Yugoslav Aesthetics IV: Yugoslav Partisan Film—Memories, Archives, and Afterlives

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the year that marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the panel brings into focus Yugoslav partisan films, a popular cinematic genre that spanned decades and brought about some of the most widely-known and beloved films made in socialist Yugoslavia. Thematizing the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB) against the fascist occupation of the country during WWII, these films are also about the socialist revolution which was being fought at the same time. The papers on this panel reflect a range of analytical and theoretical approaches that mirror the thematic, aesthetic and stylistic diversity of Yugoslav partisan films themselves. The genre was embraced both by mainstream filmmakers who made big budget epics (sometimes referred to as “Red Westerns”), and by a generation of filmmakers that emerged in the 1960s and contributed to the movement known as Yugoslav New Film (also known as the Black Wave). From today’s postsocialist and post-Yugoslav perspective, these partisan films gain another dimension—namely, they constitute an essential memory archive of Yugoslavia’s antifascist and socialist legacy, as well as attest to the ongoing vitality of its afterlives.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Nikola Radic, U of Zurich (Switzerland)

Papers

• 'Ranjenici, pjesmu!': The Role of Songs in Yugoslav Partisan Films - Zdenko Mandusic, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Partisan Films and the Role of the Individual in Collective Struggle - Boris Djordje Petrovic, U Paris-Sorbonne- Paris 4 (France)

• A Partisan in the Archives: Strategies of the Anti-Colonial Nonfiction Film - Lora Maslenitsyna, Yale U

• Remembering Chargers: Mića Popović's Delije and the Yugoslav War Neurosis - Adrian Pelc, U of Vienna (Austria)

Discussant

• Dijana Jelača, Brooklyn College