglic 1960) dealt with a Croatian man who, although reluctant,
decides to help a Jewish girl in a heroic and ultimate self-sacrificing
manner. And with the award winning Okupacija u 26 Slika/Occupation in
26 Scenes (1978), Lordan Zafranovic depicted to the last horrifying detail
the monstrous anti-Semitism in a Croatian coastal city carried out by
the occupying Italian fascist and local Ustasa forces.
The young Kusturica, unknown both in Europe and in former
Yugoslavia, made two features on Holocaust topics. His diploma film,
the twenty-five minute Guernica (1977), based on a novella written by
Antonije Isakovic, followed a Jewish boy who lives in an unnamed city
in central Europe (Iordanova 2002, p. 45). In 1937, the boy sees Picasso’s
famous painting ‘Guernica’ at the Universal Exhibition in Paris for the
first time. In 1941, the boy’s family is taken away and he stays alone
at his home. In an effort to assuage the boy’s fear, the father tells him
that they are leaving for a short period of time, as the Nazis only want
to check their (Jewish) big noses. The father never returns. The anx-
ious boy gathers family photographs, cuts all noses from the pictures,
and reassembles them together in a collage that he calls ‘Guernica’.
According to Iordanova (2002, p. 45), with Guernica, Kusturica won
an award for the best student film at Karlovy Vary in 1977 (Iordanova
2002, p. 45).
Kusturica’s second and, until the present day, last Holocaust focus
was in a television film, Bife Titanik/Buffet Titanicc (1979). Based on Ivo
Andric’s novel of the same title, Buffet Titanicc deals with the gloomy fate
of impoverished pub-owner Mento Papo-Herzika, a Sarajevan Sephardic
Jew. Herzika is an entirely trivial man, interested only in gambling and
drinking. The pub’s guests are similar to Herzika, the city’s lumpenpro-
letariat at its best. When the Nazi and Ustasa forces occupy Sarajevo,
all the guests desert the Titanic, leaving Herzika ostracised and in a deep
panic. As a Jew who has not followed the Judaic tradition, Herzika’s
desperate call for help is even rejected by the local rabbi. Abandoned
and alone, he awaits his destiny in the darkness of his pub. Herzika’s
demise comes when Sarajevan Croat Stjepan, dressed in Ustasa uniform,
enters his pub and begins blackmailing Herzika for money. In the end it
is not money that Stjepan is looking for, but the feeling of domination.
Excited by the power that the uniform gives him, Stjepan will eventu-
ally kill Herzika.
Few Yugoslavian Jews survived the Holocaust. The Jewish Municipality
in Sarajevo, for instance, mentions that less than 3,000 of 12,000
Sarajevan Jews were still alive after World War II (Cengic 1995, p. 176).
Some left Sarajevo before it was occupied by the Nazis and Ustasa.
Some of those who lived to tell the tale survived by participating in the
Communist-led guerrilla resistance. A number of Jews were saved by
those whose names are engraved and memorialised as the ‘righteous’
in the museum Yad Vashen in Jerusalem. Less than a third of those
who survived the war stayed in Sarajevo or elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
The majority left for the ‘Promised Land’, or the United States.
A few months after the 1992–1995 siege of Sarajevo had begun
and after it became obvious that the distress of its inhabitants would
last for an indefinite amount of time, the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC) organised and successfully evacuated
a significant number of the city’s dwellers who, religiously or cultur-
ally, belonged to the oldest monotheism. Together with Jews, the
same humanitarian organisation also helped evacuate a number of
non-Jews (Ceresnjes 2007). This evacuation prevented further physi-
cal and emotional sufferings of many Jews who would, otherwise,
kept facing a forbidding reality of 1992–1995 Sarajevo siege. Even
from the moral perspective, the Jews physical distance from the
Yugoslav conflicts was a correct decision. These wars were fuelled
and led by the democratically chosen South Slavic national elites who
had set their ethnic identities from the beginning, and strongly inter-
linked them with religious practices and the politics of Christianity
(Roman Catholic in Croats and Serb Orthodox churches) and Islam.
People from the Western Balkans who had been following Judaist
teaching and/or have seen themselves as Jews were the constitutional
minority in post-Communist Yugoslavia and had no influence in
creating the political platforms that led from one tragedy to another.
It is important to say here that not all Sarajevan Jews were evacuated
from the besieged city. Some stayed in Sarajevo voluntarily. As broader
empirical research and cultural discussion does not exist, it is impossible

to say precisely what the reasons were for their decisions to remain in
the city. Was it, perhaps, naïve belief that the war would not last long
and everything would be as before? And what if it the main reason for
staying was the strength of emotional bonds with a place? For many
Sephardic Jews, Sarajevo had been home for more than four centuries.
The Ashkenazi had begun arriving in the late 19th century, as bureau-
cratic and business representatives for the new rulers of Bosnia, the
mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even the terrifying experiences and
consequences of the Holocaust did not completely erase the cultural
and bodily existence of Jews in Sarajevo. That is why the last Balkan
wars were not able to eradicate the Jewish presence in Sarajevo. Despite
being inhumane, the 1992–1995 Sarajevo siege was not even close to the
horrors that the Sarajevan Jews had experienced during World War II.
But for whatever reason, Jews persisted in the city.4 In recent years,
Sarajevo’s Jewish Municipality is a vibrant cultural-religious institution.
And Sven Alkalaj, one of the most prominent Bosnian Jews of Sephardic
origins, served as the country’s Foreign Minister from 2007 to 2012.
Although rarely, the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust has never-
theless been acknowledged on the large screen in the Western Balkans.
The Romani Holocaust, Porrajmos, however, r has never been a major
topic of any feature film in the Western Balkans. Furthermore, former
Yugoslav and now post-Yugoslav cinematography has not shown any
enthusiasm for grouping together the Jewish and Romani subjects or
perspectives. Even their shared experience during the Holocaust and the
Porrajmos has not evoked possible connections.
Being (in)active and (in)visible participants in a political sphere is
what differentiates the Romani and Jewish subjects the most. ‘It is for
certain’, argues Dervo Sejdic (2010), an activist in the Roma Council for
Bosnia-Herzegovina, ‘that Roma problems and discriminatory practices
over them are different compared to difficulties that Jews face’ (np).
Sejdic points out the important differences between Jews and Romani
in post-Yugoslav societies:
The Jews are educated, politically organised, and integrated into

Bosnian society. The Jews hold important positions in jurisdictional,
legislative and political power on all levels. There have never been
any Roma in similar positions even though we do have highly-edu-
cated Roma. (Sejdic 2010, np)
For centuries, the Jews and the Romani have been Europe’s ‘ancient
scapegoats’ (Loshitzky 2003, p. 59). Although anti-Semitic sentiment still
exists in Europe, the Jews and Jewishness prevail and, at the moment,
the Roma are Europe’s least belligerent ethnic group (Maryniak 2004,
p. 63). This state of affairs reflects the marginality assigned to, and
forced upon, the Romani people everywhere in Europe. The Western
Balkans is not exempt. In Bosnia, for instance, as the Romanologist
Zarko Papic (2008) argues, ‘Roma are not respected; they are rejected’
(p. 142). In such circumstances, very few want to be related to Roma.
Even the Roma themselves, continues Papic (2008), do not declare
themselves to Roma ‘out of fear and shame’ (p. 142).
Furthermore, apart from a minor tribute to the Jewish victims dur-
ing the Holocaust, the Jewish historical bond to the Western Balkans
and their active participation in its socio-cultural formations have
been of little or no interest to those who imagine, decide, define and
create the art of filmmaking. This fact, on its own, is worth further
inquiry. However, the ubiquitousness of the Romani representa-
tion through filmic pictures is enticing as it, in one way or another,
defines the former Yugoslav and some of the current, post-Yugoslav
cinema(s). Yet, despite their ‘celebrity’ status, many Roma in the
Western Balkans are still ashamed of putting forward their national
and cultural identity. The way in which they are visualised in main-
stream cinema, perhaps, partially explains Romani uneasiness with
their own identity.
The Roma on the Yugoslav cinematic screen
The image of Roma is not sporadic or accidental in Yugoslav cinema.

Since its very beginning, the local cinematography has made numer-
ous films about the Roma. The very first Balkan film distributed out
of Serbia, Ciganska svadba/The Gypsy Weddingg (Stanojevic 1911), was
about the Roma (Kosanovic 2008, pp. 168–169; Homer 2006, p. 387).
Stanojevic shot The Gypsy Weddingg on location at Ada Ciganlija (Gypsy
Island), on the Danube River, near Belgrade. The film, of which not
a single frame has been preserved, apparently showed the Roma
from Belgrade and their marriage costume (Kosanovic 2008, p. 168).
Pathé—the
é biggest distributor of film in Europe of that time—bought
Stanojevic’s film and the French audience saw it under the title En Serbie:
Un Mariage Chez les Tziganes ((In Serbia: The Gypsy marriage). According to
the journalists of the time, the audience were ‘killing themselves with
laughter’ (Kosanovic 2008, p. 168). Kosanovic (2008, pp. 168–169) has
no doubt that ‘exotica’ prevailed in the first Balkan film on Roma and
that was the main reason for its popularity throughout Europe at the
end of cinema’s pioneering period.
The second Western Balkan feature about the Roma was made in
Zagreb. Hans Hanus, in 1920, directed Kovac Raspela/The Blacksmith
of the Crucifixfi . According to Radenko Rankovic (2002, p. 208), a
Romanologist based in Belgrade, the film is a tragi-romantic story about
a village blacksmith named Jurcic who falls in love with a beautiful
Roma girl Marta. But Marta is also an object of desire for three other
Roma men from the same village. Mad with love, Jurcic kills his rivals
and crucifies Mirta on the cross that he had previously made for the
village procession (Rankovic 2002, p. 208). Besides Gypsy Wedding and
The Blacksmith of the Crucifix
fi , there was one other recorded pre-socialist
effort to represent Roma on the silver screen. The never-completed
silent film by Zagreb-based director Franjo Ledic, named Ciganin Hajduk
Brnja Ajvanar/r The Gypsy Outlaw Brnja Ajvanar,r whose shooting began in
1927, had the intention of showing Roma men, who lived on the banks
of Sava river, as horse thieves (Kosanovic 2008, p. 167).
New feature films with a focus on Roma started to appear again in
Yugoslav cinemas not long after the end of World War II. During the
1950s, the main focus was on the beauty of Romani women—Carmens
from the Balkans. In 1953, Vojislav Nanovic directed a romantic and
predicably tragic film Ciganka/The Gypsy Girl. Two years later, in 1955,
Slavko Vorkapic directed Hanka—a feature about a Roma girl of aston-
ishing beauty based on a traditional folk song from Bosnia (Rankovic
2002; Kosanovic 2008). This mode of Roma representation followed
or reiterated the European screenplay pattern mostly noticeable in
Spanish or French cinematography of the time. The selection of the
film Hanka for the competitive programme of the 1956 Cannes Film
Festival clearly indicated Europe’s admiration for Roma stories from
the Western Balkans. In any case, Vorkapic just missed with Hanka at
Cannes in 1956, but awards for the Roma stories made in the former
Yugoslavia were not far away. However, the rewards did not come until
the filmmakers turned their attention from Roma women to Roma men.
If Roma women were depicted as ‘femmes fatales’, argues Pasqualino
(2008), ‘Roma men were often shown as clans of bohemians and unreli-
able musicians’ (pp. 344–345). In Aleksandar Petrovic’s Skupljaci Perja/I
Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), there is a mixture of these two prominent
stereotypical stances on Roma. The storyline leads the viewer through the
universe of Roma living in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.
The plot follows Bora, a handsome Roma who trades in goose feathers.
Over-emotional, with an affection for heavy drinking and gambling, Bora
is not able to take control of his business and fails in every enterprise. As
such, he is the protagonist in one of the most celebrated single scenes
made in all the cinemas of the country once called Yugoslavia. In a filthy
pub, Roma men are in an absolute delirium caused by the performance
of adorable Lenka—a singer with a sultry, deep-throated voice. Here, in
the midst of ecstasy, the camera focuses on Bora who is in a phase of radi-
cal emotional restlessness. Deeply affected by Lenka’s song, he crushes
drinking glasses with his open hands. With his hands bleeding, he joins
Lenka in a an undulating dance. She continues to sing, while her body
movement is even more seductive. Later, they make love.
Yet, Lenka is not the only woman in Bora’s bohemian life. Despite being
married, he offers his heart and soul to the beautiful Tisa,5 a stepdaugh-
ter of his business partner, gambling pal and sporadic rival, Mirta. Very
soon, and somewhat predictably if one is aware of the femme fatale in all
European myths about the Roma,6 Bora and Mirta fight for control over
Tisa’s body until the moment when one of them, Mirta, lies dead in a shed
full of goose-feathers. In the end, there is no space for hope or a happy
ending. Tisa is finally regained by Bora and destined to live an impecuni-
ous life with more-or-less constant quarrels with Bora’s toothless com-
mon-law wife. In the second-to-last scene in the film, the police question
Bora’s women and other residents of an impoverished Roma hamlet over
Mirta’s killing. But no-one is ready to talk. Nothing has changed since.
Some thirty years later, as I will argue in the following pages, inter-Roma
crime is treated in the same way in Popov’s feature Gypsy Magic (1996).
I Even Met Happy Gypsies’ indubitable aesthetic qualities secured
Petrovic the best director award at the International Film Festival in
Cannes in 1967. Furthermore, according to Kosanovic (2008, p. 169),
I Even Met Happy Gypsies became the most popular and best-selling
Yugoslav film of all time. In its second-to-last scene, a four year-old
Roma boy, with a roguish face, smokes a cigarette with gusto. One won-
ders if the boy is a new Bora—a reckless Roma man, predestined to burn
down his life prematurely? The very last scene in the film is a panoramic
shot of a long, empty road, taken from a moving vehicle. Just before the
closing credits begin to roll over the image of an empty road, the film’s
theme song fills the air with its opening lyrics, ‘I have been travelling
on a long road where I even met a happy Gypsy’.
It is necessary to pause here for a moment and say that not all pictures
produced in the former Yugoslavia carried socially out-cast, stereotypi-
cal and/or mocking images of Roma. But a different approach was vis-
ible only in productions where Roma were not prominent, but rather
incorporated into a broader picture of society. This is especially truthful
if one takes as an example Yugoslavian ideological cinema at its best, t in
the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on World War II.
Ahmed Buric, a socio-cultural essayist from Sarajevo, remembers actor

Jovan Janicievic, nicknamed Burdus, who was for a long time the ‘ever-
present Roma on duty’ in Yugoslavian kitsch cinema and TV production
for mass consumption (2001, np). As the bulk of Yugoslavian films and
TV shows in the 1960s and 1970s persisted in their ideological insist-
ence on ‘brotherhood and unity’, most of the Yugoslav nations and
constitutional minorities were represented through this well-known
face. ‘In such circumstances,’ argues Buric (2001), ‘Burdus was for a long
time the only sign that the socialist revolution was against discrimina-
tion towards the nation [Roma] that Hitler wanted to rip out of the
Earth’ (np).
Besides depth of narrative, the other crucial element that one expects
from film art is aesthetic perfection. The TV and film productions in
which the Roma character Burdus appeared did not possess these ele-
ments. However, one film with a noticeable Romani role did meet
such criteria. Being extraordinarily well incorporated into a cinematic
masterpiece, the characters of two Roma musicians in Slobodan Sijan’s
road comedy Ko to Tamo Peva?/ Who is Singing Out There? (1981) offer
the most inspiring portrait of Roma in an inclusive, multinational
Yugoslav picture.
Who is Singing Out There? is indeed a fine piece of filmmaking and
its director Slobodan Sijan, according to Fredric Jameson (2004), is one
of the most significant ‘Balkan auteur[s] unknown or ignored in the
West’ (p. 251). The screenplay for Who is Singing Out There? was written
by Dusan Kovacevic—the screenwriter who would co-write the screen-
play for Kusturica’s Underground d fifteen years later. Sijan’s film quickly
became a classic of former Yugoslav cinema. Its popularity across the
Yugoslav territories was not diminished by the nationalistic rhetoric of
the 1990s. In 1999, both Serbian and Bosnian film critics voted, sepa-
rately, that Who is Singing Out There? was the best Yugoslav film ever
made (Horton 2002, p. 23).
The film is set during the onset of the German invasion of the
Yugoslav Kingdom. The ragged coach owned by the Krstic family is on
its way from a Serbian province to the capital. The film’s protagonists
are trying to reach Belgrade, but little do they know that the following
day the Serbian and Yugoslav capital is to be bombed and Yugoslavia
is to be dragged into a disastrous conflict. All passengers have urgent
and personally important reasons to reach Belgrade, which seems ever
more distant because of the numerous obstacles that present themselves
throughout the journey. Amongst the various characters in the film
representing Serbian society, two travelling Roma musicians7 are also
on the coach. During the journey, the Roma men occasionally enter-
tain the rest of the passengers. Another function of the duo is that of a
chorus, similar to those in ancient Greek theatre. The chorus provides a
refrain to which the film’s action always returns. They constantly play
the same song but change the lyrics to comment on the present action
of the narrative. In the film’s departure from classical form, these songs
are addressed directly to the camera, and thus to the movie audience,
instead of to the other characters.
The underlying message in Sijan’s film is the latent yet persistent
discrimination against the Roma duo by the fellow passengers. At the
beginning of the journey, while a handful of passengers make hilarious
chaos while trying to enter the entirely empty bus, the Roma men are
pushed back and they get onto the vehicle last. ‘Are we going to travel
with Gypsies?’ asks one of the passengers contemptuously. Regardless
of the passenger’s protest, the Roma men remain on the coach. Their
staying is driven not by ethical or moral, but rather economic, logic.
‘Everyone who buys a ticket will be taken’, is the response from the senior
Krstic, the bus owner and ticket controller, to the despicable passenger.
At the end of the film, on the basis of an accusation that the Roma duo
has stolen the wallet of one of the characters, all the passengers attack
and beat them. Yet, the audience knows that the allegation is false, as an
earlier scene had shown that the wallet was accidentally dropped along
the way. Just before the beating is to happen, the senior Krstic announces
he will strip each of the passengers until the wallet is found. However, the
character who complained at the beginning of the trip about the Romani
presence on board stops him: ‘Why bother all these honest people when
we know who around here likes to steal?’ and pointing to the two Roma
men he invokes the racist stereotype that all Roma are thieves. There is
no further discussion. The merciless beating of the Roma men begins.
Their inevitable lynching is only interrupted by the German bombing
raid on Belgrade,8 which in a final ironic turn, kills everyone on the bus
except forr the two Roma men. The ending is laden with significance. The
desire for survival for those oppressed and on the margins is clearly per-
ceptible. Two Roma men emerge from the coach’s smoky remains to face
the camera and sing the central lyrics for a last time:
I am unfortunate
Since I was child
With all my sorrow—I sing songs
I wish, oh my mother,
That all this was only a dream.
In a nutshell, Sijan’s comedy is a marvellous critique of Yugoslav/

