Understanding Walls as Metaphor:
Investigating the Thin Line between Individual and Collective Memory In
The Other Side of Everything (2017).
Beatrijs Jansen
Supervisor: David Duindam Second Supervisor: Irina Souch
Master Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis June 13th, 2018
Content Jansen 1
Introduction 3- 10
Chapter 1: Affective Objects:
Intergenerational Transmission of Memory within the Family Space 11-30
1.1 Everyday objects and Memory Transmission 1.2 Collective memory and Cultural memory
1.3 Performative Memory Transmission
1.4 Postmemory, Indexicality and Pressing the Skin 1.5 Indexical Cultural Artefacts.
1.6 The House as Index
1.7 The Family as a Space of Memory Transmission 1.8 An Indirect Touch across Time
1.9 The Double-edged Role of the Director 1.10 Conclusion
Chapter II: Conflict in the Frame:
Cinematic Montage and the Framing of the House 31-47
2.1 Suggestive Frames and Limited Views
2.2 Conflict in the Frame: Eisenstein’s Montage Technique 2.3 The Difference between the Human and the Mechanical Eye 2.4 Framing our Worlds
2.5 Who is Srbijanka Turajlić? 2.6 The Framing of the Outside
2.7 Scenes in Conflict and the Visualisation of the Other 2.8 Conclusion
Chapter III: Confiscation of Memory and Nostalgic Divisions 48- 64 3.1. Erasure of the Past and Questions on Identity
3.2 The Confiscation of the Past 3.3 Nostalgia as a Twofold Concept
3.5 Reflective Nostalgia and Yugo nostalgic Affects
3.6 Yugo nostalgic affects and the Erasure of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 3.7 ‘The Erasure of History’
3.8 The House and the Production of Nostalgia 3.9 Conclusion Conclusion 65-69 Bibliography 70-72
‘Everyone will write poetry truth will exist in all the words in the places where poem is the most beautiful the one who started it first will retreat leaving poem to the others I accept the great thought of future poets: one unhappy man cannot be a poet I accept the judgment of the singing crowd: those who cannot stand the song shall listen to the storm but: will freedom itself sing as slaves have sung of it?’ - Branko Miljković
Introduction
Belgrade, 2015. A solemn house on the corner of the street that has experienced the turmoil of the 20th century carries the family history of three generations. This house, featuring in the documentary The Other Side of Everything (2017), visualises how the story of a family is influenced by and intertwined with the history of Serbia. The director, Mila Turajlić (1979), portrays her mother Srbijanka Turajlić in her parental home, utilising the interior space to shine a new light on the external political events that happened over the past hundred years. The Other Side of Everything presents the family memory of the previous era and shows how the history of the family and the national history should not be seen as separated. The
differently by its inhabitants, which has resulted, as the documentary suggests in divisiveness within the Serbian population today.
The house, located in a chic embassy neighbourhood in Belgrade, has belonged to the family for generations. Srbijanka’s grandfather Dušan Peleš built the house when he was the minister of justice under the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from 1918-1941. Dr Dušan Peleš was one of the ministers who signed the Declaration of Unification of the Kingdom at the end of the First World War, which resulted in the three states becoming independent from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The family Turajlić was at that time a wealthy family of advocates who believed in the unification of all Southern Slavic States: a united Yugoslavia. When Serbia turned to communism in 1945, the house of the family Turajlić was split into four so that it could be shared with other families. The doors to the other parts of the apartment were sealed, and the Turajlić stayed in one part of the residence. It was only until the start of the making of The Other Side of Everything that they revisited the other parts of the apartment, including its furniture.
The house, space where external factors have influenced the family’s history, functions as a vantage point through which the world is seen. The entire documentary is filmed from within Srbijanka Turajlíc’s house, whose observations connect the dots between the communist times, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars concerning the history of the family and the history of the country. The montage of the documentary suggests a relation between Srbijanka’s memories of the past and current events. Mila Turajlić follows her mother Srbijanka who used to be a professor in mathematics at the University of
Belgrade. Srbijanka seems to be glued to the residence that carries her family history; she has never left it. In the nineties, during the Yugoslav Wars, Srbijanka participated in the resistance group OTPOR! that opposed Slobodan Milošević and the politics he personified. The documentary starts by talking about the division within the house, but it slowly develops
into recounting how Srbijanka’s role in the resistance relates to the families past, and how this past influences the way she sees the future.
