Balkan Cinema: Film and History

The monograph Balkan Cinema: Film and History will break new ground in that it will initiate much needed insights into issues of the cross-cultural representation of historical discourses. It will make important contribution not only to film and cultural history related to the concrete region, but also to the methodology of film historiography. The study will adopt a transnational approach and seek to reconcile the contested reworking of historical material taking place in the region's cinematic discourse.

I first started working on the subject matter of Balkan cinema and representation in the mid-1990s. Back then academic colleagues warned me that I will never be able to publish my research as it was too obscure. Nonetheless, my first monograph Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (BFI), dealing with the cinematic representation and discourse on the Bosnian war, came out in 2001. It was described as a 'groundbreaking' study (Cineaste) and was compared to magisterial works such as Ella Shohat and Robert Stam's Unthinking Eurocentrism (by the European Journal of Cultural Studies). The BFI then commissioned me to write a monograph on director Emir Kusturica, which came out in 2002. Also in 2002 the AHRB gave acknowledgment to my efforts by awarding a research grant that allowed me to recruit a post doctoral researcher and a PhD student, travel across the Balkans and acquire a unique collection of films from the region on video and DVD. Ever since I could claim that I helped establish a new field of research -- in recent years about ten PhD candidates defended theses on related topics in the US and the UK; the community is growing and so is the scholarship. My most recent edited collection (2006) featured contributors from ten countries and included essays on twenty-four select films from the region; it is being currently promoted internationally. My work has been translated in more than ten languages, from French and German, Turkish and Romanian to Korean and Japanese.

Over the years I developed interests in other areas of film studies as well. Lately I have been putting out work on transnational film, Indian cinema, film festivals, and European film industry. If I want to pursue these new research lines in the future, I need to first successfully wrap up my work on film and history in the Balkans. I expect it to climax with the planned monograph that will sum up my expert knowledge and will create a much needed public awareness of Balkan cinematic treasures. The work will make an important contribution to the study of transnational/regional cinema, as well as to the study of the frilm representation of historical discourse.

In my project, I seek to provide answers to two main research questions:

-- What are the key features of the rich yet esoteric cinematic tradition of the Balkans (including the cinemas of ex-Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Albania), from the brothers Manaki early in the 20th century to present day?

-- What important ideological conclusions can be drawn from a comparative exploration of the historical films that abound within this tradition?

Here is the tentative structure of the monograph, as planned at the moment:

BALKAN CINEMA: FILM AND HISTORY

Part I Do the Balkans Exist?

Chapter 1. Connecting the Disconnected Space.
Chapter 2. From Manakia Brothers to the Balkan Film Fund.

Part II Nationalist Sagas and Hushed Histories

Chapter 3 Between Empires: The Ottoman Footprint
Chapter 4. The Vagaries of Self-Determination.
Chapter 5. Timid Modernity: Patriarchal Chronotops.
Chapter 6. Alternative Geographies and Crossroads.

Part III In the Flux of History

Chapter 7 Hajduks in Cyberspace: The Popular Genres
Chapter 8 Shifting Narratives