Serbian internal antagonisms. On the eve of the catastrophe, a South
Slav nation is in dissolution. The state is in a rogue phase; collapse is
imminent. Roma inequality, although not the central motif in the film,
is clearly addressed in Sijan’s film. A dominant nation does humili-
ate and/or exterminate its nearest Other. Threatened from the outside
(Nazism) and deeply internally divided with all sorts of enmity, the
national body of the South Slavs is quick to unite in attacking the weak-
est residents in the Western Balkans, the Romani.
During the 1980s, in the last decade of the Yugoslav state, another two
internationally known films on Roma were made: Angeo Cuvar/ r Guardian
Angell (Paskaljevic 1986) and Dom za Vjesanje/Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica
1989).9 Both films engaged with a similar topic and both were inspired
by the same story, initiated by investigative journalism, about selling and
trafficking Roma children from the Balkans to Italy. Somewhat predict-
ably, both films persisted in a stereotypical representation of Roma. In
the end, both films had considerable international attention, although
the latter profited more. With Time of the Gypsies, Kusturica won the best
director award at Cannes in 1989. From that moment, for film critics and
media studies worldwide, Kusturica was not just a talented film director
from the Balkans or Eastern Europe. He was an auteur.
Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies in some ways concludes the history of
united Yugoslav cinema. In the times that followed, during the con-
flicts in Croatia and Bosnia, post-Yugoslav cinemas became more or
less preoccupied with their own survival. Thus, the image of the Roma
disappeared from the screen. However, Roma invisibility on the cin-
ema screen in the Western Balkans did not last for long. Soon after an
uneasy peace was established in Croatia and Bosnia at the end of 1995,
post-Yugoslav cinema launched two award-winning all-Roma features.
The first, Gypsy Magicc (Popov 1997), came from Macedonia. Kusturica
made Crna Macka, Beli Macor/Black Cat, White Catt (1998) in Serbia. Black
Cat, White Catt had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival where
Kusturica won the best director award. One year earlier, in 1997, Gypsy
Magicc had premiered at the Montréal World Film Festival. The film was
a nominee for the Grand Prix des Amériques. If Gypsy Magicc just missed
there, it was luckier a couple months later, during the Mediterranean
Film Festival in Montpellier, where it won the Grand Prix Antigone
D’Oro for Best Film. It seemed that the focus on the Roma was back in
full swing. Both the European festival circles and filmmakers from the
former Yugoslavia keep watching and making filmic narratives about
Romani living in the Western Balkans.
The Roma on post-Yugoslav cinema: as seen in Gypsy Magic

and Black Cat, White Cat
Directed and co-written by the experienced and previously acclaimed

film director Stole Popov, Gypsy Magicc is based on a script developed by
Vladimir Blazhevski. In his almost three-decade-long career, Popov has
made numerous documentaries and features. In 1976, he directed a feature
long documentary Australija, Australija/Australia,
/ Australia that focused on
the Macedonian migrants who settled throughout the Australian outback.
Before Magic, Popov directed three other features: Crveniot Konj/The Red
Horsee (1981), Sretna Nova 1949/Happy
/ New Year 1949 9 (1986) and Tetoviranje/
Tattoo (1991). After Magic, in 2014, he made Do Balcak/To the Hilt.
Popov comes from a filmmaking family. His father, Trajce Popov, was
one of the pioneers of filmmaking in Macedonia (Iordanova 2006, p.
208). Despite his bond with middle-class Macedonian-Slavic national-
ity, with Gypsy Magic Popov did not enter totally unknown artistic/
ethnographic territory. Almost two decades earlier, in 1979, Popov
had made Dae/Gypsy Birth—short experimental documentary about a
Roma clan celebrating the birth of a newborn baby. According to the
anthropologist George Gmelch, who watched Popov’s short film with
his students, Gypsy Birth is an over-abstracted work without a logical
narrative. He and his students did not find anything extraordinary in
the non-linear scenes that showed:
half-naked Gypsies looking up into a rainy sky, men on horseback,

toddlers crawling, women kneading dough, people gathered around
a burning tent, men and women frolicking in a river, a young girl
dancing, and frequent close-ups of women’s breasts and faces smok-
ing cigarettes.
(Gmelch 1985, p. 232)
But then not everyone agrees with Gmelch. Both the European art film
festival scene and Hollywood found Gypsy Birth a magnificent piece
of filmmaking. Besides the official recognition throughout former
Yugoslavian and European film circles, in 1980, Gypsy Birth was the
official Yugoslav nominee for an Academy Award. Moreover, the way
that Popov recorded the Romani celebration of St George’s10 day in
Gypsy Birth had a strong impact on Kusturica. According to Iordanova
(2006, p. 209), Kusturica staged and filmed the key scene in his Time of
the Gypsies on the ‘St George Day Celebration’, directly inspired by the
way that Popov recorded it in his multi-awarded documentary.
Although not even close to the budget that Kusturica had for his Black
Cat,t Popov’s Gypsy Magicc was still imagined as an ambitious project.
Unlike the majority of important post-Yugoslav films that were made
with significant financial support from the West, Gypsy Magicc was an
entirely Macedonian production. Yet, the goals of the project were
imagined as being beyond the borders of both Macedonia and the
Western Balkans. Despite being a pure product of Macedonian national
cinema that was played and filmed principally in the Romani language,
the film was baptised neither in Macedonian/South Slavic nor Romani
script, but in the universal language of the contemporary globalised
world—the lingua franca English! Gypsy Magicc was Gypsy Magicc from its
first press release.11 In transcending the linguistic centrism of its native
country, Popov’s film clearly shows an ambition toward being a ‘cosmo-
politan’ text. Perhaps, beyond this alleged cosmopolitan longing, with
the English colloquial term for Roma people, the director Popov and
the film’s producers obeyed the former-Yugoslav anti-discrimination
law which prohibited the use of the repulsively pejorative term, Tzigan.
The actual shooting of Gypsy Magic happened between December
1995 and May 1996 and most of the action happened in and around
the Skopje suburb of Shuto Orizari—the largest Roma settlement in
Europe. Besides a couple of exterior scenes that were filmed on sev-
eral locations in Skopje, the bulk of scenes were shot in a variety of
locations in Shuto Orizari and the nearby city dump. The cast was a
mixture of professional and amateur actors. For the majority of the
amateurs, Shuto Orizari was the place where they were born and had
lived since. Kusturica also partly shot his Time of the Gypsies in Shuto
Orizari. Before 1963, Shuto Orizari had been one of the many tiny
Roma settlements on the outskirts of Skopje. After the devastating
earthquake that almost completely destroyed the Macedonian capital
in July 1963, a political decision was made that all Roma from Skopje
were to be gathered in a single settlement near the city’s rubbish
dump (Luzina 2006, p. 280). The end of shooting coincided with the
Macedonian decision to promote Shuto Orizari to being the City of
Skopje’s youngest municipality. Nowadays, on Shuto Orizari’s streets
it is possible to see police officers who are Roma. There are Romani
parties and Roma representatives in the Macedonian parliament.
Several radio stations and two private television stations are in the
Romani language. Since 2002, one of these television stations, the
BTR National, runs the Golden Wheel, the first annual film festival
dedicated to films about Roma people.
Shuto Orizari, for many Roma, represents a ‘dream of autonomy, a
glimpse of the future’ (European Roma Rights Center 1996, p. 8). With
Figure 6.1 Taip is the unchallenged patriarch of his family (still, Gypsy Magic)
a Romani population of almost eighty per cent, Shuto Orizari, widely

known as Shutka, is the world’s only self-governing community of
Roma (Demirova-Abdulova 2005, p. 199). Shutka, in the Macedonian
language, is a colloquialism for ‘dump’. And this dump is not without
its problems. In 2000, eighty per cent of its residents were unemployed
(Bajic 2000, np). In Gypsy Magic, Popov decides to reveal a portrait
of a family which is at the very bottom of the social scale in Shutka.
(Figure 6.1)
Gypsy Magicc opens with a street party in Shutka. It is New Year’s Eve and
Shutka’s residents are in a party mood. The year is 1994, Yugoslavia is no
more, the war in Bosnia is in full swing and Macedonian’s independence
is being challenged by an unprecedented socio-economic crisis and polit-
ical instability. In a nearby makeshift cinema, a local Roma man Taip, his
son Shacir, and a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) medical
doctor named Rizu are watching Bobby (Kapoor 1973)—a romantic story
about the love between two Mumbai teenagers of different classes. This
Bollywood classic is projected onto a white sheet.
Taip is an illiterate Roma man of undefined age who lives in a
wretched shack on the outskirts of Shutka with his mother, wife and
eight children. He is the unchallenged patriarch of his family. His wife

Remzija, albeit a proud and defiant woman, is unable to oppose Taip’s
absolute control of the family by any means. If she resists too much, Taip
abuses her physically. Another woman in the house backs Taip’s brutality
towards his wife. ‘Kill the whore. Kill her, my boxing champion’, is Taip’s
mother response to the vicious thrashing of her daughter-in-law.
All eight of Taip’s and Remzija’s children live with them. Bajram is the
oldest. He was married before but his wife left him some time ago. His
main job consists of the cultivation of worms on the animal carcasses
he keeps buried in a city dump. It seems that his work provides the only
steady income for his family. Bajram also helps Taip to find scrap metal
from the dump. But there are also others that have designs on the artifi-
cial hills made of garbage from Skopje, and Bajram and Taip soon get into
conflict with Omer. Omer is the leader of a family clan whose members
would not hesitate to use a dagger in their quarrels. Unlike Taip’s family,
who struggle on a daily basis and do not have enough food to eat, Omer’s
is much better off. Omer is dressed in fur. He and his brothers live in a
brick house, not so different from any average Macedonian household.
The animosity between these two families is obvious. For Omer’s clan,
Taip and his family are Chergasi. ‘Cherga’ in the Romani language means
tent, and in times past it had indicated nomadic Roma who wandered
throughout the Balkans. As the nomadic Romani do not exist any more
and cannot even be seen in low-budget feature films from the Balkans,
by naming Taip’s family Chergasi, Omer makes an appalling verbal insult.
Only the homeless and the underclass are called Chergasi now.
Two other adult sons of Remzija and Taip are Fazlija and Shacir. Fazlija
is a rebellious young man who, despite that, is very supportive of his
family. Shacir is, on the contrary, much gentler. He speaks some English.
Although it is not presented to the audience directly, it seems that he
is the one who met Rizu first and introduced him to the rest of family.
Ramiza, a fourth child, is a beautiful young woman, presumably in her
late teens. While not very happy to see her mother beaten, Ramiza is
still very obedient to her father. A chubby, teenage boy named Sherif is
number five. He is a self-educated violin player who tirelessly practises
his instrument. Hasan, the next child, is a cheeky, eight-year-old boy. He
is Taip’s favourite. From time to time, Hasan earns some money for the
family by selling cigarettes on the street. Then there is Fatima—a two-
year-old girl with beautiful eyes. That’s all that the audience can see of
her anyway, as she is not very often the focus of the camera. The very
last child is an unnamed toddler boy. A couple of shots show him naked,
wandering throughout the house. On one occasion he cries. Although
the majority of Taip’s and Remzija’s children are of school age, the audi-
ence does not see any activity in the film that signifies schooling.
All the members of Taip’s family have Arabic (Muslim) names. Yet,
there is no trace of Islamic culture in their home. Instead, the audience
is able to see posters of Hindu Gods stuck on the walls throughout the
shack. The extreme poverty in which his family lives does not prevent
Taip from dreaming; dreaming of India from where all Roma are fabled
to have started their cross-continental odyssey sometime in the 10th
century. As such, it could be said that Taip and his family are Romani
Rastafarians. Similarly to the impoverished black population of Jamaica
at the beginning of the 20th century who, by embracing the dogma of
the Rastafarian movement, identified themselves with the African con-
tinent, an underprivileged Roma man from the Western Balkans dreams
of India. With his (Rastafarian) dream, Taip infects all other family
members. ‘India is as big as half of the world’ says Taip in one instance
to his wife and son Hasan while the three of them sit on the roof and
stare on the night sky.
The acquaintance with Rizu, an ethnic Hindu, gives him hope of tak-
ing his family to India. The plan is straightforward. Taip is going to buy
a white horse, win a few races, earn decent money from it, and then
hit the road towards the motherland. Meanwhile, according to Taip’s
plan, Rizu’s task is to sort out the paperwork and, if possible, marry his
daughter Ramiza. The marriage would, of course, make an unbreakable
bond between the two men.
For Taip, Rizu is more than a human being. He is a God, a Hindu God.
‘You are so beautiful’, says Taip, comparing Rizu with the image he sees
on the screen. When Rizu, accompanied by Taip, is driving the UN car
throughout Shutka’s streets, people wonder: ‘Who is this guy with you
Taip? He is as black as us’! Rizu is everything a Roma man in the Western
Balkans is not. He is educated, highly positioned in the UN hierarchy,
and respected by all. He is not just idolised by Taip and most of the
Romani in Shutka but also highly respected by the Macedonian Slavs—
the dominant group in Macedonia. In one instance, a Macedonian medi-
cal doctor begs him for work in Africa. ‘I heard you [UNPROFOR] are
looking for people to go to Somalia. I would be willing to work as a medi-
cal technician’, says a Macedonian medical doctor to the UN official.
But a horse is not a cheap animal; especially not the white one that
Taip has his eye on. Rizu, who is more than happy to bring UN humani-
tarian food into Taip’s home, declines to lend him any money. Taip
is not happy. Even less cheerful is Remzija, who accuses her husband
of wasting time while her children are without food. Just then, the
argument between Taip and Remzija suddenly stops, as Taip’s mother

unexpectedly dies. The family’s despair and grief that night quickly
change into a positive mood the following day, after Taip and his son
Bajram collect the financial contributions from the government for the
funeral. That night, the grief-stricken family is chatting happily over
the dinner table now full of food. The feast they are enjoying is part of
traditional funeral practices in Christian Roma called ‘pomana’, which
in Romani language means feast of the dead12 (Fraser 1992, p. 316).
The amount and quality of food on the table is not often seen in their
home. In the midst of dinner, the old woman comes back to life, which
comes as something of a shock to everyone. But Taip is adamant that his
mother’s miraculous recovery remains a secret, in order to ensure that
they do not have to pay back the welfare payment they received for the
funeral. Instead, the old woman is hidden in the back room.
And that is how Taip gets his idea for accumulating the money he
needs for purchasing a horse. Very soon, a stream of ‘unfortunate
events’ begins in Taip’s family. Taip first convinces Remzija to ‘die’. He
persuades her by promising to buy her a yellow bed, which is Remzija’s
long-lasting dream. Yet the money he gets for his wife’s ‘funeral’ is
not enough to buy a horse. So, he fakes the death of his rebellious son
Fazlija who, in the meantime, has been badly beaten by Omer’s gang.
Finally, Taip is able to buy the white horse that he names Krishna.
The purchase of the horse is celebrated in a local pub. This time, Taip
and Rizu are joined by another three members of UNPROFOR. In the
midst of collective drunkenness supported by frantic live music, Omer
and two of his brothers enter the pub. Instigated by Rizu, his three
UNPROFOR friends begin merciless bashings. The almost certain lynch-
ing of one of the Omer’s brothers is stopped by Taip. The strongest UN
soldier stops beating the unconscious man on the floor and grabs Taip
in a friendly bear hug. ‘I love you Gypsy king’ yells the big man in
English with an American accent.
Taip needs more money, as the horse is not yet, if it ever will be, ready
for racing. So, the next in order to die is Shacir. Rizu, now in cahoots
with Taip, signs the death certificate for Shacir as he did in the case of
Fazlija’s and Remzija’s ‘deaths’. Meanwhile, as Taip cannot hide so many
‘dead people’ in a small shack, he decides to move his ‘dead’ and alive
family out of Shutka altogether. In the middle of moving, Fazlija decides
he has had enough and decides to run away. On the same night he finds
and kills Omer with a knife as an act of revenge. In the next scene, the
audience witnesses his admittance to a Dervish order. The Dervishes13
warmly welcome Fazlija and soon we see him attending their collective
prayer. Fazlija is not the only ‘dead’ person in Taip’s family who shifts
identity and makes it out of Taip’s control. In their new place, Shacir
also transforms himself. His other self is very feminine. To Taip’s huge
surprise, Shacir transforms himself into Shacira, a transvestite who starts
dreaming of moving to Italy. Very soon, it also becomes obvious that
Sacir’s new self, Shacira, is madly in love with Rizu.
Rizu, in the meanwhile, seduces Ramiza. He invites her to his luxuri-
ous apartment decorated with Robert Mapplethorpe prints on the walls.
Before Ramiza enters the room, illuminated with blue light, the audi-
ence sees Rizu who, after consuming cocaine, is looking at the image on
the video projector. The footage he watches is the real scene of massa-
cres from the Bosnian war. The linear footage of massacre is roughly cut
with footage of Rizu on the UN military transporter. It seems that Rizu
witnessed the atrocities in Bosnia. Yet he is numb to the emotions of
war. Remzija, who enters the room at that moment, is clearly distressed
by what she sees on the screen and yet Rizu does not stop the projec-
tor. He asks Ramiza to remove her dress. She obeys. He comes forward,
kneels in front of her and kisses her bare stomach. The fear and disgust
on her face are obvious. For a moment it looks like Ramiza will resist
Rizu and run away. But she freezes herself and says nothing. Her whole
family thinks Rizu is good and anything he does will be of benefit to
them. The avatar of the Hindu God, however, appears in many forms
and characters, and has an evil side. He gives and he takes away; he cre-
ates and he destroys.
In the meantime, the ‘dying’ is not yet finished in Taip’s household.
This time, Bajram must pretend to die. But Bajram insists on a proper
funeral with an open coffin and a generous feast not only for the fam-
ily but also for friends and neighbours. And not only will friends and
neighbours come. To complicate the plot, Bajram’s estranged wife Mara
attends to show her respect as well. Her new husband, who is a police
officer, accompanies her. In the graveyard, Taip’s closest neighbour gives
a speech. The audience now knows that Bajram was an honest man
who, in his youth, worked voluntarily to build his beloved country. He
was also the victim of a racial attack while serving in the Yugoslav Army.
The neighbours also add that not only Bajram but all other Roma in
Macedonia loved comrade Tito and now they love, even more, the pres-
ident of Macedonia, Mr Kiro Gligorov. Popov’s statement is clear here.
Unlike the Albanian minority that is considered dangerous and a real
threat for the Macedonian state and its Slavic majority, the Roma are
perceived as ‘“harmless and loyal” if not “weak” ethnicity’ (Memedova
et al., 2005, p. 28).
After they bury Bajram, Taip and Rizu go to a nearby pub for a drink.
Soon they are drunk and Taip makes his last bid to Rizu: ‘India is good.
Europe is shit. West’s declining, East’s declining. Crisis is everywhere.