In this thesis, I explore how the documentary deploys the house of the family Turajlić as space wherein the act of remembering the past shapes the present. The house in its
physical structure can be seen as a framework that encloses the space of the apartment and connects the external space with the inside of the house through its walls. My main interest is the fine line between individual and collective memory and the way the documentary situates itself among the two, shining a new light on how the past is remembered within the post-Yugoslav landscape. The documentary’s attempt to reconstruct an image of the lost collective memory is also the point it falls short: by showing only the families ‘frame’ on how the present influences the past, it does not leave any space for the ‘other’ to speak.
By dividing the thesis into three chapters, I investigate how the documentary presents an image of the past seventy years through the recollection of the family. The first chapter starts at the level of the family and investigates how the objects in the house trigger the reminiscence and transmission of memory. The second chapter looks into the house as a framework that connects the private space of the home with the external world as suggested through the montage of the scenes. In the third chapter, the documentaries’ presentation of the past on a national level is looked at. Here, the striking division between the people becomes evident as they disagree on the way the past is remembered in the present. To understand the historical context that is recounted throughout the documentary, I will give a short historical overview to cover the use of names, dates and events that are used in my chapters.
Historical Outline
Serbian history cannot be written down in one page, but I will elaborate on some events that are important for this thesis. In December 1918, the Declaration of Unification of the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was signed. In 1929, the Kingdom got renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which literary means: Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Second World War from 1941-1944 created an end to the unity. A new socialist Yugoslavia was created under the leadership of Josip Broz from 1944-1976. Tito’s death in 1976 was followed by economic crises and nationalistic upheavals which led to the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Its dissension was bloody and contentious and resulted in the Yugoslav Wars from 1991-1999. During these hundred years of history, there are some events I will expand.
The occupation of the Axis-Powers of the Yugoslav territory divided the country and resulted in a mutual war. The Croatian Ustaše soldiers collaborated with the Germans and fought against the Serbian Chetniks and the socialist Partisan Army under the leadership of the Slovene Josip Broz (Sudetić 26). Because of the Partisan aim to unite the Southern Slavic States, they attracted a lot of soldiers and citizens over the whole Balkan area, in contrast to the Chetnik army that primarily existed of Serbian soldiers because of their purpose to create a greater Serbia (Sudetić 27). The Ustašes and the Chetniks fought their expansion wars at the territory of Bosnia; were the Bosnian population, who were primarily Islamic became the victim under their fights (Sudetić 26-32). When the Chetniks and the Partisans would have fought together, they could have won the war much earlier (Sudetić 30).
With the help of the Soviet army, the Partisan soldiers defeated the German
occupation and created the SFRY: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The communist party celebrated the victory and to sustain the renewed unification of Yugoslavia created the myth that the partisans had united the Southern Slavs, covering the fact that there used to exist the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which was ruined by the Second World War (Bošković 55).
It was the slogan ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ that had led to victory, and that was used by the politics of the people’s leader Josip Tito Broz to conceal the ethnic slaughter between the countries during the World War II (Beronja and Vervaet 1). Tito’s mythmaking communist politics in these years were characterised in the way it empathised the similarities between the people rather than their differences (Volčič 22).
After Tito died in 1976 the Yugoslav economy went down; the communist
mythmaking was revealed which led to a nationalist uprising within the six states (Beronja and Vervaet 4). During the Yugoslav wars from 1991-1999 that were the result of these nationalistic tensions, the memories of the ethnic cleansings that happened during World War II were recounted and gave rise to the re-use of the terms Chetnik and Ustaše. The civil war raged in all the former-Yugoslav countries, but it were the Bosnian Muslims who lived in-between Croatia and Serbia who were crushed in-between violence and ethnic hatred which escalated in the murder of more than 7000 Muslim men and boys in the summer of 1995 in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica (Božović 54).The documentary shows how a group of students under the name OTPOR resisted against the politics of Slobodan Milosevic, who personified the Serbian expansionist politics.
