Image of the wounded space. Presentation of Bosnian and Herzegovinian cultural space through film. (original) (raw)
Related papers
How to Escape? The Trap of the Transition in the Recent Cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000-2012)
Colloquia Humanistica, 2014
How to Escape? The Trap of the Transition in the Recent Cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000-2012)The paper concerns the latest cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000-2012). Focusing on the cinema of social criticism (represented by movies which try to rethink the new socio-political order gradually emerging in BiH after the war of 1992-95), the authors recognize the Bosnian society as a community captured in the trap of an unfinished system transition. The story of the Bosnian society, simultaneously stuck in a dysfunctional and oppressive state and completely devoid of any prospects for the improvement of this situation, seems to be dominated by several escape strategies into an alternative reality: the nostalgic past, the imagined present or the utopian future. In that sense, the Bosnian cinema of social criticism turns out to be a cinema of social escapism. Jak uciec? Pułapka transformacji w najnowszym kinie Bośni i Hercegowiny (2000-2012)Tekst dotyczy najnowszej kinematografi...
CONSTRUCTIONS OF POST-YUGOSLAV IDENTITIES IN CONTEMPORARY SLOVENIAN FILM
Acta Histriae, 2021
This article discusses the construction of Slovenian national identity in relation to remembering the period of Socialist Yugoslavia and its dissolution in the context of contemporary Slovenian cinematography (1991-2021). The dynamic of forgetting and remembering Socialism and Yugoslav identity is presented with the help of an in-depth analysis representations, reception and contexts of production of select representative cases: Outsider (1997), the most popular Slovenian feature film of the 1990s, the mockumentary Houston, We Have a Problem! (2016) and the co-production Parada (2011). The article demonstrates that films are repositories and re-examiners of national and regional policies, trauma, and reinterpretations of history and identities. As such, they are important objects for analyzing processes of remembering and transformations of the attitudes towards Slovenian recent past.
Bosnia and Herzegovina on Screen: Self-Orientalism in Jasmila Žbanić’s Film Quo Vadis, Aida?
Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2022
his paper examines the contemporary meanings and functions of self-Orientalism in the Bosnian context by analyzing Jasmila Žbanić’s film, Quo Vadis, Aida (2020). The issue of self-Orientalism entails a double intrigue at the individual and collective levels: first, why Bosnian cultural producers (the ‘Orientalized’) replicate Orientalism; and second, why Orientalism, in its various forms, proliferates in Balkans despite the region’s own marginalized position. Examining Quo Vadis Aida both within Bosnian’s specific context and as part of a global phenomenon of cinematic self-Orientalism or autoexoticism, this paper argues that the film self-Orientalizes in an effort to meet contemporary viewers’ expectations for facile resolutions to imperialist Orientalism, as well as to improve the film’s marketability with Western audiences. Applying Laura Doyle’s framework of ‘inter-imperiality’ we examine how Quo Vadis, Aida ‘writes back’ to multiple empires by tracing Orientalism’s trajectories – from Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian and modern-day Holland – and by weaving the lingering effects of imperialism from before the arrival Ottomans to Bosnia in Middle Ages to the present. The paper argues that the film reveals the extent of globalist anxiety that motivates producers’ artistic imagination and reflects colonial phantasies that promote stereotyped representation of the Balkans.
Numerous post-war societies have issues with the culture of remembrance, which is the cause of many conflicts in the present, and which affects everyday life in the areas where the conflicts took place. The goal of most post-war societies is (or should be) reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. The focus of this paper is to briefly depict the influence of culture of remembrance in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) through cinema and the hero cult on conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) in the early nineties. In other words, the paper will shortly present the consequences of suppressing emotions and not starting the process of reconciliation in the system which existed in Yugoslavia and connect these with the conflict escalation after the weakening of the Yugoslav system. At the very end, the paper will address the current state of the post-war B&H as a result of the previously described events.
A work of Montenegrin director Živko Nikolić is fraught with motifs from his homeland. Since he depicted customs of that homeland as a caricature, this article reassesses possible self-stigmatism as a result of orientalist discourse. Based largely on the works of Balkanism, the paper focuses on director's approach to the stereotype. In this manner it gets closer to understanding of the "film auteur" function in bringing down stereotypes about the Balkans identity. Živko Nikolić is an excellent sample for this theoretical research, because he dedicated each of his film compositions to the Montenegrin customs. Montenegro, as part of the Balkans, is a mine of stereotypes. We should examine if director’s adherence to tradition is a consequence of discourse? Did he fall into the trap of crnogorcizam (orientalism on local level) or he observed that tradition artistically in order to destruct stereotypes. Hence, we should discuss whether Nikolić's fascination with tradition is kind of auto-orientalism or rebellion. Commercial Balkan movie was created under the influence of foreign factors and as a result of colonial thinking. A true artists, however, does not allow the symbolic geography, but revolutionize images of the Balkans that are unjustly spread around the world. This work is guided by hypothesis that director opposes the postcolonial agency with sarcastic attitude towards a system of stereotypes. The most famous Montenegrin director made his peculiar poetics and aesthetics from the mentality of his country. Nevertheless, this mentality, as it's hypothesized, didn't „orientalise him“.
COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA, 2018
The main aim of this overview is to trace the presence and importance of Yugoslav narrative (dedicated to a common cultural and artistic space before, during and after Yugoslavia) as important for (re)creating and maintaining continuity and coherence in the core narrative as an internal structure of cultural institutions in Serbia, especially in the transition period (2000 – 2018). The emergence of the South Slavic unity idea in the territory of the Balkans, as we argue in the paper, can be traced to a time long before the state of Yugoslavia was created as a concept. The fact that a common field (common ground) in the sense of cultural space existed long before the creation of Yugoslavia contains the assumption that a common cultural ground and art space exist in the postYugoslav period as well. The concept of the common cultural space is also known as the Yugoslav Artistic Space. The main goal of the paper is to form the conclusion that the Yugoslav Artistic Space, considering its tradition, still exists despite the political changes after 1989, particularly during the 1990s and the transition process, if not in another sense then as a core narrative of institutions (such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, for example). The paper also offers the thesis that marginalization of the Yugoslav legacy leads to discontinuity, fragmentation, and a status quo position in the transition process of Serbian cultural institutions.