The Balkans is fucked up. Bosnia has gone; the war; Kosovo is next.
India is salvation. You, I and Krishna; we do business’. Rizu is drunk. It
seems that he does not, or does not want to, understand Taip’s mixture
of Roma, German, Macedonian and body language. What Taip gets
from him is just friendly slapping over the shoulder. Things go badly
for Bajram, as he is left for too long in the grave. When Taip and Rizu
dig the soil out, they find Bajram is actually dead. From this moment,
one tragedy will follow another. In the next sequence, Omer’s broth-
ers find Taip’s new place and burn it down. The family is again on the
move. ‘Where is little Fatima?’ asks Hasan of his father. ‘She will come
later’, replies Taip. ‘Eh, and we even did not get money for Bajram yet’,
concludes Hasan. Taip says nothing. The audience of Gypsy Magicc has
been left to presume that Fatima perished in the flames.
In the following scene, the cross-dressing Shacir discovers that Rizu
left Skopje without saying goodbye to anyone. ‘He went back to Bosnia.
Macedonia is a holiday from Bosnia. … Don’t be sad, you are pretty
lady. You’ll find a new man’, says the UN officer who told him the
news about Rizu, flirting with Shacir. It is clear from the beginning that
Taip’s desire to take his family to India is unrealistic and as such it is a
just a dream. As the story progresses it becomes obvious that this will
not happen. Their reality, and that is what the viewer sees through the
sequences of the movie, consists of alcohol, yelling and violence, and
permanent conflict. In the end, Taip himself is murdered by the Omer
clan. His body, leaning against the steps of the freight train, departs for
somewhere far away.
At the news of Taip’s disappearance, which Sherif brings to the family,
Remzija begins to cry. ‘Who will feed my children?’ she moans. The rest
of the family is quiet. It seems they accept their fate. It is their destiny
to remain in the underclass, living on the periphery, which is beyond
the farthest periphery inhabited by South Slavs. Only little Hasan, Taip’s
favourite son, is furious. ‘He is a liar. He went to India without us’.
Suddenly, he jumps on Krishna’s back and gallops through the nearby
swamp. In the film’s last and aesthetically most striking scene, water
sprinkles in all directions under Krishna’s hoofs. According to Hindu
spiritual teaching, the God Vishnu has had nine incarnations. The
tenth and final incarnation is still to come during the present age of
decline, when Vishnu will appear in person on Earth, seated on a white
horse. We can pause for a second and wonder about Popov’s intentions
here. Is Hasan the absolute incarnation of Vishnu? Is he a God des-
tined to save humankind? Or, perhaps, is Hasan the reincarnation of a
pragmatic messiah with the ultimate mission of bettering the life of the
Roma? Or, finally, is it possible that the sighting of Vishnu in Hasan is
just another illusion? What if he is just a false hope; as the precondi-
tions for the Romani messiah have not been achieved yet?
Gypsy Magicc is an emphatic tragedy. The style stumbles back and
forth between brutal cinéma vérité and wild magic realism. In terms of
grand narrative, however, Popov frankly admits that, while focusing on
the Roma and their ‘everydayness’, his real intention is to illustrate the
condition of uncertainty experienced by his entire Macedonian nation
in the turbulent 1990s:
This is a funny and yet a sad story of a Gypsy family of great dream-
ers making their last desperate efforts to find their way out of the
Balkan Labyrinth of absurdity, evil and misfortune. … The gypsies
serve merely as a picturesque background for the universal story of
the rejected and maladjusted, of those who play badly the game of
finding their way around in the dark, people we meet every day and
whose tragicomic fate rarely occupies our thoughts for more than
one minute, because they are not people who ever make the first five
pages of the daily press.
(Popov, cited in Iordanova 2001, p. 218)
Perceived by most post-Yugoslavs as being at the very bottom of the

hierarchy, the Roma are often used metonymically to stand for the
lower end of dichotomies. This conforms to a general tendency in
interethnic perception to cast both oneself and the other in terms of
extreme contrasting elements (Zivkovic 2001, p. 170).
Although recognised and appreciated in film festival circles all over
the world, Gypsy Magicc never became a blockbuster, as was the case with
Black Cat, White Cat. Perhaps, Popov’s misfortune was that two promi-
nent film directors, who are considered authorities on ‘Roma themes’,
Toni Gatif and Emir Kusturica, also released their films on the Roma in
close proximity to Gypsy Magic.
In December 1995, however, Kusturica did not have the intention of
making a movie. After he received his second Palme d’Or in 1995 for
Underground, Kusturica was overwhelmed by emotions: ‘[The] only one
reason for me to make movies’, Kusturica said in his acceptance speech,
‘is to be loved by you!’ (cited in Iordanova 2001, p. 130). However,
a significant number of film and cultural critics in Europe were not
impressed by the film’s storyline. Kusturica furiously rejected all aspects
of the criticism of him and the film. His resentment culminated in
December 1995, when he declared that he would quit filmmaking for

good. Amongst other emotional statements related to his resignation
from the world of cinema, Kusturica was reported saying: ‘I just couldn’t
stand the attacks any more—like I was one of the biggest criminals
against humanity’ (cited in Feinstein, 1999). Less than four months
after his public announcement of retirement, however, in March 1996,
Kusturica began shooting his new film on the banks of Danube River,
not far from the Serbian capital.
Black Cat, White Catt was originally imagined as a documentary about
the Roma musicians who meandered through Underground (Iordanova
2002, p. 83). The working title of this ‘nonpartisan’ project was Muzika
Akrobatika/Acrobatic
/ Musicc (Feinstein, 1999). With a return to the
‘Gypsy’ theme, Kusturica’s intention was to overturn and dispel the
consequences of the intense political debate that followed the premiere
and triumph of Underground at Cannes. ‘After all’, Feinstein resonates,
‘the insular Gypsy subculture … lay outside the blurred ethnic grid and
neo nationalist trajectory of the Balkans’ (1999).
At some point, the documentary about tuba-tooting Romani musi-
cians became a full-length feature comedy about a mafia-style Roma.
French, German and Serbian producers provided a $4.5 million budget
and the film was shot over two summers. The film’s script, which
Kusturica co-authored, was written by Gordan Mihic—the screenwriter
of Kusturica’s first film with a Romani theme: Time of the Gypsies.
Although written in Serbian, the film is almost entirely spoken in
the Romani language. As in his first Roma film, in Black Cat, t Kusturica
largely relied on non-professional Romani actors. He experienced
both joy and distress while working with his Romani acting crew.
His approach while working with strategically chosen Roma men and
women, Kusturica compared to US foreign policy: ‘From time to time,
you have to do it the way Madeleine Albright is doing it all around the
world. One day, I threatened the Gypsies, the other day, I was their best
friend’ (cited in Kaufman 1999). One rules the world; the other is in
command of a Romani film crew.
The tactic of treating the Roma actors simultaneously with stick and
carrot worked well for Kusturica, because his Black Catt vision impressed
many. Following the premiere in 1998 in Venice, the film became a
blockbuster. In France, Black Cat has been seen by almost one million
people. In Kusturica’s own words: ‘[o]nly after Black Cat, White Catt did
I become well-known in the world … Black Catt was a commercial suc-
cess that made possible financing and shooting my other films’ (cited
in Gajevic 2010, np).
The vast scenes in the film were filmed at carefully chosen, extraordi-
narily beautiful spots on and around the Danube River; only in the after-
noon hours; and only during hot, summer days. ‘And then’ as Kusturica
himself explains, ‘everything you put in the frame looks much richer
and bigger than it really is’ (cited in Kaufman 1999, np). Under such
conditions, the tri-layered depth of the scene’s background, the much-
loved kitsch of the mechanical devices, and close-ups of faces not often,
if ever, seen on the street, become even more expressive and irresistible
to those who appreciate cinematic aesthetics. What also attracts audi-
ence and critics alike in Black Catt is its hilarious, yet Balkanised, humour
and ‘memorable caricatures’ (Iordanova 2002, p. 88) of humans who are
supposed to represent Roma living in 1990s Serbia.
Unlike Kusturica’s first ‘Gypsy’ film, Time of the Gypsies, which mixed
the socio-economic harshness of everyday life for the majority of Roma
in former Yugoslavia with the vigour of magic (cinematic) realism, Black
Catt is an ode to the honour of a hedonistic way of life. All the Roma
protagonists in Black Catt live stereotypical free-spirited lives, but also
have a comfortable lifestyle. The way of life has not even been touched
by the UN-imposed sanctions on commercial goods against Serbia dur-
ing the Bosnian war. The audience gets to know the period in Western
Balkan and Serbian history in the film’s very first scene, in which a Roma
man named Matko Destanov is illegally trading petrol. The barrel of oil
he has just bought is smuggled into Serbia by Russian sailors. Soon, with
the help of his obedient teenage son Zare, Matko finds out that he was
cheated by the Russians who sold him scented grey water instead of
diesel. As such, Matko is an unsuccessful underworld entrepreneur on
a small scale. Yet, he still lives a relatively comfortable and easy-going
lifestyle in a shack on the Danube. But he wants more. For Matko, an
ideal way of life is the one he sees on a passing cruise where presumably
Western passengers dance to Strauss’s ‘On the Beautiful Blue Danube’.
It seems that the cosy hut in which Matko lives with his son Zare, was
not bought by him but by his father Zarije Destanov who was, until his
recent retirement, the owner of a ‘separation’ business. The audience
first meets him in hospital where he is recovering from an unknown
health problem. Soon, he is released from hospital. Yet he leaves in
style. A full brass band follows him from the moment he gets out of his
hospital bed; then on a small boat where he yells ‘freedom’, for the joy
of being able to consume alcohol again; until the following day when
he wakes up on the river bank with a terrible hangover.
Through his dialogue with his beloved grandson Zare, we find out
that Zarije’s best friend is Don Grga Pitic, a powerful Roma godfather
figure. But before Grga appears in the flesh, the audience is introduced to
Dadan Karambolo, a well-off Roma gangster in his twenties who rides in a
chauffeur-driven limousine; accompanied by ridiculously funny yet ruth-
less bodyguards, and attractive ‘bimbos’. We presume the call-girls are
non-Roma, as they only speak a Serbian variant of South Slavic languages.
Dadan’s parents are dead and he, as the family patriarch, has to take care
of his three sisters. Caring—according to Dadan—equals finding suitable
husbands for them. Two of his older, ill-favoured sisters are already mar-
ried. Afrodita (Aphrodite), the youngest one, is not. Due to her miniature
height, Afrodita is better known in the neighbourhood as Ladybird. But
life is good for Dadan. It seems that he is the one who most profits from
the Serbian international blockade. If only he could find a fitting com-
panion for his diminutive sister, Dadan’s life would be a fairy tale.
Meanwhile, Matko digs up the idea that will turn his luck. He finds
out about a scheme to import a cargo train loaded with diesel from
Bulgaria. The stakes are colossal and Matko needs a business partner.
He needs someone who has money and connections with the Bulgarian
border-officials. Predictably, Dadan becomes Matko’s partner. But Matko
also needs a large amount of cash. Other than Dadan, only Don Grga
has the amount of money he needs and, soon, Matko and his son Zare
hit the road.
Don Grga lives in a guarded compound where he runs, amongst
other illegal trades, a whisky distillation factory. He is an extravagantly
elegant man with massive, silver front teeth and thick, black-rimmed
glasses. He loves cigars and can endlessly watch the last scene of his
favourite film: Casablanca (1942). Don Grga is an old man and he
knows his time will come soon. The only thing he wants to see before
he dies is the wedding of his much-loved, and very tall grandson named
Grga Veliki (the Big). He loves his younger grandson Grga Mali (the
Small) as well. Grga Mali is a chubby, teenage boy who is at least a metre
shorter than his older brother.
There is nothing that Don Grga can deny to Zarije’s son, as Zarije saved
his life twice during their youthful adventures in France and Italy. These
Western European escapades also included, as the audience discovers later
in the film, a lucrative business of controlling the city dump in Milan.
By making a false statement that his father is dead, Matko achieves both
sympathy and money from Don Grga. The Roma Godfather does not
want his money back. The only thing that he wants from the son of his
devoted friend is a detailed report on the petrol business.
And the business does not go well for Matko. As Dadan wants the
entire cargo, his bodyguards drug Matko and kill the Bulgarian customs
officer who has been, until that moment, an ally of Dadan. In short,
Matko is double-crossed by Dadan, who takes every drop of the smug-
gled oil for himself. Furthermore, as compensation for the ‘lost profit’,
Dadan blackmails Matko into agreeing to marry off Zare to Afrodita.
Zare is, of course, furious about the news of his bride-to-be. He is in
love with a witty, blue-eyed, blonde Roma girl named Ida. She lives
with her, seemingly, caring grandmother Sujka who is the owner of a
floating-pub. Sujka is a charismatic woman who earned her fortune, as
the audience finds out during her conversation with Dadan, by beg-
ging throughout Western Europe. Things go from bad to worse for the
young couple after Sujka offers Ida’s hand to Dadan in exchange for
30,000 German marks. ‘She sells you as a cow,’ says Zare to Ida. The
hot-blooded Roma girl decides to oppose the deal her grandmother has
just made. Zare, too, pledges he will never marry Ladybird.
Not a soul is able to resist Dadan. Not even Afrodita, who is the most
resentful towards the arranged marriage. As the last attempt to save his
grandson from getting married to Afrodita, Zarije decides to die on the
wedding day. But, to Matko’s and Zare’s surprise, Dadan decides that the
show must go on. Zarije’s body is hidden in the attic and covered with
a big chunk of ice. His death will be announced to relatives and friends
only after the wedding. Therefore, the most hilarious and the kitschiest
wedding ceremony on the bank of Danube begins. And Dadan is the
happiest participant. He sings, dances, and repeatedly yells ‘freedom’
out of joy. As the party goes on, Afrodita manages to run away into
a nearby forest. At that very moment, an accidental passer-by is no-
one but Grga Veliki. Love at first sight is reciprocal. Soon, the couple
is joined by Grga Mali and Don Grga. The grandfather is more than
pleased by his grandson’s choice. But Dadan and his bodyguard also
arrive. After a minor exchange of gunfire between the two gangs, peace
is established. It appears that Dadan was an apprentice for Don Grga in
a time when the latter had a ‘city dump’ business in Italy.
The party is renewed immediately, and the double wedding goes on.
Afrodita is marrying Grga Veliki and Ida is going to say ‘yes’ to Zare.
At that very moment, Don Grga suffers a heart attack and dies. Dadan
insists Don Grga should join his friend Zarije in the attic until the wed-
ding is over. But up in the attic, a miracle has occurred. With a little
help from two cats, two old men are suddenly alive again and, to the
surprise of all, they rejoin the party. The ultimate happy ending is on
the horizon.
Afrodita marries the man of her dreams. Ida and Zare are married too,
and on their way out of the country. And finally, it seems that Matko and
Figure 6.2 Matko and Dadan mean business (still, Black Cat, White Cat)
t
Dadan take a new, very positive approach towards each other. ‘This is
the beginning of a beautiful friendship’, says Don Grga in English to his
friend Zarije, pointing at two thugs. Zarije nods in approval.
On first watching, it is difficult to establish who has the leading role
in Black Cat. Different plotlines, seemingly unrelated, evolve from
each other. A relative depth of narrative in Black Catt exists, but it is
not crucial. Although often compared with the titans of European
cinema such as Frederico Fellini and Andrei Tarkovsky (Gocic
2001; Iordanova 2002); Kusturica in Black Catt takes a Hitchcockian
approach. Hitchcock, in many cases, as Zizek (2006) argues, does not
proceed from the plot to its translation into ‘cinematic audio-visual-
terms’. Instead, Hitchcock begins with a set of visual motifs that preoc-
cupy his imagination. In such a creative approach, a narrative serves
only as the ‘pretext’ for Hitchcock’s previously established imagery
(Zizek 2006).
In Black Cat’s
t case, it seems that the imagination has no boundaries.
The wedding, a compulsory element in Kusturica’s films since When
Father was Away on Business (1984), is more hilarious and visually rich
than ever. Then, as part of the show in Sujka’s pub, a colossal female
singer uses the cheeks of her backside to pull a nail out of a plank. Her
bizarre performance is comparable to an image of the Bulgarian customs
officer’s body that hangs on a railway-crossing barrier. And the idiosyn-
cratic imagery goes on: Dadan uses a goose as a towel to clean the dirt
from his body; Don Grga moves around in a baroque, motorised wheel-
chair; and a pig literally eats out an abandoned car.
The pig with the appetite for the Trabant—an Eastern German vehicle
out of production since the fall of Berlin Wall, and infamous for its plastic
shell—appears three times in the film. Since the 1980s, the Trabant has
been a symbol for Communist or Eastern European backwardness. In
post-Wall Europe, the Orwellian, capitalist pig finishes it off with gusto.
Here, Kusturica’s allusion to the fall of totalitarian socialism(s) is straight-
forward. However, there is no trace of a greedy, Western capitalist in Black
Cat. The only foreigners in the film are passing Russian sailors on their
way to the Black Sea and a fraudulent Bulgarian border guard who is exe-
cuted by Dadan’s thugs anyway. The spoilers of society in Kusturica’s tale
are its own residents. Despite being funny and lovable, there is no doubt
that the majority of Black Cat’s
t protagonists are a bunch of opportunists.
And Dadan is worst of all. He is cunning, greedy and ruthless.
Publicly, Matko praises Dadan as a ‘businessman’. Behind Dadan’s back,
Matko describes him as ‘a war criminal’. Yet, Matko idolises Dadan until
the very end. With little doubt, it can be said that Matko is Dadan in the
making. There is nothing wrong with being an entrepreneur and war-
criminal at the same time, if such grouping can result in unprecedented
material prosperity. Don Grga’s suspiciously-earned wealth is guarded
by a small, private army. Sujka, seemingly a loving grandmother, is
ready to sell her granddaughter into an arranged marriage. It seems that
everybody knows that everybody is ready to deceive and betray every-
body. And everybody accepts it.
Consequently, the only way out is to escape. The film offers a gateway
to the most innocent: Ida and Zare. ‘The sun never shines here’, says
Zarije in approval of Zare’s decision to run away with his bride. As a fare-
well gift, Zarije gives Zare all his money which is, according to Zarije,
‘all that you need to live happily’. In Black Cat, t as in Underground, the
homeland of Kusturica’s characters is in social and architectural ruin.
The ultimate message in the film is that the only way to deal with the
Western Balkans is to grab a bag with money and run to civilisation,
leaving others in their filth.
Yet Black Cat, in Kusturica’s own words, underlines the ‘hedonistic
nature of the people living in Yugoslavia … even though the film is
about Gypsies’’ (cited in Fuller 1999, np). This omnipresent hedon-

ism is always related to an unethical way of life. Even if, according to
Kusturica, pleasure-seeking dominates throughout the Western Balkans
in general and Serbia in particular; the central question is why the Roma
‘caricatures’ are chosen to be the evidence of it?
The answer to this question may lie in Gocic’s (2001) argument that
in reality, as well as in the world of representation,
the Gypsies are Europe’s extreme vision of marginality, who offer as

such one of the most persistent pictures of Eastern pagans in Western
fiction. … Moreover, the Gypsies have remained one of the few
mysterious, unspoken currencies of cinema, concentrated around
identifiable stereotypes. (p. 93)
In their films, both Popov and Kusturica evolve around the ‘mechanism
of projective identification whereby they are not meant to represent the
Roma but to project concern about the Balkan self’ (Iordanova 2001,
p. 218). Hence, it was the South Slavic (Serbian and Macedonian in
particular) ostracisation from European culture that influenced Popov
and Kusturica in their decision to sell the Roma image as their own.
Nonetheless, this ‘trade’ is at least paradoxical if not morally cynical.
It seems that both directors were well aware that the low socio-cultural
status of the Roma in the Western Balkans might serve as the projective
identification of South Slavic ostracisation from the rest of European.
In such a case, one may ask, how it is possible that well-established art-
ists and intellectuals still persist in exploiting the Roma image for their
own agenda?
Since Black Cat, t two other feature films on the Roma were shot
in Serbia. Both were realised in late 2006, and both films employed
Shakespeare’s universal adaptability. Goran Milic’s Guca/Guca—Distant
Trumpett is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet set amongst Roma and
Serbian brass musicians. Romeo is a young, handsome Roma trumpeter,
while Juliet is the daughter of the most popular trumpeter in Serbia. The
Serbian father will allow love to flourish between his blonde daughter
Juliet and dark-faced Romeo under a single condition: the young man
must beat him at the Guca Trumpet Festival.14 Unlike the original play,
Milic’s filmic adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy has a happy
ending. Aleksandar Rajkovic’s Hamlet-Ciganski Princ/Hamlett (2006) takes
on the Prince of Denmark, the ruler of Belgrade’s garbage dump. Largely
employing amateur actors, Rajkovic updates the tale to a dynastic fight
between rival garbage collectors, ostensibly commenting on the detritus
of modern society. Two ‘Gypsy’ gangs, Orthodox and Muslim, fight for
control of the distribution of garbage.
However, neither of these briefly mentioned films on Roma attracted
significant attention—either domestically or internationally. A couple
of available film reviews describe Guca as an exotic musical made largely
as a promo for the largest amateur trumpet festival in the world. Hamlet, t
on the other hand, has been depicted as a poorly-crafted film, both in
the technical and the aesthetic sense (Radovic 2007). Left without its
artistic aura, it was much easier for critics to label Rajkovic’s film as yet
another stereotypical portrait of Roma in the post-Yugoslav context.
Furthermore, by adding a religious dimension to an inter-Roma con-
flict, but without deeper research on Romani spirituality, Rajkovic, as
with many of his predecessors, blatantly uses the Roma to represent a
contemporary animosity between South Slavic nations, causing mili-
tant nationalism and religious intolerance.
Is it possible to say Kusturica and think Roma?
If previous Yugoslavian and current Serbian cinematography was

marked out by films on Roma, then Kusturica’s work on this subject
matter is its defining marker. There is no other film artist in the Western
Balkans who has been more preoccupied with Roma themes than this
Sarajevo-born director. Spending his defining years in a Sarajevo neigh-
bourhood that bordered a poor Roma ghetto, Kusturica was fascinated
by Roma. He considered himself lucky to have grown up near Roma
who ‘started drinking earlier than us, they started sleeping with girls
earlier than we did. So, every spiritual process that every man has to
go through they had instantly and with no problems’ (cited in Horton
2000, p. 34).
For a while it seemed that his second ‘Gypsy’ film, Black Cat, White Cat,t
would be his last meditation on the subject. However, asked by UNICEF
to participate in a project titled ‘All the invisible children’ (2006), which
gathered seven short films by eight directors coming from different
places, Kusturica made a twenty-minute feature, Blue Gypsy, based on
a script by his son Stribor Kusturica. The blue gypsy is actually Uros—a
Roma boy with fair skin and blue eyes. He is about to be released from
a juvenile detention centre in which he has spent quite a long time. He
is faced with mixed feelings on his release; dealing again with his father
who forces him to steal, yet supposedly being released into the outside
world. Cornered, young Uros chooses return to jail rather than his own
family. This short narrative caused outrage inside Romani intellectual
circles all around Europe.15 In 2007, Kusturica staged a (punk) opera in