The poem at the beginning of the introduction is written by a Croatian Poet and is cited in the documentary by Srbijanka when she narrates her reaction of the fall of Milosevic after the Serbian Revolution in 2000. She uses the poem to rephrase her thought on the upcoming future that was imagined by the opposition, but now that democracy is on its way, she does not know how to situate herself in the freed Serbia. After the break-up of
Yugoslavia, the new post-communist governments began to erase the memories of the multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and started to construct a national memory.The documentary shows how this has led to identity questions, because what is individual memory when there is dissension
of what the collective memory holds? Mila Turajlić, born in 1979, has talked about the complexity of this question or her generation in an interview:
‘On an official public level almost none of the post Yugoslav republics have managed to narrate their old identity or their new identity, and we really have a problem narrating our own past. I really think that maybe documentary film allows you to say: OK, there’s a new arena in which we can open a conversation. One that can be more nuanced and subtle and to me makes no truth claims. I’m not going to tell you the truth of what happened. That’s where we really get stuck. Every time someone decides to tell you the truth of what happened.’
(Turajlić 2017).
The documentary shows that the individual memory of the Yugoslav past is mediated by transmitted stories of parents and grandparents, texts and images, and evolving ideological frameworks. The transmission of memory between mother and daughter within the family house shows a recount of the past that is not shown in the media and on television, and these missing links of this complicated past —because of the confiscation of memory and history— are only transmittable due to personal accounts and cultural interpretations.
Chapter Outline
The first chapter investigates how the documentary presents the transmission of memories of the times forgotten from generation to generation through the act of touching objects with an indexical link to the past. The chapter explores the affective quality of the objects within the space of the house by combining the transmission of memory by words: communicative memory, and the intergenerational transmission of memory through cultural artefacts:
cultural memory. In connecting the Marianne Hirsch’s concept on postmemory with Sara Ahmed’s theory on pressing the skin, I explain how the act of touching affective objects within the house can trigger memories that are ascribed to them and leads to transmission of memory within the family space.
The second chapter explains how the pre-knowledge of the transmitted memories of the previous generation might influence one’s perspective on the past and moreover can create a bias that frames one's view of the outside world. The second chapter merely focuses on the way the montage of the scenes influences the images that the audience sees to visualise this framed perspective. The framing of the scenes stands in relation to the framing of
memories that change the way the present is perceived. By analysing the montage of the scenes, the chapter underscores how the documentary uses the house of the family to connect the transmitted family memory with the national memory. The documentaries’ use of framing and montage will be made visible by the concept of framing by K. Richards and the montage principles of Sergei Eisenstein.
The third chapter investigates the documentaries’ presentation of the way the Yugoslav collective memory has been changed, distorted and used by politicians to support their political agenda. The confiscation of memory, a concept by Croatian essayist Dubravka Ugrešic, explores the influence of the erasure of the memories of the past for the
post-Yugoslavs. I examine the documentary illustration of how the act of remembering of these confiscated moments produces a nostalgic affect, and how this generated affect of nostalgia is used in both the private and the public sphere to give meaning to the present. The concept of restorative and reflective nostalgia by Svetlana Boym discerns how the remembering of the past on these two levels leads to the production a nostalgic affect. The combined ideas of the confiscation of the past and the two-fold concept of nostalgia show how the production of the reflective nostalgic affect recollects the memories of the past to fill in the gaps that are
created by the confiscation of the memories that belonged to the collective Yugoslav
Memory. The network of transmitted memories within the family space that the documentary presents, complement with the gaps on the level of national memory, which situates the documentary within the field of post-Yugoslav cinema that tries to reconstruct the lost cultural landscape.
