Utopia and Reality by Simon Spiegel;Andrea Reiter;Marcy Goldberg;

Author:Simon Spiegel;Andrea Reiter;Marcy Goldberg;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

Figure 6.4 • The street corner as a starting point for socio-political reflections

Into the future via the past

By deviating from conventions of documentary storytelling, the fragmentary, incomplete account points to the constructedness of the narrative representation and structuring of reality. By questioning the dominant discourses about the recent past as well as the social practices of the post-war society by way of personal, autobiographical narratives, Žbanić offers individual – and thus new and unexpected – insight. This entails a specific form of address that differs from classic forms of historiography in that it includes the subjective understanding of social contexts and events, reflecting personal experiences in political and historic contexts.83 This engenders the potential of documentary film to influence and push the viewers’ thinking in new directions, thus appealing to their agency, as Balsom and Peleg emphasise.84 By linking a fictionalised author-narrator with artistic visualisations and political commentary, the film creates a complex narrative that conjures up the viewers’ own issues of survival, raises their political awareness and prompts them to question the official positions on dealing with the past.

With its reflections on a previous era and its critique of the present, Images from the Corner offers its viewers a utopian perspective by making them aware of the necessity of thinking and talking about the past in order to look ahead and consider actively shaping a desirable future. The film thus encourages its audience to confront the often suppressed but crucial issues of the war and the ensuing war crimes, as well as the political future and life in an ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse state. It does so both from the inside perspective of those who lived through the war, and from the outside perspective of the ‘international community’ that was not involved in the war, but observed it. Žbanić’s film was co-produced by the German public broadcaster ZDF as part of a series of films about the wars in Yugoslavia by young filmmakers from the region, and it was aimed at local as well as international audiences. The prospectivity in Images from the Corner demonstrates how an artistic view of traumatic experiences can serve as an inspiration to think about the conditions of a post-war society – in the sense of coming-to-rest and of active participation.

Conclusion

As I have explained in my analyses, the two films look closely into the political circumstances to develop their – very different – individual styles and structures. The challenging and prospective character of each encourages viewers – especially local viewers, but also international audiences – to reflect and take a political position. With multi-perspectival narratives, discontinuities, irritations and carefully crafted aesthetics, they inspire viewers to critically address the current political situation and to think about how the films’ themes resonate with their own lives. They stimulate thought processes and opinion-forming, and perhaps even prompt people to raise their own voices. Storm over Krajina defies common taboos. It links the Yugoslav past with the post-Yugoslav present in order to contextualise and criticise political developments and fundamental social values, as well as the nationalist ideologies and inhuman events of the wars.

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