Paris entitled Time of the Gypsies with a narrative that followed in detail
his 1989 film of the same name. Beyond his artistic contribution to the
subject, Kusturica was also engaged as an executive producer for the
above-mentioned film Guca—Distant Trumpet (Milic 2006).
However, Kusturica’s youthful fascination with Roma people and the
use of their imagery to the point of profitable exploitation was restricted
to a strict cinematic space. One of the best living directors in the world
has never extended his artistic curiosity towards the Romani into con-
crete political support (Gocic 2001; Iordanova 2002; 2008). His out-
spoken political backing was reserved for the most significant national
Other in the Western Balkans—the Serbs!
Since 1995, as previously discussed, Kusturica has been openly
accused by numerous critics from the Western Balkans and abroad of
taking the Serbian side during the years of Yugoslav disintegration.
For a while, the director fiercely denied such accusations. At the time,
Kusturica was living between Belgrade and a farmhouse in France.
However, in 2004, after the construction of his ethno-village on the
Serbian mountain Mokra Gora near the Bosnian border, Kusturica per-
manently settled in Serbia. On St George’s Day in 2005, Emir Kusturica
was baptised in a Serbian Orthodox Church as Nemanja (Zizek 2008b,
p. 484; IMBD nd). On one hand, Kusturica’s Orthodox baptism was a
very personal gesture. On the other hand, however, as religious orien-
tation in the Western Balkans is closely affiliated with nationality, his
baptism ultimately confirmed his longing for the Serbian nation. ‘It will
be remembered’, writes Mile Stojic, the poet and cultural critic based in
Sarajevo, ‘that Kusturica willingly swapped his aristocratic Arab name
Emir (Arabic for the ruler, the great) for the Serbo-Slavic name Nemanja;
the etymon for one who is orphaned, a poor man, a pariah, a man who
is in need’ (Stojic 2005, np).
Kusturica, however, is not a needy man, as he is far from being a
deprived artist. In Serbia, since building his ethno-village, he has even
become a very successful entrepreneur. Now, as a prominent artist and
businessperson from Serbia, Kusturica has no more reasons to deny his
chosen national identity or patriotism. Moreover, he has an obligation
to protect it if and when it is needed. In case of the Western Balkans,
the needd for protecting a nation usually comes sooner rather than later.
Thus, on 21 February 2008, Kusturica gave a politico-patriotic speech
for the first time.
On 17 February 2008, Kosovo became the youngest mono-national
state in Europe. On that day, Kosovo’s parliament overwhelmingly
voted in favour of independence from Serbia. The parliamentary proc-

lamation gave legal, perhaps democratic, and yet symbolic sovereignty
to the Albanians in Kosovo. The decision did not surprise anybody
who had any knowledge of what had been happening in and around
the former Yugoslavia since the early 1980s. However, in the end, the
date began to symbolise the day when the [semi]official16 borderline
separated Kosovo’s Albanians from Serbs and the Serbian national state.
Not a single significant political or cultural subject inside the Serbian
national corpus recognised the proclamation of independence by
Kosovo’s parliament. Yet, some segments of the Serbian coalition gov-
ernment were more vocal than others against the absolute sovereignty
that Kosovars proclaimed under the shield provided to them by the
US and major states inside the EU. Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian
Prime Minister at the time and president of the nationalist-oriented
Democratic Serbian Party (DSS), needed four days to prepare and
organise a massive political rally in Belgrade under the slogan ‘Kosovo
is Serbia’. Then in the early evening of 21 February 2008, almost
300,000 people came together in Belgrade’s square in front of the
National Parliament.
After an appropriate cultural-artistic programme, the Prime-Minister
Kostunica himself addressed the crowd first. His speech was followed by
an oration from the leader of the opposition in the Serbian parliament,
Tomislav Nikolic. The leaders of Bosnian and Montenegrin Serbs were
next in line to pledge their support in maintaining Kosovo within Serbian
jurisdiction. After the politicians, the rally’s protocol turned its attention
to two outstanding Serbian sportsmen. The tennis player Novak Djokovic
addressed the crowd via the video link. He was, at that time, out of coun-
try and unable to physically attend the rally. After the famous basketball
player Dejan Bodiroga finished his speech, Prime Minister Kostunica
briefly approached the lectern again. This time, his intention was to
personally announce the very last speaker. Kostunica introduced Emir
Kusturica as ‘the artist’ and ‘great Serbian’ and ‘world director’.
The artist’s appearance was perhaps atypical for a political rally in the
Western Balkans. Dressed in very casual robes, with messy hair and an
unshaved face, the most rewarded director in Balkan history looked as
though he was asked to come straight from an isolated film set. Yet, few
should have be surprised by Kusturica’s public appearance. Rock music,
his second artistic affinity, together with his unquestionable cultural
capital, which he had earned by winning two Palmes d’Or at the most
prestigious film festival in Europe, allowed Kusturica to present himself
in this post-punk style.
On his first appearance on the stage, the electrified mass began to

chant ‘Emir, the Serb’. It appeared that he was not reading his almost
five-minute speech. Either Kusturica practised so that he knew it by
heart or he had a momentous inspiration. Kusturica’s face offers som-
breness and anger when he begins:
Where are tonight the local mice that are lying for salaries and saying
that we are nobody and nothing? Where are the local mice, who for
small [amounts of] money, claim that our values aren’t in the bed-
rock of western civilisation? … Where are those who deride Kosovo’s
myth? (2008)
And the speech goes on. Once finished with the domestic turncoat,
Kusturica pointed at the ‘international community’. Despite belonging
to Western civilisation by contributing to its science and arts for example,
Serbia, according to Kusturica, had in the preceding twenty years been
severely punished by the West. The 2001 democratic changes in Serbia,
which led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic and his regime, Kusturica
describes as ‘possibly the most tragic [democracy] in the world’.
It is indicative that Kusturica began his speech by askingg for Serbs
who did not attend the rally. Of course, his concern was not with the
remaining 11 million Serbs who live in the Western Balkans and all over
the world. Rather, Kusturica’s ‘mice’17 are the vocal and consequently
visible opponents of the mainstream political discourse in Serbia: the
leadership and supporters of marginal political parties, and Serbia’s
intellectuals, artists and journalists with anti-nationalistic sentiments.
More than symbolically, Kusturica opened his public monologue by
stressing and repeating the core discourse from Serbian collective mem-
ory on the Kosovo battle. Rather than political, economic and military
predispositions, it was the internal disunity and particular traitors from
the Serbian medieval corpus who were blamed for the Serbian defeat on
the Kosovan field in 1389.18
After the director’s address, the master of ceremonies asked the crowd
to calmly move towards the shrine of Saint Sava, the largest Christian
Orthodox Church in the world, for a vigil and prayers dedicated to
the salvation of the Serbian people in Kosovo. Besides a purely spir-
itual segment, those who gathered in and around St. Sava’s temple
also witnessed a passionate political speech by the head of the Serbian
Orthodox Church. Yet, not all the protesters moved peacefully towards
the church. A large group, mostly youth, began a destructive and
violent rampage through Belgrade. The majority of shops in the city
centre were looted, windows smashed, and rubbish bins lit and thrown
on the roads. The US, British, German and Croatian embassies were
attacked. One young protestor died in the burning entrance hall of the
US embassy, torched by his pals.
Peace and orderr returned to the streets of Belgrade in the early hours
of 22 February 2008. Some, mostly young, participants in the rally were
still out, only by now they were calm and peaceful. Dejan Stankovic, a
Serbian cultural critic, easily recognised them as they were still ‘hold-
ing the state and national symbols’ (2008, np). Stankovic is straight-
forward and unapologetic in describing the youth on the streets. They
are ‘vandals’ responsible for ‘destroying’ the city. He is cynical, yet still
wondering about their ‘calmness and casual walk’ through, as Stankovic
dramatically described it, ‘the apocalypse’ (2008, np). Nevertheless,
their behaviour is empirically understandable for Stankovic: ‘[T]hey
grew up in chaos and chaos seems to be their natural environment’
(np). Two decades of constant violence for and because of borders is the
only time they lived and knew.
However, Serbian youth are not the centre of Stankovic’s emotional
response to the rally, which was published on the b9219 online portal
soon after the eventt occurred. A group of city cleaners’ nationality and
work ethic is what inspires Stankovic most:
[And] then, exactly there, in the middle of confusion and decadence,

I saw a group of five, six Roma men—the city’s rubbish collectors!
They work diligently, but really, really diligently. They were in a
hurry, picking up scattered rubbish containers and mopping broken
glass. It looked so routine but very effective. It is a [their] job and has
to be done! And then, I [Stankovic] recalled words spoken by one
gentleman. It was a long time ago, at a time when I was a kid. The
man said: Gypsies are our biggest Serbian shame. They are discrimi-
nated against in every sense. They don’t have the same opportuni-
ties. They are not integrated into society. And yet, we think we are
better than them. (2008, np)
Perhaps, one should pause here and say loudly, ‘what a story; what a
movie!!’ Roma men who, more than symbolically, clean up the mess
caused by radical forms of nationalism in the Western Balkans/the
former Yugoslavia could provide an inspirational metaphoric moment
for Kusturica, Popov, Paskaljevic, Gatif or any other director who has
the will, knowledge and funding to portray the Balkan Roma and their
causes through cinematic practices.
But then again, I am still curious: what did those low-paid work-
ing Roma men have to say about the violence and destruction some
members of the dominant nationality in Serbia exercised in downtown
Belgrade? What do they think about Serbs, and what about Albanians
from Kosovo, and what do they think about each particular South Slavic
nation? Furthermore, I would also like to know whether they have an
opinion about Kusturica; the director who became famous worldwide
and financially well-off thanks to visually appealing filmic themes
on Roma? But then, nobody has asked them. But we do know that
Kusturica did not consider them. Otherwise, he would have mentioned
the Roma in the speech he gave a few hours earlier.
If Kusturica had decided to mention Roma in his speech, he would
have had good reason. Together with Serbs, almost the entire Romani
population was forcibly removed from Kosovo in the aftermath of the
1999 NATO intervention. Once the fighting ended and the hundreds
of thousands of Kosovan Albanians driven from their homes returned,
they took revenge on all remaining Serbs and Roma. Any suburb or vil-
lage with a Roma quarter was attacked, looted and burned (Crowe 2000,
p. 112). According to a Memorandum of the European Roma Rights
Centre (ERRC 2005), Albanians violently expelled approximately four-
fifths of Kosovo’s pre-1999 Romani population, estimated to have been
around 120,000, from their homes. In the course of the ‘ethnic cleans-
ing’ campaign, ethnic Albanians kidnapped Roma, severely abused and,
in some cases killed, Roma men and raped women in the presence of
family members (ERRC 2005, p. 3). As the ‘justification’ for atrocities
against Roma, the official Kosovan Albanian discourse insisted that
the Roma were Serbian allies (Crowe 2000, p. 110). Even though being
entirely questionable or only partially true (Crowe 2000; ERRC 2005),
the alliance between Serbs and Romani in Kosovo showed that the latter
were the only inhabitants in the Western Balkans who were still on the
Serbian (nationalistic) side. Nonetheless, Kusturica did not find it appro-
priate to mention Roma refugees from Kosovo in his speech.
Furthermore, not many reacted in Serbia, including Kusturica, when
in 2007, in the midst of the debate in the Serbian Parliament over
Kosovo, Marko Jaksic, a member of the ruling Democratic Party of
Serbia, accused Vladan Batic (the member of the oppositional Christian
Democratic Party of Serbia) of coming to the session not in order to
defend Kosovo, but to ‘provoke others with his Tzigan’s (Gypsy) men-
tality’ (cited in Radojkovic 2007). A day later, in an explanation of his
chauvinistic outburst, Jaksic demonstrated that he was not just a com-
mon racist. After apologising to everyone who may have felt insulted
by his words, Jaksic insisted that he actually had nothing against Roma,
as he was talking only about the ‘specific Tzigan’s mentality of Mr
Batic’ (Radojkovic 2007, np). He basically meant that ‘Cigan’s mental-
ity’ is a character trait of Mr Batic. In the end, the only penalty for
the parliamentarian Jaksic was a public warning by the Speaker of the
Serbian Parliament. It is important to say here that the xenophobic and
racist public statements in the context of Romani are not only linked
to Serbia. In Bosnia for instance, few, if any, publicly protested when a
heated Bosnian crowd at a football match between Bosnia and Portugal
in the town of Zenica in November 2009 chanted ‘Tzigani’ in an effort
to insult Portuguese players who were winning the game.
While visiting Sarajevo during the summer of 2008 to experience
the Sarajevo Film Festival, I also mingled with my friends and relatives
from the town of Visegrad and its associated villages and farms, who
have lived in the Bosnian capital since their forced expulsion from the
eastern Bosnian borders. One of them, my distant relative, invited me
to go for a swim with her family at a recently opened aquatic centre.
She praised the centre and its ‘extremely clean’ facilities. ‘Unlike two
other swimming pools in Sarajevo’, she said to me, ‘the staff in the new
centre do not allow Gypsies and their children to get in. What they can
do [the Roma children] is to watch us through the fence’, she laughed.
‘There is no chance’, she continued, ‘that you will see anybody who is
unclean there’.
I have known this woman since my childhood. My mother has been
a very good friend of her mother since they were children. The woman
and her mother somehow survived the 1992–1995 atrocities in Eastern
Bosnia. Soon after the war ended, in Sarajevo, she married a Bosnian-
Muslim man who survived the genocide in Srebrenica. Except for him,
not a single male in his family was left alive. He had three uncles, two
brothers, and a father. Since our ‘swim’ talk, I keep wondering how it is
it possible that she, whose family and the family of her partner almost
perished because of being different, of being the ultimate Other,
r can have
such a perception of the Roma?
I also wonder why she is certain that the Romani are unhygienic?
Does she know any Roma man, woman or child personally? Before the
last war, to my knowledge, there were no Roma living in the town of
Visegrad and its municipality. The dozen Roma families who lived in
the town’s outskirt called Dusce, and who were well known for their
blacksmiths’ trade, perished during World War II. If some of Visegrad’s
Roma survived the Porrajmos, they did not return to the town of
Visegrad. The only Roma she might have met in the 1980s in Visegrad
was a middle-aged couple from Macedonia, broom-makers who would

come occasionally to the town on market day, for the purpose of selling
their handmade stroll and ‘besom’ brooms.
If not through personal experience then, perhaps my female cousin
unconsciously grasped her ‘knowledge’ about the Roma from the nov-
elist Ivo Andric, Visegrad’s most famous resident. Although not born
or ever residing in Visegrad during his productive years, Andric spent
some of his formative years in the town. The town of Visegrad is also
the setting for his best-known novel, the Nobel Prize winning The Bridge
on the Drina (1946–1977). The novel spans about four centuries and
its narrative is built around the bridge over the Drina River. While the
majority of his numerous characters are Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Turks
and Austrians, Andric does mention Roma on a few occasions.
In the novel, three Roma men are the executors of a horrifying
impaling of a Serbian rebel ordered by the Ottoman rulers. The very act
of impaling is described with agonising precision in over eight pages
(pp. 43–51). Later, one of Andric’s characters, a Serb peasant from the
nearby village, delivers the following monologue about the Roma man
he previously approached: ‘He’s a gypsy, a thing without cross or soul,
one cannot call him either friend or brother, and one cannot take his
word by anything in heaven or earth’ (Andric 1977, p. 56). A couple of
centuries later, as an act of revenge for the Serb’s uprising against the
Ottoman rule, many Serbs were beheaded. Their heads stayed exhibited
on the bridge for days to follow. In one of these bodiless heads, writes
Andric, ‘the gypsy children stuck a cigar’ (p. 91). Another century
passes. Meanwhile, the Habsburgs replaced the Ottomans. New rules
and costumes come with new rulers. In the Habsburgs’ Bosnia, even
women are allowed to visit a pub. One of the first female visitors in the
filthy, local pub is Saha; an alcoholic Roma woman from the town. She
is described by Andric as ‘a squinting gypsy woman, a bold virago who
drank with anyone who could pay, but never got drunk. No orgy could
be imagined without Saha and her meaty jokes’ (p. 188). The day after
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy declared war on Serbia in 1914, the
first militia ready to fight the local Serbs was formed in the town. Its
leader was a ‘certain Huso Kokosar, a gypsy without honour or definite
occupation, who lost his nose in early youth as the result of a shameful
disease,’ (Andric 1977, p. 283).
Andric’s novel was compulsory reading in the secondary education
curriculum all over the former Yugoslavia. Just before the conflict
erupted in Bosnia, a group of Bosnian Muslim nationalists led a cam-
paign against Andric, declaring him an anti-Muslim writer who hated
Bosnia, Bosnian Muslims and their culture. Yet, the moral panic they
caused was untenable. Few, if any, non-Muslims in Bosnia have written
with passion about the Slavs who embraced Islam after the Ottoman
arrival on the Balkan Peninsula, as Andric did in his impressive opus.
Nevertheless, I have not been able to find a critical analysis of Andric’s
problematic discursive stance on the Roma.20
Writing on cinema, Alain Badiou (2005) rightfully observes that the
‘film would not exist, or would not have existed, without the novel’ (p. 79).
Without a written story on Roma there would be no feature film on
Roma. According to numerous press accounts from the Western Balkans
(Summer 2010–Winter 2011), Emir Kusturica has agreed to make a film
in the near future based on Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina. The
most significant financial contributor to this project will be the gov-
ernment of the Serb entity in Bosnia. The Bosnian-Muslim nationalist
elite have once again instigated the rumour about Andric’s past, and
Kusturica’s current anti-Bosnian Muslim and pro-Serb rhetoric. Yet, the
focus of criticism should go in a different direction. With his early films
Kusturica created an ode in honour of the Sarajevan secular Muslim and
of certain Bosnian identities. Even if he wants to, Kusturica cannot erase
this aspect of his bibliography. What is important here is not Andric’s
extraordinary reach and vibrant prose on South Slavs of all fates from
Bosnia. What does matter, however, is his problematic view of Roma.
If the film project with the working title of The Bridge on the Drina
becomes reality, and if its mise-en-scène is the horrifying, crucifixion-
like impaling of the Serb peasant on the bridge, then a crucial concern
should be the approach that Kusturica takes in depicting the ‘execution-
ers’: three Roma men.
A Roma image to come
Non-Roma artists have created a whole field of signifiers that continue

to be quoted, recycled, and perpetuated, to the extent that even Roma
use and quote them themselves. Ian Hancock, a prominent Romani
scholar, points out that when other nations are portrayed in stereo-
types, the school curriculum takes care to distinguish between fact and
fiction (Hancock 1997, cited in Szeman 2009, p. 103). In the case of the
Roma, these films are one of the few sources of information about them
available to the public at large.
In general, neither Yugoslav nor post-Yugoslav cinema have been
capable of producing a mainstream feature film on Roma that either
critically examines their historical positions or imagines a socio-cultural
perspective that would be in line with cosmopolitan norms about the