‘The past not just there in memory, it needs to be articulated to become memory.’ - Susan Brison
Chapter I: Affective Objects:
Intergenerational Transmission of Memory within the Family Space
In this chapter, I will connect the Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, regarding the transmission of memory, to Sara Ahmed’s concept of pressing the skin. I will use these concepts to investigate how Mila Turajlíc’s documentary, The Other Side of Everything, visualises the transmission of memory within the family through the act of touching the everyday possessions of previous generations. I begin this chapter with a preface focussed on two scenes that show a how memory is transmitted within the family through everyday objects located in the families’ apartment. Next, I will offer an introduction to memory studies, explaining the distinction between collective, individual and cultural memory concerning specific scenes in the documentary. A close reading of the scenes will focus on the importance of the indexical power of objects in the network of both individual and communicative memory in the apartment of the family Turajlić. This chapter stars at the micro level of the apartment of the family and focuses on the intimate space of the Turajlić-part of the aTurajlić-partment
1.1 Everyday Objects and Memory Transmission
The first five minutes of the documentary show the three main focal points of the story: the house, the sealed door and the documentary’s protagonist, Srbijanka Turajlić. The house is the location in which the documentary is set; the closed door is the object around which the narration of Srbijanka connects individual and collective memory. This first scene introduces a recurring theme in the documentary: Srbijanka carries out domestic tasks whilst reminiscing about moments from the family’s past. These domestic responsibilities like folding laundry, polishing, and cleaning are acted out in a space that has been inhabited by Srbijanka’s ancestors since 1918. As she carries out her tasks, touching everyday objects inherited from her ancestors, Srbijanka begins to recount to her daughter, Mila, the memories evoked by these objects. A simple question to ask, but more difficult to answer: what precisely is memory transmission and how does the documentary visualise it? Also, perhaps even more importantly, how can the transfer of memory stimulated by the act of touching these objects be seen with respect to individual and collective memory?
The documentary shows that Srbijanka's experience of the past in the present is not based only on the communicated transmission of memory’s, but that she reminisce parts of her grandparents past also through her act of touching the objects. The combination of communicative memory and the act of touching cultural artefacts creates together a network of memories that comes together in the house. I will call this network a ‘memory-chain’. The objects do not ‘have’ memories themselves, but they trigger a remembrance of the past. It is the memory and the knowledge that these objects used to belong to her grandparents that touching them produces an affective reaction in Srbijanka. Because of the everyday character of the artefacts — a doorknob, portrait or silverware—Srbijanka’s use of them recalls the daily actions of the past, her hands performing the same ritual as her grandparents. This direct link with the past stimulates the transmission and recollection of memory.
1.2 Collective memory and Cultural memory
To explore the various kinds of memory transmission that are shown in the documentary it is important to distinguish between individual and collective memory. This paragraph will also distinguish between communicative memory – that is, memory transmitted through words – and cultural memory, transmitted by means of cultural artefacts. As individuals we might think that our memory is individual, but personal memory does not exist outside the
collective context. In 1950, French Sociologist Maurice Halbwachs published his ideas about collective memory in La mémoire collective, ideas which greatly influence on how we think about memory culture today. Expanding upon Halbwachs work on collective memory, Jan and Aleida Assmann discern two types of memory that are not directly related to individual memory: communicative and cultural memory (Duindam 21). Communicative memory is passed on through oral transmission and can move between three or four generations. It is embodied and lived memory which is communicated in vernacular language. Cultural memory, on the other hand, is mediated by texts, institutes like museums, traditions and formal language and can travel over several millennia (21). This categorisation marks a bifurcation between the two types of memory transmission: the unmediated face-to-face transmission that is communicative memory. And, on the contrary, the indirect and detached transfer of cultural memory (21).
Jan Assmann writes that: ‘our memory exists only through constant interaction with both humans and with ‘things’; outward symbols’ (Assmann 111). According to Assmann ‘, these things do not “have” a memory of their own, but they may trigger our memory because they carry memories which we have invested them with. These are things such as dishes, feasts, rites, images, stories and other texts, landscapes and other lieux de mémoire’(111). Jan and Aleida Assmann argue that there are two types of memory transmission, but in the
documentary, communicative and cultural memory are intertwined and cannot function separately.
A strict bifurcation is not productive for my analysis, because, in the scenes where Srbijanka brushes and touches the objects in the house, this act of touching cultural artefacts happens at the same time as she starts to transmit the memories to Mila through
communication. It is the combination of communicative and cultural memory that creates a memory chain that gathers in the framework of the house where these memories are lived the documentary shows that Srbijanka touches the object while she narrates moments that are related to the past. She thus actively makes the connection with an object that used to be part of the past she narrates. Srbijanka’s memorisation of the past is not a form of unconscious recall: by touching, brushing and using the objects that also belonged to the previous generation, the past is instead performed.
