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8 We All Live Two Lives: Serbian Cinema & Changing Values in Post Yugoslavia Andrew Horton “Next week we continue our tale of the sunken Slav tribe.” Rasha in Hadersfield (2007) Film has the power to inspire, to incite, to provoke, to change the way we think. A “war film” can encourage the viewer to identify with one side or the other, or to blame outsiders, or to view war as something which simply happens. Films can promote civic values or nationalist hatred, they can encourage the viewer to view women as sexual objects or promote a culture of gender equality, and they can foster tolerance or promote intolerance. Film is a powerful medium directly relevant to the values which exist or come to exist in a society. In Serbia today, the cinematic sector can play a role in bringing Serbian society closer to the European mainstream in culture and attitudes. Three Serbian cinematic moments to start us off: – A crippled young Belgrade man sits in a wheel chair talking to a video camera, crying out, “I look like an ordinary guy, but that’s not true!” and as soon as the camera stops shooting, the young man stands up clearly showing he is not crippled as he talks to his friend, the cameraman . – A bus with an odd collection of characters is pulling into an old Yugoslav hotel near Tito’s birthplace by a beautiful Croatian lake. The female guide speaks to the group who are contestants for the Yugoslav “Noble Deed of the Year Competition” and she tells the group, “We all live two lives, normal and as ‘Heroes of Yugoslavia.’” As the film continues, we see everything break down and the war that broke up Yugoslavia begin. – A sweeping view of Belgrade and a middle aged man standing by the river with a pistol as we hear him in voice over: “None of this should have happened.” We fade into a flashback as we continue to hear him, “That’s why I’m trying to do the right thing now.” By the film’s end he will be murdered for his actions. In this brief study, I wish to consider both the changing nature of cinema and values—personal and cultural—in Serbia since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s when Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Socialist Yugoslavia ended in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia became independent, to 2003 when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of Slobodan Miloševi ć’s rule ended and was transformed into the Union of Serbia and Montenegro and finally, to the moment of Montenegro’s independence , leaving only the Republic of Serbia. More specifically, I wish to focus on three particular areas of Serbian films in recent years. The first is films that specifically deal with the war and its effects, the next group concerns those films about life after the war in Belgrade and Serbia and how people are trying to get on with life, and finally those films that clearly embrace a Hollywood approach in style, content, and message and thus seem to “go beyond” anything particularly concerned with Serbia and the past. Before turning directly to these topics, however, it is important to note that in dealing with the values of a country and its people as reflected in cinema, much depends on informed interpretation rather than straight statistics and facts. Let us simply consider Hollywood in 2007 as an example. The United States in 2007 was (and still is in 2009) at war in Iraq with many other international and national difficulties being played out in the “war against terrorism.” In cinema, the Oscars in 2007 went particularly to the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Clearly both films bring up issues of violence in America and American values associated with how to deal with violence in relationships, communities , politics, and religion. And yet, it would be important to point out that, beyond the Oscars, there is the statistic of which film made the most money in 2007 and that was Tim Hill’s Alvin and the Chipmunks . A comedy for children?! A discussion of 2007 in Hollywood would thus suggest that if the awards go to films reflecting values under pressure and change, more Americans have voted, with Alvin— for comedy and films that children appreciate—a fact that could be discussed as both a transcending of current conflicts and hardships or as a way of avoiding facing...

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