Other. What Gypsy Magicc and Black Catt have brought to the surface is
almost identical to their predecessors from fifty or even a hundred years
ago. ‘Gypsy films have been recycling—or, shall we say, plagiarising from
each other—the same narrative tropes of self-destructive love fixations
and reckless confrontations with the law’ (Iordanova 2008, p. 307).
Thus, Popov’s Gypsy Magic has recycled almost completely the discur-
sive fable from Petrovic’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies. The main characters
in both films, Bora and Taip, live their lives beyond any social responsi-
bilities and norms. In both films, the main focus is on irrational impul-
siveness and a lack of moral consciousness amongst men. Furthermore,
the Roma people in general are portrayed as immune from the law due
their ability to stay out of mainstream society. If the scholarly references
on the previously mentioned Rankovic film from 1911, Gypsy Wedding,
are accurate, then Kusturica’s Black Catt is post-modern reprocessing
at best. Together with the exotic attractiveness of Roma culture, the
targeted framing of irresistibly laughable living caricatures is all that
Kusturica has to say about the Roma at the end of 20th century.
Perhaps, Kusturica may say more. A Roma woman named Gina
Ranjicic was born in 1831 on the land that is contemporary Croatia.
She lived in Belgrade, Istanbul and Venice. She died in Paris in 1890.
Gina Ranjicic was a poet. She wrote in Romani, Serbian and Turkish lan-
guages. In her lifetime, she wrote more than 350 poems (Marushiakova
& Popov 2001, p. 82). Gina Ranjicic was a literate woman at a time
when ninety nine per cent of women in the Western Balkans were illit-
erate. Gina Ranjicic was a poet of Romani origin. Perhaps, a ‘Kusturica’
to come will visualise Gina.
If previous visual narratives have inflicted negative stereotypes about
Roma on public culture, it might be possible to reverse this trend by
portraying alternative images of Roma. This might be seen as propagan-
distic and perhaps exploitative, but then again, there is no such thing as
an apolitical film. This is especially important in cases where the Other
is concerned. In this era of supposed Roma inclusion, the Roma in the
Western Balkans remain the last outsiders. They should be, in contrast,
part of the diversity that progressive forces in post-Yugoslav societies are
trying to (re)claim.
Conclusion: Sarajevo and One
Illusion in August
In Chapter 2, ‘Once upon a time in Sarajevo’, I began my narrative of

Sarajevo and Yugoslavia by echoing a statement by cultural anthropolo-
gist Fran Markowitz (2011), who described pre-1990s Sarajevo as the
most Yugoslav city in Yugoslavia. For Markowitz, pre-war Sarajevo was
the ideal mirror image of a state known for its cultural, religious and
ethnic diversity. The city of Sarajevo—in which Yugoslav multiplicity
was compacted in a dense urban environment—was the classic example
of a settlement in which almostt all human beings, regardless of their
ethnic and religious backgrounds, could live in harmony. This was true
multiculturalism. Sarajevans called it cohabitation, or ‘common life’,
as Markowitz (2010, p. 29) credibly translates the South Slavic phrase
‘zajednicki zivot’.
The imperative for the nationalist elite(s) in the late 1980s and
throughout the 1990s was to prove once and for all that ‘common life’
was a fallacy. To make cohabitating practices impossible, the Other was
othered to a level that went beyond the definition of banal. In this
process of othering the Other, multi-ethnic urban spaces were perceived
as the largest obstacles. Thus, some of the most cosmopolitan Yugoslav
cities and their residents paid a horrendous price for being examples
of ‘common life’. The nationalist elite found it necessary to destroy all
bridges and tear apart all the possible connections between cosmopol-
itan-minded people. The Serbo-Montenegrin attack on Dubrovnik—a
city without any apparent strategic importance—was neither random
nor meaningless. Dubrovnik, together with cities such as Vukovar,
Mostar and Sarajevo, was an urban place known not only for its archi-
tectural beauty but also for its openness, hospitality and diversity of
cultures. By destroying Dubrovnik, Vukovar, Mostar and Sarajevo,
nationalists were ending the very idea of common life.
161
Almost a decade after the last conflict in the Western Balkans had
ended, the consequences of the nationalist predilection for destroying
possible habitats for cohabitant ways of life are clearly visible. Sarajevo,
once Yugoslavia’s most Yugoslav city, is a clear example of nationalist
accomplishment. If socialist Yugoslavia is a synonym for a multicultural
and multi-religious society, and the term ‘post-Yugoslavia’ is a schol-
arly definition of the geo-political region in South-East Europe deeply
divided by ethnic and religious borders, then contemporary Sarajevo
is post-Yugoslavia’s most post-Yugoslav city. With the disappearance of
Yugoslavia, Sarajevo’s ethnic mix has also vanished.
Contemporary Sarajevo is overwhelmingly inhabited by Bosniaks
(Bosnian Muslims),1 who account for over ninety per cent of the city’s
population (Sell 1999, p. 200). The numerous newly-built mosques
and Islamic centres, the only remarkable architectural achievements in
post-war Sarajevo, ‘give a visual form to Bosniaks’ and the Islamic domi-
nation of the city’ (Aksamija 2008, p. 117). The remains of Sarajevo’s
‘lovely ethnic mix’, as Sell (1999, p. 200) poetically laments the city’s
recent past, are only visible in its two central downtown municipalities,
in which most of the historical buildings reference the multicultural
and multi-faith past and where the vast majority of the current city’s
non-Bosniak residents still live. However, most of Sarajevo’s peripheral
suburbs are almost exclusively populated by Bosniaks. Before the con-
flict, in some of these places, Bosniaks were a statistical majority. Yet, in
many of these peripheries, they were not. Prior to 1992, these suburbs
were either multicultural or had a Bosnian Serb or Bosnian Croat major-
ity. Only in March 1996, after the war had been over for six months and
the Dayton Peace Accord2 had been signed, would Bosniaks become the
dominant national-ethnic group in the administrative entity named
‘The Canton of Sarajevo’.
Nevertheless, the initial plan for post-war Sarajevo was significantly
different. According to Richard Holbrooke (1998), the United States
diplomat in the Clinton administration and the creator of the Dayton
Peace Accord, post-war Bosnia had been imagined as a loose, decentral-
ised state in which all three major national collectives would almost
undisputedly rule over theirr territories. For the city of Sarajevo, however,
the Accord’s planners had a different proposal. Sarajevo was supposed
to become a separate district that would be a semi-independent entity
within the Bosnian state (Holbrooke 1998, p. 248). This city-district
would be evenly governed by representatives of the Bosnian national-
ethnic triumvirate. In practice, it meant reunification of the besieged
parts of Sarajevo with the surrounding suburbs that had been under
Conclusion 163
control of the Bosnian Serbs since the beginning of the conflict. The
plan further included Kiseljak and Kresevo—two small towns in the
vicinity with Croatian majorities—in the geo-political map of post-war
Sarajevo.
In the end, the idea of Sarajevo becoming a Bosnian multicultural
district was not realised. Alija Izetbegovic, the undisputed Bosniak
leader of the time, agreed on the Sarajevo District plan, but required
further territories for ‘his’ people. The representatives of the Bosnian
Serbs, on the other hand, refused any idea of having ‘mixed’ territo-
ries (Silber 1996; Sell 1999). The deadlock was broken by the Serbian
president Slobodan Milosevic; arguably the most influential negotiator
in Dayton. According to Holbrooke (1998), Milosevic told to him that
the district model for Sarajevo was too complicated and that he was
ready to give it to the Bosniaks as long as the Serbs remained in control
of forty-nine per cent of the Bosnian territory. To the great surprise of
those present, Milosevic said: ‘Izetbegovic has earned Sarajevo by not
abandoning it. He is one tough guy. It’s his’ (cited in Holbrooke 1998,
p. 291). The man who had once pledged to unite all Serbs in one state
gave up on Serb-held parts of Sarajevo even though nobody had asked
him to do so (Silber 1996, p. 69). His unexpected offer was enthusiasti-
cally accepted by Izetbegovic, as well as by the American mediators.
However, Milosevic’s ‘generosity’ was a nationalist Trojan horse placed
in the centre of what had once been the most diverse city in the region.
Apparently, the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs—Radovan Karadzic
and Momcilo Krajisnik—were not pleased with Milosevic’s decision
to give parts held by the Serbs in Sarajevo to the Bosniaks. Only after
Milosevic’s intimidation, which included arrest warrants for the entire
leadership of the Bosnian Serbs, did Radovan Karadzic accept the deci-
sion made by the Serbian leader (Sell 1999, p. 182). At that time, an
estimated 100,000 Bosnian Serbs were living the Sarajevan suburbs
controlled by Karadzic’s army. According to the optimistic American
creators of the peace agreement for Bosnia, they would stay in their
suburbs. However, for Radovan Karadzic, the option of Sarajevo’s
Serbs remaining in their homes was out of the question. Thus, an
unprecedented campaign in the Serb-controlled media on behalf of the
Bosnian-Serb leadership began. This campaign encouraged Sarajevo’s
Serbs to abandon their homes and lands in Sarajevo and move to parts
of Bosnia that remained under Serbian control (Sell 1999, p. 183). As
compensation for their abandoned homes, the Bosnian-Serb leader-
ship promised to build an entirely new city named Serb’s Sarajevo. The
new metropolis was to be built in the Serb-controlled mountainous
region south-east of Sarajevo. Soon, the Serbs around Sarajevo began to

migrate on a massive scale to the Serb-controlled areas. Some of them
torched their homes once the furniture had been transported into their
new accommodation. Some Serbian families even dug out and trans-
ported the remains of their ancestors from the graveyards. For them,
life under the political domination of Bosniaks and/or Croats was out
of question.
The Izetbegovic government in Sarajevo showed indifference to this
massive, planned exodus of Sarajevo’s Serbs. Izetbegovic himself once
said that the people of Sarajevo ‘finally deserved to be free of their mur-
derers’ (Sell 1999, p. 183). Later, he called on all Serbs to stay. However,
Izetbegovic’s offer excluded those ‘who fought against his government
and had committed war crimes’ (Sell 1999, p. 183). Considering that
most adult males had either volunteered or been forced to serve in
the Serb army, Izetbegovic’s amendments only intensified the Serbian
exodus.
In almost four years under siege, Sarajevans had experienced
extremes of fear and lived without adequate food, water and electric-
ity. An estimated 10,000 people had died in Sarajevo during the war.
Within this approximate number, children killed by bombs or snipers
accounted for 643 (Halilovic 2012). These factors significantly contrib-
uted to the Sarajevans’ lack of sympathy for departing Serbs who lived
around the besieged city. However, following simple logic, it must be
said that not all soldiers on the Serbian side contributed to Sarajevo’s
misery. Considering the Serbs’ military superiority and the geo-strategic
advantages of their positions, one could conclude that many, many
Serbian soldiers did not point their guns at civilians living in the city.
Otherwise, the human casualties would have been multiplied several
times.
Furthermore, an estimated 20,000 Serbs who stayed in the besieged
Sarajevo carried two additional psychological burdens compared with
the rest of the Sarajevans. On the one hand, they were all considered
traitors by their fellow Serbs, who had besieged the city in the first
place. On the other hand, however, many Serbs living in Sarajevo were
intimidated by other Sarajevans because they belonged to the same
nationality as those who were besieging the city. Amongst those killed
in besieged Sarajevo were an estimated 150 Serbian civilians, brutally
murdered by armed gangs operating in the city (Donia 2006, p. 353).
A wise Bosnian or Bosniak leader of the time would have considered all
of these facts and done his or her or his best to keep Serbs in the city
best known for its centuries-old tradition of multiculturalism.
Conclusion 165
After the Austro-Hungarian empire annexed Bosnia in 1878, a signifi-

cant number of Bosniaks decided to migrate to today’s Turkey. Aleksa
Santic, a prominent Bosnian-Serb poet from the city of Mostar wrote
the poem ‘Stay Here’ (1896), in which he urged Bosniaks, with whom
he shared a common language and many other aspects of culture, to
remain in Bosnia. Santic’s poem begins with the verse: ‘Stay here! The
sun that shines in a foreign place will never warm you like the sun in
your own’ (Santic 1896–2006). Regrettably, it will be remembered that
no Bosniak or Croatian artist from Sarajevo publicly asked Serbs outside
the besieged borders to remain in their homes in March 1996.
In the days and months following the reunification of Sarajevo into
one administrative unit, Bosniak refugees from Eastern Bosnia settled in
deserted Serbian houses and apartments. In the years to follow, many
of them bought or legally exchanged their properties with Sarajevo’s
Serbs now living in Eastern Bosnia. The remains of my extended family,
who survived the massacre of Bosniaks in Eastern Bosnia, also settled
in Sarajevo. My uncle’s house, mentioned in Chapter 2, was rebuilt
soon after the end of the war. That house is now a permanent home for
my mother, brother and his family. The grassy hills, which previously
surrounded the house on three sides, are now overwhelmed by new
houses, built in a hurry and with few resources. Only a mosque, which
stands at the centre of this new settlement on Sarajevo’s periphery,
looks somewhat grandiose. The owners of these unimpressive houses
and most common attendees at prayers at the pompous mosque are
by and large Bosniak refugees from Eastern Bosnia. In the post-war
years most of these refugees became a loyal voting base for the Bosniak
nationalist parties. Perhaps a significant amount of time will be needed
for them to overcome the trauma of the preceding war and their cur-
rent depressing poverty. Only with these two preconditions will they be
ready to absorb and, perhaps, contribute to the way of living in the city
where ‘common life’ was the most significant element of the culture.
The Bosniak refugees from Eastern Bosnia, now living in contempo-
rary Sarajevo are not, of course, the cause of Sarajevo’s shrinking ethnic
diversity. Those who planned and executed the siege are the main
cause. Their goal was to tear apart the fabric that connected Sarajevans
in a network of solidarity based on sharing the urban space. Their plan
was to set neighbour against a neighbour. ‘They were not only killing
citizens in the city, but they were killing the city in citizens too’ (Hemon
2005, np). Nor are Bosniaks from Eastern Bosnia living in contemporary
Sarajevo the creators of its current socio-economic problems. Those
responsible are the Bosniak nationalist parties, who build their political
platforms on victimhood, and the never-indicted criminals in the city’s

economy who profited most from the transition from a socialist to a
capitalist economy.
Sarajevo’s contemporary cultural and social everyday life is vastly dif-
ferent from the enthusiasm of 1970s and 1980s. Aleksandar Hemon, a
Bosnian-American writer born and educated in Sarajevo, compares his
place of birth with a ‘beloved wife with a broken spine’ (2006, np). He
continues:
We believe she can walk again and we believe that our love will help
her. We also believe that our mutual love is still connecting us. …
Regardless of the privilege of being able to walk freely, our human
destiny is tied to people we love, and while they do not heal we are
unwell too.
Hemon 2006, np
On another occasion, Hemon (2005) argues that cities, including

Sarajevo, cannot die. Hemon, who often visits Sarajevo, insists that a
significant number of ‘good, interesting, talented and diligent people’
still live in the city. One of these people, I would argue, is film direc-
tor Jasmila Zbanic. In Grbavica, she depicted Sarajevo as a place deeply
scarred by the wounds of war. Yet, she left open a window of hope for a
better tomorrow for Sarajevo by focusing on her character Sara’s youth-
fulness and enthusiasm. Sara represents the hope that a better future
is possible and will come for her, her mother and the city they live in.
Sara’s very name somehow represents Zbanic’s metaphorical faith in a
better Sarajevo. Sara is a mythological name from the Old Testament,
used with barely any variation in pronunciation by all three Abrahamic
religions. Sara’s name also carries another discourse that goes beyond
monotheistic tolerance or the common ground between Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Sara is the abbreviation of the word Sarajevo.
The character of Sara is Zbanic’s way of expressing hope for Sarajevo’s
renewal.
Traces of Sarajevo’s pre-war spirit and glimpses of its possible rejuve-
nation are most visible each August for ten days. Since 1995, August has
been the month when Sarajevo is flooded with filmmakers and admir-
ers of their art. In 2008, the year I visited the city, The Sarajevo Film
Festival (SFF) was attended by 1,611 accredited film associates and 650
journalists (Petkovic 2009). In ten days, the festival screened 174 films
from forty countries and attracted some 100,000 visitors (Djurica 2008).
The SSF was launched almost immediately after the siege was lifted. Its
Conclusion 167
origin, however, goes back to 1993, when the city was under constant
shelling and sniper fire. A film festival subtitled ‘Beyond the End of the
World’ was initiated by theatre and film director Haris Pasovic, who sent
out a letter to several film directors in which he asked for VHS copies
of their new films (Pasovic 2009, p. 7). The response was overwhelm-
ing and Pasovic was supplied with 140 films. Thus, from 23 October to
3 November 1993, the festival was held in the three available cinema
theatres and attracted more than 20,000 viewers (Pasovic 2009, p. 7).
The common question for Pasovic from the foreign journalists working
in the besieged city was: ‘Why a film festival during the siege?’ Pasovic
sometimes answered with the counter-question: ‘Why a siege during
the film festival’ (Pasovic 2009, p. 8).
Perceived as a symbol of the city’s cultural resistance in 1993, the SSF
would become the largest and most significant regional gathering for
filmmakers at the beginning of the 21st century (Petkovic 2009). The
festival, built on the solid tradition of the filmmaking and cinephilia in
Sarajevo, has turned into an internationally renowned event that pro-
motes local cinematography but also brings to Sarajevo the finest films
from the Balkans, Europe and the world. While the SFF screens movies
from all over the world, the main focus is on the region of Southeast
Europe (Albania, Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece,
Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia,
Slovenia and Turkey) and its filmmakers, which compete in Feature,
Short and Documentary film sections (The SFF 2012). The SFF has a
central role in forging multiculturalism and co-existence, by drawing on
the symbolic capital of Sarajevo as a cosmopolitan centre prior to and,
perhaps, since the war (Dimova 2009, p. 107).
The honour of opening the SFF in 2008 went to the young Sarajevan
female director Aida Begic and her début feature Snijeg/ g Snow
w (2008).
Already acclaimed as the 2008 winner of the prestigious Critics’ Week
Grand Prize in Cannes, Snow w attracted extraordinary interest. Thus, I
was not able to buy a ticket for its screening in a remarkable 3,000-
seat open-air-theatre, artfully shoe-horned between buildings on an
old school playground. Instead, I watched Snow w a few days later in a
sold-out multifunctional amphitheatre with an 800-seat capacity. Prior
to World War II, this amphitheatre had been an integral part of the
largest Sephardic synagogue in this part of Europe. Looted and partially
burned down by the fascist Ustasa mob in 1941, the synagogue stood
abandoned until 1966, when the Jewish community offered it to the
city of Sarajevo for use as a cultural centre. The remaining residents
of the once large Sarajevan Jewish community—both Sephardi and
Ashkenazi—decided that the much smaller Ashkenazi synagogue

