CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Kolaric, Tamara |
|---|---|
| Title | Hidden Dialogues with the Past: Cinema and Memory of the 'Homeland War' |
| Summary | This dissertation analyses the relationship between fiction films and collective memory in Croatia specifically related to the memory of the ‘Homeland War’ – the armed conflict which took place in the country between 1991 and 1995. The analysis is based on the films produced in the period between 2001 and 2014. While literature on post-Yugoslav cinema is abundant, little has been written about the role films play – or have the potential to play – in shaping collective memory. Inspired by the adverse reactions fiction films frequently caused in public, this dissertation started from the following question: what was it that these films “do” – or were perceived to do – to the story of the war? This was then broken down into two research questions: as a point of departure, I looked into whether the war was present in contemporary Croatian cinema, i.e. whether films offered material with regard to the war. Further, if the war was present, how was it addressed – a question that required probing for a suitable explanatory framework. A theoretical framework was built on the literature on collective memory, enabling me to observe the filmic texts as potential artefacts of cultural memory, which offer narrative interventions into the dominant memory narrative of the ‘Homeland War’. A further assumption was made regarding the nature of this dominant narrative: in the heavily memory-saturated environment of contemporary Croatia, the story of the war developed by political officials during the war evolved into a narrative of political memory through active production, media control and occasional use of force to silence dissonant narratives. This then also became a schematic narrative template for shaping further memory of the war – thus mostly excluding dissonant stories from national memory. To answer the first question, thematic analysis was conducted on a preliminary data body, including all feature fiction films made in the period between 2001 and 2014 that were produced, or majority co-produced in Croatia. The ‘Homeland War’ was identified as a prominent topic appearing in four different ways, thus constituting the second data body, consisting of four groups of films in which the war was present as a topic (major, minor, background or silent). In the second stage of analysis, I explored the dialogical relations between films dealing with the war and the dominant memory narrative (in its extrapolated core/narrative template form), observing the different strategies films take in their responses. In doing so, and to understand the film-memory dynamic, I adapted Bakhtin’s concept of hidden dialogicality as read by Wertsch (2002). Through the analysis, the dissertation found three groups of films with regard to their strategies of engaging with the dominant memory narrative. First, films dealing with the past, which dialogically challenge the dominant narrative, reject it through failed polyphony or trauma-silence, or affirm the dominant narrative. Second, films bypassing the past by focusing on the present, depoliticizing and challenging the dominant narrative limitedly. Finally, films assuming the past, which provide cues for a particular war narrative to be “written in,” thus maintaining or subverting the dominant narrative. These findings cast a new light on how fiction films in Croatia address the ‘Homeland War’, enhancing the understanding of the role films play – or can play – in shaping collective memory, and vice versa. This opens the way for future research with regard to both cinema and memory, but also narrativity and memory more generally. It also reveals the need for a more systematic understanding of relationship between narratives and memory in post-war context, not just from the perspective of cultural or memory studies, but political science as well. |
| Supervisor | Dimitrijevic, Nenad; Sgier, Lea |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/kolaric_tamara.pdf |
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