What the Camera Knew: Late and Post-Yugoslav Docufictions

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Culture III: Formal Concerns and Documentary Claims in (Post-)Yugoslav Film

Abstract

This presentation will examine the simulation of documentary elements in late and post-Yugoslav films, including Zasada bez dobrog naslova / A Film with No Name (Srđan Karanović, 1988), Lepa sela, lepo gore / Pretty village, pretty flames (Srđan Dragojević, 1996), Kordon / The Cordon (Gordan Marković, 2002), and Što je Iva snimila 21. listopada 2003. / What Iva Recorded (Tomislav Radić, 2005). These films feature characters using video cameras to record varying aspects of Yugoslav society, from ethnic tensions and violence in Kosovo, the War in Bosnia, police repression of protestors in Serbia, and family dynamics in post-Tuđman Croatia. The films of Karanović, Dragojević, Marković, and Radić
emphasize the perspective of the camera by drawing attention to the production of images. In this manner, they locate documentary filmmaking within a narrative plot. The process of video recording, the recording apparatus, and the styled representation of the camera perspective collectively draw attention to the implied definitions of nonfiction and fiction. These definitions are thus anchored in the historical developments of late- and post-Yugoslav society and culture.

Author

• Zdenko Mandusic, U of Toronto (Canada)