nearby was sufficient for their spiritual needs. While waiting for the
projection of Snoww to begin at any moment, I could not help but think
of the horrendous price that Sarajevo’s Jews had had to pay for fellow
Sarajevans to be able to watch a film in an 800-seat amphitheatre that
had once been a Sephardic synagogue.
Snow
w is a dreamy, slow-paced story about the women whose entire
beings are marked by the horrifying consequences of the not-so-long-
ago military conflict. The film’s setting is a partly demolished Bosniak
hamlet in eastern Bosnia. Its central narrative follows a week in the
lives of Bosniak refugees who returned to their village soon after the
war ended. This micro-society is missing a key element for returning
to the religiously devotional and patriarchal way of life they had lived
before the war: almost the entire male population has perished. When a
Western European property developer, escorted by a local Serb, proposes
to buy up all their land, the women are tempted to accept the offer and
escape poverty and isolation. In the end, the women decide not to sell
their village. They are there to stay. The women in the film are por-
trayed as proud and diligent humans. In particular, the main character
Alma—played by the talented Sarajevan actress Zana Marjanovic—is,
perhaps, a utopian example of a human being who does not lose her
or his dignity despite the almost unbearable psychological and social
circumstances. (Figure C.1)
Aida Begic, the co-writer and director of Snow, is a practicing Muslim.
Begic’s religious commitment is further underlined by the fashionable
Islamic scarves that hide her hair and frame her face every time she
appears in public. There is no doubt that Begic’s religious affiliation
is transferred to the characters in Snow. The leading character Alma,
in particular, is an example of a woman whose faith in God is very
strong despite the doubts and challenges she faces in the struggle of
her everyday routine. Alma is also characterised by her strong will, and
power to make decisions about her future. Specifically, in the context
of a traditional patriarchal society, it was not the only surviving adult
man in the village but Alma who took the decisive role during nego-
tiations with the foreign developer over the future for the surviving
villagers. Perhaps, in Snow, Begic successfully shows Islamic feminism
whose objective is, according to Balibar (2011 p. 19), to challenge from
the inside the cultural structures of patriarchal domination within this
particular form of monotheism. The gender-liberating aspect of Begic’s
film is an example showing that the spiritual (religious) is not always
Conclusion 169
Figure C.1 Alma, a close-up (still, Snow)
opposed to the secular. The struggle for dignity and equality for the
Other may have several paths.
Aida Begic and Jasmila Zbanic are two young Sarajevo-based female
directors who have effectively used the power of film narrative to depict
the aftermath of war from women’s perspectives. The accent in their
films on domestic spaces, the rhythms of everyday life, and female
solidarity constructs an alternative to that of the patriarchal societies
across post-Yugoslavia. Further optimism, in regard to women’s per-
spectives, concerns and their visualisations, lies in an important and
optimistic detail that Zbanic and Begic are not the only female directors
who have made a significant mark in post-Yugoslav cinematography.
Marina Andrée, Oja Kodar, Aneta Leshinkovska, Maja Milos, Andrea
Staka and Teona Strugar are a new generation of talented (female)
film directors whose artistic practices are challenging the long- estab-
lished domination of masculinist discourse in the post-Yugoslav visual
space. The significant presence of female directors and their films at
the SFF in recent years further underlines the fact that the process of
post-Yugoslav de-masculinisation has begun and, hopefully, it is not

turning backwards.
These artistic female voices further pledge that, for instance, the hor-
rendous consequences of systematic war rape will not be easily erased
from human consciousness. And those influences are not necessarily
only from the Balkans. In 2008, while travelling as a tourist across
former Yugoslavia, the Australian actress Kym Vercoe visited the town
of Visegrad. Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina was the defining
moment in Vercoe’s decision to stay several days in this small eastern
Bosnian town. Only after she left Visegrad, Vercoe would eventually
find out that the otherwise unremarkable hotel in Visegrad she stayed
in had served as a detention camp for Bosnian women and girls during
the 1990s conflict. Their captors, Serbian soldiers, committed horren-
dous crimes against their bodies. Very few women and girls kept in this
hotel survived.
It was the overall invisibility and silence over this particular war
crime that urged Vercoe to write a one-woman play, Seven Kilometres
North-East,t in which she offered remarkable human and artistic rever-
ence for the vanished women from Visegrad whose suffering would
otherwise have remained generally unnoticed and eventually forgotten.
Seven Kilometres North-Eastt had its premiere in Sydney in 2010. In 2011,
Vercoe brought the play to Sarajevo, where she met Jasmila Zbanic for
the first time. In the years to follow, Vercoe and Zbanic would transform
Seven Kilometres North-East into a film script; For Those Who Can Tell No
Tales had its premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
In Grbavica, Zbanic focuses on a particular victim of war rape. The
audience get to know Esma and her specific suffering very well. In For
Those Who Can Tell No Tales, however, Zbanic asks for an emphatic
relationship between the audience and the numerous invisible victims
of war rape. It is Kym Vercoe’s bodily presence—her everyday gestures,
walk and dance which offer the viewers a connection with the victims
who would otherwise remain silent and largely forgotten.
Kym Vercoe is not the only woman outsiderr to leave a visual mark on
the topic of Bosnian war rape. Angelina Jolie’s directing début, In the
Land of Blood and Honeyy (2011), explores the possibility for a love in
impossible circumstances. Ajla is a young Bosnian woman abducted by
the Serbian Army and taken to a rape camp. There, she will eventually
meet a young Serbian officer, Daniel. Daniel moves Ajla out from the
prison camp and lets her live with him. Soon, a bizarre love-relationship
develops. The ultimately ends in tragedy. Ajla is killed by Daniel, who
later surrenders himself to the UN peacekeeping forces.
Conclusion 171
Controversy followed Jolie as soon as she revealed her decision to

write and film this impossible and ultimately tragic love story. Both
Serb and Bosnian nationalists accused Jolie, either of an anti-Serbian
stance or of the further humiliation of Bosnian victims of rape. The
film premiere eventually calmed down the anti-art voices, as it became
obvious that Daniel was not the ultimate villain and Ajla was not a
passive victim who simply fell in love with her abductor. Overall, In the
Land of Blood and Honeyy is a benevolent story with impressive photog-
raphy. Jolie’s Balkans and Bosnia are imagined and depicted as places
of impressive architecture and art galleries. It is a far cry from the typi-
cal colonial Western gaze that sees the Balkans as vast wilderness and
peasantry (Pavicic 2012). As such, In the Land of Blood and Honey was
nominated for the best foreign language film at the 69th Golden Globe
Awards and won the Stanley Kramer Award at the 23rd Producers’ Guild
of America Awards. In 2012, the SFF also awarded Jolie’s film with an
Honourable Mention. Still the most important accolade for In the Land
of Blood and Honey lies in its multidimensional perspective. Firstly, the
film is an anti-war drama which looks for a beauty amongst ruins and
try to imagine a love in impossible circumstances. Secondly, while mak-
ing the film, Angelina Jolie involved a cast and film crew from almost
every corner of the former Yugoslavia.
Film is the first medium to have crossed over the nationalist walls
among South Slavic nations across post-Yugoslavia. Film and film
culture are the evidence that, in spite of the unforgiving efforts of the
nationalist elites, the people of the former Yugoslavia can live, work and
play together. The film Buick Riviera (Rusinovic 2008)—the SFF winner
in 2008—is yet another example of the extraordinary multicultural
achievements of the artists from the region.
In terms of Buick Riviera, the co-operative spirit of the South Slavs is
made manifest in the following order: the film is based on Miljenko
Jergovic’s novel of the same title written in 2002; Jergovic is a Sarajevo-
born Croat living in the Croatian capital of Zagreb; Goran Rusinovic,
the director of the film, is a young Croatian director who lives in the
United States. Two equally important roles in Rusinovic’s film are
given to Slavko Stimac and Leon Lucev. The latter, Lucev, is a talented
Croatian actor. In Buick Riviera, he plays Vuko—a Bosnian Serb living in
mid-America. Slavko Stimac, on the other hand, is the doyen of Serbian
film and theatre. Well-known in Sarajevo for his role in Kusturica’s
debut film Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (1981), in Buick Riviera Stimac
is again given the role of a secular Muslim from Sarajevo, as he trans-
forms himself into Hasan—a quiet Bosnian émigré in the United States.
For their extraordinary performances in Buick Riviera, Stimac and Lucev

shared the best actor award at the SSF. It was somehow evocative to see
these two men together on the red carpet while holding in their hands
stylised, golden hearts; the trademark of the SFF.
The story of Buick Riviera is told through the fates of Hasan and Vuko.
Both are Sarajevan migrants in the United States. Unknown to each
other, Vuko and Hasan meet for the first time by chance on a deserted
road in the middle of America. These two men will spend the next
twenty-four hours mentally sabotaging each other. While trying to fig-
ure out who is guilty of what, they change their lives forever. Yet, they
prove nothing. Just as the war they left behind did not prove or justify
anything. The film’s ending and its overall message have the character-
istics of classical theatrical tragedy.
Both stylistically and discursively, Buick Riviera is already a step away
from the cinematic cliché of ‘Yugoslavian wild man’ (Jameson 2004,
p. 240). While still exposing the emotional fragility of two men from
former Yugoslavia, deeply traumatised by the recent conflict they
both participated in, Rusinovic avoids emphasising the previously pre-
ferred ‘ferocity’ of ‘barbaric’ and ‘bloodthirsty’ men from the former
Yugoslavia. Rather, as has already been seen in examples from No Man’s
Land d (2001) and Ordinary People (2009), men from the former Yugoslavia
have been the objects of a consciously-built discourse in which their
masculinity contributes to or equals the strength of their nation.
However, as I have demonstrated throughout the book, the demystifica-
tion of imagined militaristic energy is a clear tendency in post-Yugoslav
cinematography. Jurica Pavicic, a film scholar from Croatia, calls this
change of stylistic dominance in post-Yugoslav cinematography the
‘cinema of normalisation’ (Pavicic 2010). Together with an emphasis
on the concerns of women, the de-masculinisation of men is the most
significant contribution of film art to the re-building of a peaceful,
prosperous and equal society in the part of Europe that was once called
Yugoslavia.
However, it is now important to emphasise that neither film art in
general, nor film artists in particular are necessarily constructive in
regard to the just-mentioned discursive practices that might contribute
to the dissolution of patriarchy and/or nationalism. Emir Kusturica’s
shift in artistic practices, as well as his engagement as a public intel-
lectual, are examples of a trajectory wherein ‘cosmopolitanism is
replaced with ultra-nationalism’ (Conversi 2009, p. 361). Since the
early beginning of his career, Kusturica has always known how to find
common ground with the powerful politicians of the day. And with
Conclusion 173
the changing political climate, Kusturica has kept changing too. In the
late 1980s, as soon as it had become unpunishable and somewhat
fashionable, Kusturica used every possible opportunity to attack the
persona and legacy of the late Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito (Skrabalo
1989–2006, p. 76). His current alignment with the remnants of the
Milosevic regime and other Serbian nationalist hardliners is at odds with
the roots of the Roma cosmopolitan tradition he has been exploiting
for years (Kostic 2010, p. 65). His right-wing political involvement and
comfortable position as a wealthy businessman who runs businesses and
owns properties in Serbia, Bosnia and France, are in sharp contrast to the
anti-globalist image he tries to build and sell to the world (Kostic 2010,
p. 65). Finally, Kusturica’s artistic shift, in which he switches from imag-
ining and creating Sarajevo’s urban and secular space to promoting anti-
Western and pro-Russian rural Serbia, as seen in his most recent feature
to date, Zavet/
t Promise Me This (2006), is a perfect example of his ‘skilful
adaptation to the ideology of the moment’ (Kostic 2010, p. 61). ‘All
this data’, as the Serbian scholar Marko Kostic (2010, p. 65) concludes,
‘provide a grotesque, and possibly more comical than depressing, pub-
lic form’. His uncompromising alignment with nationalist elements of
the Serbian political scene brought about Kusturica’s financial fortune
as well as his status as an artistic god in the eyes of a particular part of
Serbian society. However, as a filmmaker in a post-Yugoslavian context,
he stayed alone. At this point, it is both needless and necessary to say
that Kusturica has not visited Sarajevo since the beginning of the war,
whereas the vast majority of other film directors and actors from Serbia
are regular participants at the SFF.
While summarising the SFF for the Guardian, Ronald Bergan (2008)
finds that ‘the spirit of the festival is one of co-operation among the
ex-Yugoslavian nations’. Despite the need to be cautious about the fact
that the cosmopolitan spirit of SFF is a ‘ten-day-long illusion’ (Jergovic
2011, np), there is hope that Sarajevo may gradually regain its status as
the most culturally and religiously diverse city in the region. Together
with the further stabilisation of peace and de-stabilisation of the nation-
alist discourse, the persistence of SFF’s politics of cohabitation may lead
Sarajevo to a moment when the ‘ten-day-long illusion’ is transformed
into a genuine and lasting reality for the conurbation that was once the
most Yugoslav city.
In the very last scene in Underground d (1995), Kusturica offers a uto-
pian ending in which all the dead protagonists come back to life and
gather together for a wedding feast. They dance, sing, kiss and pledge
a distorted forgiveness to each other. In the background, the members
of the ever-present Roma orchestra are on their feet. They are there to
entertain. There is an allusive allegorical connection between the spirit
of SFF and the last scene in Underground. Namely, both the SFF and the
wedding scene bring together the post-Yugoslav nations after cataclys-
mic events. Another allegory between the SFF and the last few minutes
of Underground, however, is more direct. It is the Roma musicians. In
Underground, as I have already argued, the Roma musicians are noth-
ing more than the a prop to maintain the rhythm of the film and give
another, more vivid, dimension to the background of numerous scenes.
Regrettably, that is exactly the way in which Romani subjects were used
by the SFF planners and selectors in 2008.
The year 2008 was the third year after the ‘Decade of Roma Inclusion
(2005–2015)’—a cultural and political commitment by European gov-
ernments and Romani civic societies to improve the socio-economic
status of the Roma—had been introduced across all of the European
Continent. The purpose of the Decade was to accelerate progress toward
improving the wellbeing of Roma living in Europe. In 2008 and beyond,
the planners of the SFF did nothing to make any valuable contribution
towards this important cause. In 2008, ‘Sarajevo Talent Campus’—the
SFF educational and creative platform for up-and-coming young film
professionals—was without a Roma participant. In 2008 and since, the
SFF—as the largest and most important film festival in the region—
found it unnecessary to establish cooperative relations with the Golden
Wheel Film Festival in the nearby city of Skopje in Macedonia. In 2008,
Zelimir Zilnik—the doyen of former-Yugoslav and Serbian socially-
engaged cinema—was not invited to give one of his compassionate and
educational lectures on the unbearable socio-cultural positions of Roma
in the former Yugoslavia and Europe. Zilnik, in 2007, had completed a
doco-fictional trilogy about a young, handsome, and witty yet digni-
fied Roma man named Hasan Kenedi (Kenedi ( se vraca kuci/Kenedi Goes
Back Home (2003); Gde je Kenedi bio dve godine/Kenedi, Lost and Found
(2005); Kenedi se zeni/Kenedi is Getting Married
d (2007)). The year of 2008
was perhaps the best possible time for Zilnik to share his accumulated
knowledge with young filmmakers, journalists and the audience attend-
ing SFF on subjects that matter, such as, for instance, the ethical and
moral norms that have to be considered while filming and visualising
the Roma.
Nevertheless, during the ten days of the SFF in 2008, the locals in
Sarajevo and the city’s numerous visitors were still able to appreciate
one segment of Romani culture. Those who planned the SFF and its sup-
porting events invited two Romani brass orchestras from Serbia. Ljiljana
Conclusion 175
Buttler, a well-known Romani female singer, was also invited to perform.

Buttler and the brass bands all began their performances at almost mid-
night. The reason was half obvious. The festival’s honourable guests and
organisers had first to conclude their interviews or business-related meet-
ings. The audience, too, had to finish watching the last film of the night.
Only at that moment, were they all ready to walk to the nearby venue
and totally relax with the help of the magical voice of Ljiljana Buttler.
There was no other role for Roma musicians at the SFF in the year of 2008
than to entertain the festival audiences at the end of yet another exciting
and fulfilling day. Thus, Kusturica’s attitude towards Roma in Underground
is identical to the attitude that the SFF planners displayed in regard to the
most disadvantaged group of people in the former Yugoslavia.
Then again, in 2013, the 19th SFF was opened by Epizoda u zivotu
beraca zeljeza/An
/ Episode in the Life of an Iron Pickerr (Tanovic 2013)—a
low budget film about one particular sequence amongst many unforgiv-
ing settings that many Roma living in Bosnia experience on everyday
basis. I like to think that An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker would
not have opened the SFF if its director had not been the Oscar-winning
Danis Tanovic and if the Iron Picker had not won the Grand Jury Prize
at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.
The Iron Pickerr is Nazif Mujic; a Roma man who supports his pregnant
wife Senada and two children by collecting scrap metal. Living conditions
are not a fairly tale in post-war Bosnia for many and Nazif’s family is not
an exemption. For them, life would turn from bad to worse once Senada is
denied life-saving medical treatment. The fetus in her body is dead and she
needs an urgent surgical intervention. As Senada is not insured and does
not have money to pay the procedure in advance, she is denied help in
hospital. In the days that follow, Nazif will try everything what is in power
to save Senada’s life—desperately collecting scrap metal, as well as seeking
help from non-governmental and governmental institutions. Eventually,
Senada’s life will be saved. But in the meantime, Nazif and Senada will
fully experience the cruelty of a neo-liberal society in transition towards
the poor in general; and blatant racism towards Roma people in particular.
Nazif and Senada Mujic are actual people. In the Iron Pickerr they
played themselves; they performed an episode from their own lives.
Danis Tanovic visited the couple soon after their harrowing experience
become a news item in the local press. He succeeded in persuading the
Mujic family to play themselves. The filming lasted only nine days.
The finished product, the film itself, is an extraordinary powerful set of
visual puzzles which tell a haunting story through a genre which fuses
together experimental, documentary and feature filmmaking.
The jury of the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival awarded Nazif
Mujic with the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance. Fifteen
minutes of fame followed: for a moment, Nazif became the Balkans’
latest celebrity. As a reward, the municipality in which he lived with
his family offered him a job as the garbage collector. Instead, in 2014,
Nazif and his family opted to apply for asylum status in Germany. The
Mujic family spent next six months in an asylum centre in Berlin. Upon
the rejection of their application for asylum, the Mujics were forced to
return in Bosnia. There is no country for a Roma man. Anonymous, but
overwhelmingly racist, comments across online media in South Slavic
languages almost unilaterally named as ‘ciganska posla’ (gypsy business)
Nazif’s desperate attempt to secure a more dignified life for his family.
His fifteen minutes had been spent out.
While re-building their own bridges, the South Slavic nations in the
former Yugoslavia keep ignoring the needs of those who have been liv-
ing around them for centuries. The Roma people are there to stay and
their intolerable socio-economic conditions are directly linked with
South Slavic racism and ignorance. Both men and women of South
Slavic descent are equally responsible for the position of the Roma
in the former Yugoslavia. Consequently, despite the improvement of
some cosmopolitan norms during the post-war period, the Roma case
remains a case of bad conscience on Sarajevo’s as well as the regions’
roads towards the cosmopolitan society it has yet to become.
Instead of a postscript
I began this book out of a desire to expose some of the most important
films made in the former Yugoslavia and consequently to contribute to
an ongoing and still important debate on the historical causes and con-
sequences of the Yugoslav disintegration. In doing so, I focused primar-
ily on a visual, cinematic retrospective of social, cultural and political
trajectories that culminated in the series of brutal conflicts on European
soil at the end of the 20th century.
Guided by Kellner’s (1995; 2010) methodological apparatus, which he
names ‘diagnostic critique’, I used particular cinematic narratives from
the former Yugoslavia to interpret the history of the region. However, as
indicated by Kellner, diagnostic critique is a two-way process in which
film can serve as a historical reference only if it is read with and/or
against other texts that define a particular social context and historical
era. Thus, the interpretation of a film will benefit from contextual read-
ing while, at the same time, a film narrative adds another dimension to
Conclusion 177
particular events from the past. In this double-vision, a cinematic nar-

rative can be understood as an additional referential point.
I also aimed to offer some alternatives for post-Yugoslav space(s) by
pointing in particular to cosmopolitan practices that would destabilise
the socio-political discourses that caused the misery for many and, fur-
ther, establish entry into a future where military conflict is unimagina-
ble, and where individual and group human rights are not an exception
but rather a norm. Again, as was case with the causes and consequences
of the Yugoslav wars, I looked upon art in general, and film art from
the region in particular, as pointing imaginatively towards, elaborating
upon and reinventing cosmopolitan alternatives for post-Yugoslavia.
The influence which led to these expectations of film art is Benjamin’s
(1973) argument that film art can contribute to a critique of society by
suggesting new or alternative ways of being in the world.
By connecting a cosmopolitan humanism with Benjamin’s reflections
on the liberating potential of film art, I navigated my writing toward
the ‘care for the Other’ and a ‘city’, which should become the ultimate
site where the Other is welcomed. With the emphasis on Sarajevo—
once a centrepiece of microcosmic cosmopolitanism—I clearly stressed
the devastating consequences that nationalism has brought to the
region. However, the Sarajevo case also showed the strength and capac-
ity of film and cinema culture to reinsert the cosmopolitan spiritt in
an urban place. The filmic interrogation of three particular Other(s)
from the former Yugoslavia showed partial success, as represented by a
socially conscious visual narrative. While progress has been made if one
speaks of gender representation and the abandonment of militaristic
discourse in a South Slavic context, little or nothing has been done to
challenge the persistent racism and pejorative attitudes towards Roma
living throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Furthermore, through the entire length of this book, I have tried to
stay in line with Benjamin’s (1973) observation, which alerts us to the
fact that a filmic re-imagining of the world can swing in more than one
direction. Thus, I have offered another reading of the film Underground
(Kusturica 1995), arguably the most significant visual narrative ever
made in the Western Balkans. My findings point out that Underground
is either the product of propaganda on the behalf of the Serbian
nationalist elite and/or yet another visual spectacle for a Western audi-
ence, which is horrified, but excited by images that depict the Western
Balkans as a ‘timeless, incomprehensible, mythical cycle of passions’
(Zizek 1997, p. 38). To underline further my findings about Underground,
I have followed the artistic and political development of its creator, film
director Emir Kusturica. Hence, I have reinstated the concept of the

author—almost
r a forgotten notion in film and cultural studies thanks
to Barthes’ (1977) still influential claim that interpretation cannot be
based on, or informed by, the biography of the author.
Nevertheless, throughout the entire book, I have tried to stress the
idea that film art is an important part of furthering the humanisation
of human beings. What I heard in a lecture given by the acclaimed film
director and producer Lord David Puttnam (2010) with regard to the
emancipatory power of moving images took me beyond my own imagi-
nation. Namely, in 1985, Putnam visited Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine
(at that time part of the USSR), where he was promoting the Oscar-
winning film The Killing Fields (Joffé 1984). Apparently, after Puttnam
left the Ukraine, numerous VHS pirated copies of The Killing Fields—a
poignant narrative about the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge
regime on their own people—started to circulate in schools and uni-
versities all over Ukraine. ‘As far I can make out’, Puttnam (2010, np)
claims, ‘just about every young person in the Ukraine has seen the
movie’.
More than twenty years later, in 2006, Puttnam was introduced to the
then Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, who had also been the
leader of the Orange Revolution.3 During the meeting, Yushchenko asked
Puttnam if he had noticed the fact that during the Orange Revolution
the possibility of a civil war in Ukraine was out of the question, in spite
of the extreme political tensions between the regime and the opposition.
According to Puttnam, Yushchenko explained that the main reason for
not pursuing a military option during the length of Orange Revolution
was the film The Killing Fields. Yushchenko continued:
Because of your film we understood all too well what civil war can
do to a nation. We saw what happened in Cambodia. Everybody was
determined it was not going to happen in Ukraine.
Puttnam 2010, np
Ever since then, I have wanted to and do believe that the miracle
described so enthusiastically by Lord Puttnam to his Australian audi-
ence in 2010 is possible. A miracle is the only appropriate word to
describe the enormous educational and social impact that the visual
story of The Killing Fields allegedly left on Ukrainian society. Yet a mira-
cle is an extremely rare phenomenon and its revelation is not given to
everybody. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and, at the time
this line is being written, the ongoing military conflict between the
Conclusion 179
Ukrainian army and the Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, show

that a movie with this miraculous potential has yet to be made. Only
time will tell if the Ukrainian conflict will overshadow the Yugoslav one
and even trigger the beginning of the end of the cosmopolitan dream
for Europe. The miracle that Lord Putnam proclaimed in 2010 has
turned into a terrifying normality.
There was also no miraculous story that could prevent the outbreak
of the disastrous military conflicts in former Yugoslavia in the last dec-
ade of the 20th century. One also should not believe that a film with
a divine message would prevent the eruption of a new war in post-
Yugoslavia or the further negation of human rights for the Other(s).
What one should hope for is the fostering of cosmopolitan strategies
and norms across every aspect of political, social and cultural life in
the former Yugoslavian territories. The visualisation of those strategies
and norms in films made in and about this part of Europe is what one
should ask for and expect from the art of film and film artists. Such con-
tributions of film narratives in building a cosmopolitan post-Yugoslavia
that has yet to come, would be close to a miracle. We shall not ask for
more.
Notes
1 Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

1. According to Kellner (2010, p. 43) the term ‘cinema’ has richer connotations
than ‘film’, as cinema refers to ‘the system of production, distributional,
reception, as well as the genres, styles and aesthetics’. Thus from now on,
by following Kellner’s logic, I will use film and cinema interchangeably to
describe past and contemporary cinema in Western Balkans.
2. I am referring here to Foucault’s essay ‘What is an Author?’ (1994) and
Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of Author’ (1977).
2 Once Upon a Time in Sarajevo

1. See Chapter 3 for further discussion of this issue.
2. The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illus-
trated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the
Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, origi-
nating from Spain. The Haggadah is presently owned by the Bosnian National
Museum in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display.
3. Kusturica’s TV films are Nevjeste dolaze/The brides are comingg (Kusturica 1978) and
Bife Titanik/Buffet Titanicc (1979). I will briefly discuss Buffet Titanicc in Chapter 6.
4. Cvijetin Mijatovic (1913–1992) became the first President of the joint
Yugoslav Presidency after Tito’s death in May 1980. He presided over the
Yugoslav Presidency for one year.
3 An Historical Fable of a Country That Is No More

1. Janaki (1878–1954) and Milton (1882–1964) Manaki are considered to be the
Balkans’ pioneering filmmakers. They were born in the land that is part of
Macedonia today and their ethnic origin is Vlach—a minority group that still
lives in mountainous parts of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
The brothers spent most of their productive life in the Macedonian town of
Bitola, where they owned a photographic studio and cinema theatre. After
their death, the impressive archive of their static and moving images was
deposited in the Macedonian film archive. The annual Manaki Brothers
International Film Camera Festival, commemorating them, is held in Bitola.
The two scenes I discuss are from the film Spinning Women in Avdela and can
be seen on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jnoC3MQqVY.
2. See Chapter 5 for more insight into Ulysses’ Gaze.
3. For the film’s script, Kusturica collaborated with Dusan Kovacevic; a leading
Serbian scriptwriter. As was case with his previous films, Kusturica worked
closely with the playwright; and the script was credited to both (Iordanova
2002, p. 75).
180
Notes 181
4. Zeljko Raznjatovic (Arkan) was a criminal figure who turned into a high-
profile Serbian warlord whose paramilitary units were responsible for one of
the most gruesome crimes against non-Serb civilians during the conflict in
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1999, the ICTY issued a warrant for his
arrest and charged him with crimes against humanity. He never faced trial,
as he was assassinated by a member of Belgrade’s underworld in 2000.
5. The last Yugoslav census in 1981 showed that Albanians were the fourth largest
ethnic/national group. Numerically, only Serbs, Croats and (Slavic) Muslims
had a larger population than the Albanians. The number of Slovenes was
almost equal to the number of Albanians. The Macedonians and Montenegrins
had smaller populations than the Albanians (Hodson et al. 1994).
6. The Tito-Stalin Split was a conflict between the leaders of Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and the USSR, which resulted in Yugoslavia’s expul-
sion from the Communist Information Bureau in 1948. For further informa-
tion regarding this topic see Perovic (2007).
7. In the article ‘Tito’s default’, particular segments of which I am either para-
phrasing or citing here, despite his overall argument, which is in general
favourable towards Tito and his historical role, Perisic does not forget to
mention the crimes committed in the name of Communism in Yugoslavia.
Most noticeably, Perisic underlines the execution of Ustasa and Chetnik war
prisoners, the harassment and forced expulsion of the Austrian, German,
Italian and Hungarian minorities immediate after the end of World War II,
the persecution of Stalin’s supporters after the split between Tito and Stalin
in 1948, and the harassment and persecution of political dissidents.
8 John Paul Driscoll was a documentary filmmaker based in New Orleans. He
collected the material for the article I cite here while shooting an educational
film about Yugoslavia.
9. The best-known filmmaker within the Black Wave movement was Dusan
Makavajev. Other prominent filmmakers within the movement were Jovan
Jovanovic, Lazar Stojanovic, Zivojin Pavlovic, Bata Cengic, Krsto Papic and
Zelimir Zilnik. For further reading about the Yugoslav Black Wave cinema see
DeCuir (2011).
10. I will pay closer attention to the genre of partisan film in Chapter 4.
11. Bulajic’s partisan film Bitka na Neretvi/Battle for Neretva (1969) was nomi-
nated for an Oscar in the category for best non-English film in 1970.
12. In his semi-biographical novel Smrt je neprovjerena glasina (2010), Kusturica
describes Siba (Hajrudin) Krvavac as a close family friend and person who
had had a prevailing influence on his decision to become a filmmaker.
13. As a term, ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’ refers to a series of carefully-
orchestrated mass protests against the governments of the Yugoslavian
republics and autonomous provinces during 1988 and 1989, which led to
the resignations of the leaderships of Kosovo, Vojvodina and Montenegro
and the consequent capture of power by politicians loyal to Slobodan
Milosevic. For further reading see Vladisavljecic (2008).
4 Ordinary Men at War

1. For centuries, the gusle had been the most popular folk instrument in Serbia,
Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and southern parts of
182 Notes
Croatia. This musical instrument was played and appreciated by all ethnic
groups living in these territories. However, all but the Serbs and Montenegrins
abandoned the gusle in the late 1980s. The reason for this sudden rejection,
according to Zanic (1998), lies in the fact that the gusle, due to its prominent
presence in Serbian nationalistic discourse of the time, became an exclusive sig-
nifier for the Serbian cultural domain. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to see,
hear or read about the gusle in areas dominated by Croats or Bosnian Muslims.
2. Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787–1864) is considered as one of the most impor-
tant reformers of the Serbian language. He was also a passionate collector and
promoter of the Serbian folk tradition.
3. The 1990s Yugoslav wars were not the first conflict to adopt ‘Rambo style
insignia’. As Kellner (1995) writes, in 1985 worn-torn El Salvador, some sol-
diers and officers had worn the same ‘bandanna-style headgear as the beefy,
bare breasted Rambo’.
4. Amongst numerous awards, No Man’s Land d won the Academy Award for the
best foreign film in 2002. Ordinary People was winner of the prestigious Critics’
Week award in Cannes for 2009. In the same year, Ordinary People was the
overall winner at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
5 Women Speak after the War

1. See Chapter 3 for additional notes about the Manaki brothers.
2. On average, prior to the first multi-party elections, twenty to twenty-five
per cent of Yugoslav (republican) parliamentarians were women (see Djuric-
Kuzmanovic et al. 2008, p. 287)
3. See Chapters 3 and 6 for further insights on the Ustase and Chetniks.
4. I mention the Tito-Stalin split in Chapter 3.
5. Both Christine A. Maier and Barbara Albert worked on Zbanic’s second feature
film, On the Path (2010), which had its premiere at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival.
6. This news announcement was not subtitled in English in Grbavica’s DVD for
English-speaking countries.
7. In 2008, the central Sarajevo square, facing the Bosnian National Theatre,
was named after Susan Sontag.
8. For further reading on the turbo-folk music phenomena in the Western
Balkans see Baker (2007). See also Kronja (2004).
9. Ilahi is a Muslim religious song which content primarily magnifies the
power of God. Ilahi lyrics also offer the unconditional love for God on behalf
of the performer/singer.
10. Belgrade’s International Film Festival (FEST) is an annual event, usually
scheduled for the end of February. The decision to screen Grbavica at the
thirty-fourth FEST in 2006 was initiated by human rights activists from
Serbia, and the publicity Zbanic’s debut had gained after the award at the
Berlin Film Festival.
11. The Serbian Radical Party (Srpska Radikalna Stranka) is an ultra-nationalist
party which in 2006 held a significant number of seats in the Serbian
Parliament. Its founder is Dr Vojislav Seselj, whose trial at the ICTY is now
in progress.
12. ‘Anti-Serbian propaganda’ is not a strong enough expression for explaining
the verbal attacks on Karanovic. In obscure tabloids and threatening letters
Notes 183
sent to the actress she was depicted in terms ranging from the ‘Turkish
whore’, to the ‘ugly woman turned lesbian because she is undesirable to
men’ (see Svett 2006, no. 454; Zbanic 2006, LA Times 14 April).
13. See Chapter 4 for further insights into Pretty Village, Pretty Flame.
6 Roma: The Other in the Other

1. Even if the English-speaking readership of this book may be more familiar with
the word ‘Gypsy’, I am insisting on naming these people the Roma or Romani.
The reasons are numerous. First and foremost, it was the legitimate decision
by the Roma elite. In April 1971 in London, during the first World Romani
Congress, delegates from all over Europe adopted the term Roma to describe
themselves (Fraser 1992, p. 317). Second, while the term ‘Gypsy’ has become
so pervasive that some Romani associations use it in their own organisational
names, this word still has pejorative connotations in English-speaking socie-
ties. The idiom ‘to gyp’, often used in the United States, describes a particular
lifestyle related to stealing or deceiving. Perhaps, many Americans do not
know that the etymon gyp originates from the word Gypsy. The apparently
non-racist, yet persistent, use of the expression ‘to gyp’ in American colloquial
English does not make it any less wrong. In the end, ‘gyp’ does signify a whole
ethnic group as ‘cheaters’. In times which are behind us, some (previously)
oppressed groups such as Jews, Irish or African Americans, either through
political, cultural or lobbying activities, managed to expel related offensive
terms from use in everyday language. The Roma community still does not
have this potential. The equivalent for the English word ‘Gypsy’ in South
Slavic languages is Cigan (pronounced as Tzigan). The acute misuse of this
term in former Yugoslavia shows up in a passage of the Anti-discrimination
Act 1971, which specifically prohibits the word Cigan, considering it offensive
(Memedova et al. 2005, pp. 48–49). Then, in Romania in 2010, the Roma
were tried to be redefined as Tzigani by the state parliament in an effort to
prevent using Romani as the official term because it could be confused with
Romanian. The Romanian general public initiated this redefinition due to the
unprecedented fury over a French sports journalist who labelled the Romanian
national soccer team ‘Gittano (Gypsy) virtuosos’. Further embarrassment on
behalf of Romanians and their politicians was interrupted by the Romanian
upper house, the Senate, which rejected the proposal. I will use the terms
Roma and Romani interchangeably, except when referring to the original work
from the authors. The word ‘roma’ is derived from the word ‘rom’, which
means human being/man in the Romani language(s). In the English language,
Romani is an adjective that can also be a noun.
2. ‘Porrajmos’ is a Romani word symbolically equal to the meaning of the word
Holocaust.
3. See Chapter 2 for further discussion of The Scent of Quinces.
4. For further reading regarding Jews living in contemporary Sarajevo see
Markowitz, F. (2010) Sarajevo: A Bosnian Kaleidoscope, University of Illinois
Press, Chicago.
5. Tisa (played by Gordana Jovanovic) is the only leading actor in Petrovic’s
film who is of Romani origin. Bekim Fehmi (Bora) is an Albanian from
Kosovo, while Bata Zivojinovic (Mirta) and Olivera Vuco (Lenka) are Serbs.
184 Notes
While Fehmi, Zivojinovic and Vuco have had colourful careers either in
theatre or cinema, Jovanovic only appeared twice: in Petrovic’s film It Rains
in My Village (1977) and ten years later in Guardian Angel (Paskaljevic 1987).
Both roles were small.
6. For an interesting introductory discussion on the all-European stereotypical
portrait of Roma in cinema see: Pasqualino, C. (2008) ‘The Gypsies, Poor but
Happy’, Third Text,t vol.22, no.3, pp. 337–345.
7. These two memorable roles in Sijan’s film are played by cousins Miodrag and
Nenad Kostic.
8. According to Croatian writer and publicist Zoran Zmiricc (2005), there is
one interesting connection between Sijan’s Who is Singing Out There? and
Kusturica’s Underground. Originally, the last scene in Who is Singing Out
There—where the bus, upon its arrival in Belgrade, is destroyed by a Nazi
air raid—was supposed to have a massive animal escape from the Belgrade
zoo. However, due the death of Tito, the Yugoslav borders remained shot
down for a period of time and the animals, owned by an Italian circus, were
not delivered to the film’s set. Fifteen years later, the scene with animals
escaping from Belgrade zoo is revived in Kusturica’s Underground. This time
the animals are used for the opening scene. But they still mark the German
bombardment of Belgrade in the early hours of 6 April 1941.
9. As Kusturica’s and Paskaljevic’s films have been written on extensively before
(see Iordanova 2001, 2002; Gocic 2001), I am not paying close attention to
them in this chapter.
10. St George’s Day (Herdalejzi in the Romani language or Djurdjevdan in South
Slavic languages) is the most significant holiday for the Balkans’ Roma of all
faiths. Herdalejzi is originally an Orthodox Christian holiday that has been
incorporated into Romani communities regardless of their religion, and is
celebrated in a manner particular to that community.
11. Both the Macedonian Cinema Information Centre and the Internet Movie
Database (IMDB), refer to the film’s title only in the English language.
12. In the Balkans, this tradition is not strictly related to Roma. Marko Vesovic, a
poet and literary professor at Sarajevo University of Montenegrin Orthodox
Christian origin, recalls his childhood trauma with bitterness. On the day
of his mother’s funeral, he was forced by his uncles to take care of the food
cooked for the funeral’s guests.
13. By and large, most Dervishes and their numerous Dervish orders are Sunni
Muslims who follow Sufi teaching, a mystic stream of Islam.
14. The Guca Trumpet Festival is a three-day feast of brass music with a forty-
year tradition. It is an annual festival located in the south Serbian town of
Guca.
15. Kusturica was accused of stereotypical presentation of Roma. The Roma
council of Europe wrote a protest letter to the UN, who was the sponsor of
the project.
16. Kosovo has been recognised by the US, United Kingdom, Germany, France,
Italy, Holland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey, etc. However, Russia, Spain, China
and number of other states have not recognised Kosovo’s de facto independ-
ence from Serbia.
17. ‘Mouse’ is slang originating from Sarajevo. It describes a coward or extremely
unpopular person.
Notes 185
18. I wrote briefly about this medieval event, deeply embedded in Serbian public
discourse, in Chapter 3.
19. Radio and television/RTV b92 are Belgrade-based media best known for their
criticism of everyday political norms during Milosevic’s era.
20. As the only Nobel Prize Laureate from the former Yugoslavia, Andric and his
prose have been the topic of numerous scholarly articles and essays, both in
English and South Slavic languages.
Conclusion: Sarajevo and One Illusion in August

1. So far, in this book, I have used the terms Muslims, Bosnian Muslims and
South Slavic Muslims to describe Bosnians and other South Slavs who have
adhered to Islam since the 15th and 16th centuries. In the former Yugoslavia,
the official name (recognised in the Constitution since 1972) for this Yugoslav
nation of South Slavic origin used to be Muslims (Muslimani). The Bosnian
Muslim intellectual and political elite, however, changed it to Bosniaks in
1993. The main purpose for this change was to avoid confusion with the reli-
gious term Muslim. Historically, Bosniak (Bosnianin) described an inhabitant
living in medieval, pre-Ottoman Bosnia. Thus, as Markowitz (2010, p. 63)
indicates, the eponym Bosniak, unlike the term Muslim, makes a direct link
to Bosnia. Since, both geographically and culturally, Bosnia is part of Europe,
the eponym Bosniak further indicates the inseparable link between South
Slavic Muslims and the rest of Europe. I use the eponym Bosniak from this
point as it coincides with the historical time-frame in the book’s narrative.
2. The Dayton Accord is the peace agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina that was
reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in November
1995, under the guidance of the US government. This agreement, signed
by the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian presidents, put an end to the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
3. The Orange Revolution was a series of protests and political events that took
place in the Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005. The revolu-
tion was the response to the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, which was
claimed to have been marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and
direct electoral fraud. Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, was the focal point of the
movement’s campaign. Nationwide, the Orange Revolution was highlighted
by a series of acts of civil disobedience and general strikes.
Filmography
After, Afterr (Zbanic 1997) Bosnia.

All the Invisible Children—Blue
— Gypsyy (Kusturica 2006) France/Italy/Serbia.
Andrei Rublevv (Tarkovsky 1969) Soviet Union.
Anika’s Times (Pogacic 1954) Yugoslavia.
Arizona Dream (Kusturica 1993) United States/France.
(The) Battle of Kosovo (Sotra 1989) Yugoslavia.
Beautiful People (Dizdar 1999).
(The) Beauty of the Sin (Nikolic 1986), Yugoslavia.
(The) Big Boss (Wei 1971) Hong Kong.
Black Cat, White Catt (Kusturica 1998) France/Serbia/Austria/Germany/Greece/
United States.
The Blacks (Devic & Juric, 2009) Croatia.
(The) Blacksmith of Crucifix (Hanus 1920) The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes.
Bobby (Kapoor 1973) India.
Buffet Titanic (Kusturica 1978) Yugoslavia.
Buick Riviera (Rusinovic 2008) Croatia/Bosnia.
Calling the Ghosts: A Story about Rape, War and Women (Jacobson & Jelincic 1996)
United States.
Do You Remember Dolly Bell (Kusturica 1981) Yugoslavia.
Early Works (Zilnik 1969) Yugoslavia.
For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (Zbanic 2013) Bosnia & Herzegovina, Qatar,
Germany.
Geett (Sagar 1978) India.
Gypsy Magic (Popov 1997) Macedonia.
Grbavica (Zbanic 2006) Austria/Bosnia/Germany/Croatia.
Guardian Angel (Paskaljevic 1986) Yugoslavia.
Guca-Distant Trumpet (Milic 2006) Serbia.
Guernica (Kusturica 1977) Czechoslovakia.
Gypsy Birth (Popov 1979) Yugoslavia.
(The) Gypsy Girl (Nanovic 1953) Yugoslavia.
Hamlet (Rajkovic 2006) Serbia.
Hanka (Vorkapic 1955) Yugoslavia.
How the War Started on My Island d (Bresan 1996) Croatia.
I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Petrovic 1967) Yugoslavia.
Images from the Corner (Zbanic 2003) Bosnia.
In the Land of Blood and Honey (Jolie 2011) United States.
Kenedi Goes Back Home (Zilnik 2003) Serbia.
Kenedi is Getting Married (Zilnik 2007) Serbia.
Kenedi, Lost and Found (Zilnik 2005) Serbia.
(The) Killing Fields (Joffé 1984) United Kingdom.
The Living and the Dead d (Milic 2007) Croatia.
Lukina’s Jovana 1979 (Nikolic 1979) Yugoslavia.
186
Filmography 187
Montevideo, God Bless You (Bjelogrlic 2010) Serbia.

Morning (Djordjevic 1967) Yugoslavia.
Nafaka (Dukarkovic 2006) Bosnia.
No Man’s Land (Tanovic 2001) Bosnia/France/Slovenia/Italy/United Kingdom/
Belgium.
(The) Ninth Circle (Stiglic 1960) Yugoslavia.
Occupation in 26 Scenes (Zafranovic1978) Yugoslavia.
(The) Old Timerr (Zilnik 1988) Yugoslavia.
Ordinary People (Perisic 2009) France/Serbia/Netherlands/Switzerland.
Partisan Stories (Jankovic 1960) Yugoslavia.
(The) Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Fiennes 2006) United Kingdom/Austria/
Netherlands.
Petria’s Wreath (Karanovic 1980) Yugoslavia.
[The] Pianist (Polanski 2002) France/German/Poland/United Kingdom.
Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (Dragojevic 1996) Serbia.
Priests Cira and Spira (Jovanovic 1957) Yugoslavia.
Promise me This (Kusturica 2006) Serbia/France.
Red Rubber Boots (Zbanic 2000) Bosnia.
[The] Scent of Quinces (Izdrizovic1982) Yugoslavia
Serbian Epicc (Pawlikowski 1992), United Kingdom.
Slavica (Afric 1947) Yugoslavia.
Snow (Begic 2008) Bosnia/France/Germany/Italy/Iran.
Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica 1989) Yugoslavia/Italy/United Kingdom.
Ulysses’ Gaze (Angelopoulos 1995) Greece/France/Italy/Germany/United
Kingdom/Serbia/Bosnia/Albania/Romania.
Underground (Kusturica 1995) Serbia/France/Hungary/Bulgaria/Czech Republic.
Unseen Wonder (Nikolic 1984) Yugoslavia.
Walter defends Sarajevo (Krvavac 1972) Yugoslavia.
When Father was Away on the Business (Kusturica 1984) Yugoslavia.
Who is Singing Out There? (Sijan 1981) Yugoslavia.
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Index
A C
After, After, 107 Calling the Ghosts: A Story about Rape,
Agamben, Giorgio, 17 War and Women, 104–5
Albanese, Patricia, 68, 75, 104 (the) Chetniks, 49, 50, 91, 103,
All the Invisible Children, 151–2 181n, 182n
Anderson, Benedict, 66 cosmopolitanism, 3, 4, 8–9, 10–11,
Andric, Ivo, 98, 126, 158–9, 170, 185n, 172, 177
see also The Bridge on the Drina critical theory, 4, 11–12, 13, 17
Anika’s Times, 97–8 Crowe, David, 41, 156
(the) Anti-Fascist Front of Women Curak, Nerzuk, 2, 71
(AFZ), 91, 93–4
(The) Author as Producer, 16 D
(the) ‘author’, 16–17, 178 Dabcevic-Kucar, Savka, 89
‘authorship aura’, 17 Dakovic, Nevena, 59, 77
(The) ‘Dayton Peace Accord’, 162,
B 163, 185n
Badiou, Allan, 15, 159 (the) ‘death of author’, 16–17
Balibar, Etienne, 2, 3, 8, 37, Derrida, Jacques, 4, 10, 73
86, 168 diagnostic critique, 4, 17–19, 176
Banac, Ivo, 36, 61, 62 Djeric, Zoran, 40, 44
Barthes, Rolan, 16–17, 178, 180n Djordjevic, Mirko, 113
(The) Battle of Kosovo, 64–5 Djordjevic, Purisa, 57, see also
(The) Beauty of the Sin, 100–1 Morning
Begic, Aida, 167, 168–9, see also Snow Do You Remember Dolly Bell, 5, 29–30,
Benjamin, Walter, 11–13, 15, 16, 31, 32, 171
68, 177 Donia, Robert, 21, 22, 23, 164
Best, Steven, 17–18 Drakulic, Slavenka, 84, 120
(The) Big Boss, 25 Driscoll, John 56, 181n
Black Cat, White Cat, 4, 6, 124, 134, Dubrovnik, 31, 161
143, 144–150
(The) ‘Black Wave’, 57, 58, 95, 181n E
(The) Blacksmith of Crucifix, 130 Early Works, 57–8, 65
Buick Riviera, 171–2 Engelen, Leen, 16
Boose, Lynda, 67–8, 68–9, 104, (An) Episode in the Life of an Iron
110, 114 Picker, 175
(The) Bridge on the Drina, 158–9, 170 (The) European Union, 1–3
Brooks, Geraldine, 28–9, see also
People of the Book F
Buffet Titanic, 126–7, 180n Fisk, Robert, 74
Bulajic, Veljko, 60, 181n For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, 170
Butler, Judith, 14, 34, 63, Foucault, Michel, 10, 16,
66–7, 110 74, 180n
Buttler, Ljiljana, 174–5 Fraser, Angus, 41, 125, 140, 183n
204
Index 205
G K
Gypsy Magic, 4, 6, 131, 134, Karadzic, Radovan, 75–6, 106, 116,
135–143, 160 118, 119, 163
Gmelch, George, 135 Karanovic, Mirjana, 106, 109, 119,
Gocic, Goran, 46, 58, 148, 150, 121–2, 182n
152, 184n Karanovic, Srdjan, 98, 99, 100, 102
(The) Golden Wheel Film Festival, see also Petria’s Wreath
136, 174 Kellner, Douglas, 4, 11–12, 13–14, 15,
Goulding, Daniel, 45, 46, 55, 56, 57, 17–19, 78, 176, 180n, 182n
58, 76, 92, 96, 97 Kenedi (trilogy), 174
Grbavica, 4, 105–122, (The) Killing Fields, 178, 179
Guardian Angel, 134, 184n Kopic, Mario, 3, 9
Guca-Distant Trumpet, 150–1 Kosanovic, Dejan, 40, 44, 129,
Guerard, Albert, 12–13 130, 131
Gypsy Birth, 135 Kostic, Marko, 173
(The) Gypsy Wedding, 129, 130 Kovac, Mirko, 33, 34
Kovacevic, Dusan, 59, 88, 132, 180n
H Kronja, Ivana, 98, 182n
Hamlet, 150, 151 Krvavac, Hajrudin, 22, 23, 60,
Hanka, 130 181n
Hannerz, Ulf, 10, 73 Kusturica, Emir, 4, 5, 17, 29, 30–4,
Hattam, Robert, 11 46–7, 143–4, 152, 153–4, 159,
Hemon, Aleksandar, 165, 166 172–3, 175, 177–8, 180n, 181n, see
Holbrooke, Richard, 162, 163 also All the Invisible Children; Black
Holocaust, 8, 26, 28, 125, 127, 128, 129 Cat, White Cat; Buffet Titanic; Do
Homer, Sean, 46, 59, 60, 129 You Remember Dolly Bell; Guernica;
Horton, Andrew, 32–3, 52, 93, 132, 151 Promise me This; Time of the Gypsies;
When Father was Away on the
I Business
I Even Met Happy Gypsies, 130–1, 160
(The) ‘Illyrians’, 37–8, 41 L
Images from the Corner,r 108 Levi, Pavle, 46, 49, 51, 65–6
In the Land of Blood and Honey, 170–1 Little, Allan, 75
Iordanova, Dina, 22, 32, 46, 47, 48, (The) Living and the Dead, 79
54, 65, 70, 71, 79, 88, 128, 135, Loach, Ken, 84
143, 144, 145, 148, 150, 152, 160, Lovrenovic, Ivan, 3, 54
180n, 184n Lucev, Leon, 109, 171–2
Izetbegovic, Alija, 163, 164
M
J Magas, Branka, 61, 62, 75, 102
Jakisa, Miranda, 77 Malcolm, Noel, 20, 40, 43, 64, 75
Jameson, Fredric, 71, 87, 132, 172 Mann, Lena, 57, 58
Jancar-Webster, Barbara, 91 (the) Manaki brothers, 45–6, 87,
Jergovic, Miljenko, 22, 24, 25–6, 29, 180n, 182n
30, 31, 33, 34, 83, 171. 173 Marjanovic, Zana, 168
Jolie, Angelina, 170–1, see also In the Markowitz, Fran, 20, 21, 161,
Land of Blood and Honey 183n, 185n
Jovanovic, Tatjana, 9 Mijatovic, Cvijetin, 31, 180n
Jovanovic, Soja 96–7 Mijovic, Nikola, 100–1
206 Index
Milosevic, Slobodan, 33–4, 52, 63–5, Porrajmos, 125, 128, 157, 183n
66, 69, 71–2, 154, 163, 173, 181n Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, 79,
Miskovska-Kajevska, Ana, 91, 93, 94 119, 183n
Mladic, Ratko, 69, 106, 118, 119 Promise me This, 173
Mujic, Nazif, 175–6 Prpa-Jovanovic, Branka, 37–9, 41,
Montevideo, God Bless You, 42 42–3, 49, 50, 52
Morning, 57 Buffet Titanic, 126–7, 180n
Mueller, John, 78, 82–3 Puttnam, David, 178
N R
Nikolic, Zivko, 99–101, see also The Ramet, Sabrina, 101
Beauty of the Sin Ranjicic, Gina, 160
(The) Ninth Circle, 126 Rankovic, Radenko, 130
No Man’s Land, 4, 5, 79–81, 85, Red Rubber Boots, 107–8
172, 182n ‘red western’, 59, 77
Rusinovic, Goran, 171–2, see also
O Buick Riviera
Occupation in 26 Scenes, 126
(The) Old Timer,
r 65–66 S
Ordinary People, 4, 6, 77, 82–4, 85, Said, Edward, 11–12, 16–17, 47
172, 182n Sakic, Tomislav, 15, 55
(the) Other, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10–11, 16, Santic, Aleksa, 165
73, 124, 125, 177, 179 Sarajevo Film festival (SFF), 166–7,
169–170, 172, 173, 174–5
P (The) Sarajevo Haggadah, 28, 180n
Papic, Zarana, 103 Savic, Obrad, 3, 73
Papic, Zarko, 129 (The) Scent of Quinces, 26–8, 29,
Partisan Stories, 56–7 126, 183n
Pasovic, Haris, 167 Sejdic, Dervo, 128
Pasqualino, Caterina, 130, 184n Sell, Louis, 162, 163, 164
Pavicic, Jurica, 171, 172 Serbian Epic, 75–6
Pavlica, Damian, 61, 62, 69, 70 Sesic, Rada, 23, 35, 60, 77
People of the Book, 28–9 Seven Kilometres North-East, 170
Perisic, Vladimir, 6, 79, 82, 83, 85, Shuto Orizari, 136–7
see also Ordinary People Sidran, Abdulah, 29, 30,
Perisic, Vuk, 3, 49, 50–1, 54–5, 59, 61, 31, 96
62–3, 70–1, 72, 75, 181n Sijan, Slobodan, 95, 132, see also
Perovic, Latinka, 42, 54, 89 Who is Singing Out There?
Pesic, Vesna, 63, 66, 67, 68, 75, 121 Silber, Laura, 75, 163
Petria’s Wreath, 98–9, 109 Skjelsbaek, Inger, 104
Petrovic, Aleksandar, 130–1, 160; Skrabalo, Ivo, 33
see also I Even Met Happy Gypsies Slapsak, Svetlana, 86, 88, 91, 93, 94,
Pejkovic, Sanjin, 33–4 95, 96, 97–8
[The] Pianist, 26–7 Slavica, 92–3, 102
Planinc, Milka, 88–90, 102 Snow, 167–9
Polanski, Roman, 26–7 Sontag, Susan, 84, 111, 182n
‘political hermeneutics’, 4, 17–18 Srebrenica, 69, 75, 81, 105, 157
Popov, Stole, 6, 124, 131, 135–6, ‘St George Day’, 135, 184n
141, 143, 150, see also Gypsy Magic; Stimac, Slavko, 171–2
Gypsy Birth Stojic, Mile, 3, 105, 106, 152
Index 207
T Visegrad, 24, 102, 157–8, 170, see also

Tanovic, Danis, 5, 79–80, 85, The Bridge on the Drina
175, see also An Episode in the Vukovar, 2, 35, 161
Life of an Iron Picker, No
Man’s Land
W
Tepavac, Mirko, 60, 70
Walter defends Sarajevo, 22–3, 35, 60
Time of the Gypsies, 32–3, 134, 135,
When Father was Away on the Business,
136, 144, 145, 152
5, 31–2, 95, 148
Tito, Josip Broz, 50, 53–4, 60, 62, 71,
Who is Singing Out There?, 132–3,
90, 141, 173, 181n, 182n
184n
Todorova, Maria, 9, 46
‘Women in Black’, 119–20
(The) Work of Art in the Age of
U
Mechanical Reproduction, 12–13
Udovicki, Jasminka, 38, 40, 43, 70
Ugresic, Dubravka, 114
Ulysses’ Gaze, 45–6, 87–8 Z
Underground, 5, 17, 37, 46–60, 70–1, Zanic, Ivo, 75, 76, 182n
79, 86–7, 88, 132, 143–4, 149, Zbanic, Jasmila, 6, 17, 106, 107–9,
173–4, 175, 177, 178, 184 119, 120, 169, see also After, After;
Ukraine, 72, 178–9, 185n For Those Who Can Tell No Tales;
(The) Ustase, 26, 28, 44, 49, 50, Images from the Corner; Grbavica;
91, 103, 125, 126–7, 181n, 182n Red Rubber Boots
Zilnik, Zelimir, 57–8, 65–6, 174,
V see also Kenedi (trilogy); Early
Vercoe, Kym, 170, see also For Those Works; The Old Timer
Who Can Tell No Tales; Seven Zizek, Slavoj, 3, 25, 42, 46–7, 79, 90,
Kilometres North-East 110, 124, 148, 152, 177
Vesovic, Marko, 184n Zvijer, Nemanja, 15

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List of Figures viii

3.1 Blacky, Marko and Natalia in the cellar (still, Underground)

Interdisciplinary in its approach to the analysis of film and politics,

is introduced at this point in the book’s narrative. From here on,

2001) and Ordinary Peoplee (Perisic 2008)—as examples of a strategic

Cosmopolitanism über alles

Theoretically speaking, this book finds its conceptual framework in

and emphasis on collective and individual human rights. Thus, in the

With Christianity, Europe took over the 4,000-year-old Egyptian

One may add here Fabrizio Tassinari’s (2009, p. 3) important remark

The emphasis on a city, as an emancipatory and hospitable entity is

Derrida (2001), apart from enigmatically mentioning that a ‘new order

figures’, writes Edward Said in 1989, ‘like women, Orientals, blacks

If cosmopolitanism is perceived as the conceptual frame for this book,

also involves a language of possibility … [and] might be understood

Critical theory aims to speak the language of conventional social and

political consciousness by encouraging scrutiny of the world as well as

Politically conscious film: its mimetic power, its historical

There are several approaches to studying film. Those approaches

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses

Together with other segments of artistic expression, Benjamin per-

provide[s] artistic visions of the world that might transcend the

positive and negative, and provide[s] insights into the nature of

it would be a mistake to think that we only need to find the right

Through the visual portrayal or engagement of crucial issues, films can

is a personal commitment to the past to avoid or pursue certain

It is a particular perspective or personal commitment and responsibility

For an interpretive procedure for the underlying meanings of film texts,

helps with the formulation of progressive political practices which

social alternatives that are grounded in existing psychological, social,

Diagnostic critique provides a ‘utopian content that can be used for

Before its brutal dismemberment at the beginning of the 1990s,

cosmopolitanism. There, three Abrahamic religions lived in relative

Sarajevo was liberated by the Communist-led army on 5 April 1945.

is challenged by the overwhelming circumstances that the war visits on

The 1980s and Sarajevo’s favourite artist

Both logos and pathos urged me to introduce myself to this research.

mother, is a caring housewife who dreams of getting a decent apart-

In the late 1980s, Kusturica had also entered a phase of uncontrolled

of horrendous shelling, the Serbian Army occupied the Croatian city

From Illyria to the Yugoslav kingdom (1835–1941)

Far from representing it as ‘an exception and an anomaly’ in the mid-

p. 46). Prpa-Jovanovic’s remark had been further confirmed by the

momentum to the creation of a new state in the Balkans (Matkovic

more often overshadowed by the authoritarian rule of the Serbian royal

as a sign of growing Serbian hegemony. The nation’s new constitu-

occupied and annexed most of the Croatian and Montenegrin coasts.

Yugoslavia: from ashes to ashes and in between (1941–1989)

In regard to an up-to-date filmic narrative, Kusturica’s Podzemnje: Bila

In this region, war is a natural phenomenon. It is like a natural catas-

For both Zizek (1997) and Iordanova (2001), Kusturica’s natural

The first of two archival sequences consists of documentary foot-

In such circumstances, the decision was taken in July 1941 by the

It never happened that so many individuals organised in an effi-

Unlike the Yugoslav Communists, their local nationalist opponents

In giving the account on this particular moment in Yugoslav history,

What did the Communists want to achieve in July 1941? Perhaps

In Underground, however, Kusturica represents this historical moment

highly appreciated by the nationalist elite. At Underground’s premiere in