1.3 Performative Memory Transmission.
Cultural Theorist Mieke Bal explains how cultural memorisation is seen as an activity
occurring in the present, ‘in which the past is continuously modified and redescribed, even as it continues to shape the future’ (Bal vi). While we talk about memories of the past, the action of remembering always happens in the present and looks towards the future. Ernst van
Alphen adds to this argument by adding that memory is not something that we have, but something that we produce as individuals sharing a culture (Van Alphen 37). Bal argues that ‘cultural recall is not something that happens to you’, like a memory that just ‘pings' up in your mind, ‘instead, it is something that you perform, even if, in many instances, such acts are not consciously, wilfully constructed’ (Bal vii). The memories that Srbijanka narrates while touching the cigarette box are transmitted to her daughter Mila.
To analyse this aspect of the documentary, I need a combination of both Assmann’s dual concept of communicative and cultural memory and Bal’s notion of the performance of the past in the present. The act of touching objects can be seen as the past performed, the memories narrated as a combination of individual and collective memory. The combination of different forms of memory transmission creates a mnemonic memory chain in which personal and collective memories come together. It does so because Srbijanka does not only narrate her own memories of her grandparents but also recounts memories of the house and the closure of doors. These are memories of moments Srbijanka cannot remember as she was too young, but which she recounts as if she experienced them herself.
1.4 Postmemory, Indexicality and Pressing the Skin.
Literary scholar Marianne Hirsch argues that descendants of Holocaust can experience the transmitted memories of their parents so profoundly as if they were their own (Hirsch 105). The non-experienced memory is remembered so strongly by the second generation that Hirsch calls it postmemory. As Hirsch puts it: ‘the events happened in the past, but their effects live on in the present’ (Hirsch 107). For Hirsch, photographs are an especially powerful medium of memory transmission within the family space (Hirsch 104). According to Hirsch, ‘memory signals an affective link to the past, a sense precisely of an embodied “living connection.”’ (111). In the case of photographic images, the affective link of the past is embodied in the indexical power of the photograph; the certainty that the person who was photographed stood in front of the (analogue) camera.
American linguist C. S. Pierce’s distinguishes three ways in which signs refer to their object: the symbol, the icon and the index. The symbol has a habitual yet arbitrary relation to the object, an icon has a physical resemblance, and an index has a physical relation of
the presence of fire. The indexical sign is always indirect; when you see a footstep in the sand you know that someone has walked there, but you might never know whose foot it was. The interpreter of the sign must therefore always actively reconstruct the connection between the indexical sign—the footstep— and the object —the person— it refers to. Within the
documentary, it is everyday objects rather that have an indexical quality which indicates a link with the previous generation to have held them in their hands. Different than Hirsch’s use of the term postmemory as a structure of memory transmission on the basis of
photographic images, the documentary shows that it is the act of touching rather than looking at these indexical objects that stimulate the recollection of the past. The act of touching an old object can be seen as a performance of the past; by touching an object that someone else has held in his hands at an earlier moment, the act that has been done in the past is performed again. Because the documentary makes the connection between the spoken words and the touched objects, the audience is engaged in the active reconstruction of the indexical power of the object that refers to the past.
According to Sara Ahmed, our memories ‘are not only lived by the head, but they are also lived by the body’ (Ahmed 202). Concerning the ‘doing' of emotions, Sara Ahmed looks at the way our encounters and experiences ‘press' upon us. In her book The Cultural Politics of Emotions (2004), Ahmed writes that, due to the cultural influence of psychological studies, emotions are seen as something that comes from within the individual. When one has a feeling, this feeling can be expressed, which can lead to a feeling that is shared with someone else (Ahmed 10). For Ahmed, emotions should be looked at as moving from the outside inwards. If we take our skin as a metaphor for the ‘surface’ of our body, then we see that our skin, while containing our bodies, is also the surface where others impress upon us (Ahmed 6). Ahmed argues that the ‘paradoxical function of the skin begins to make sense if we
felt when being impressed upon,’ for example when we are encountering others (Ahmed 7). Some encounters leave an impression on us; they ‘press’ on our skin. There is a difference between the way an encounter with another person ‘presses’ on our skin, and how the skin is pressed when touching objects that have a special meaning, objects like those in the
documentary that refer to the past. Ahmed’s concept can be expanded by linking it to the affective reaction of the body when an object which acts as an index towards the past is touched. As the documentary shows, the affective reaction when touching goes together with the transmission of memory.
The married concepts of pressing the skin and postmemory give an insight on how the presence and everyday use of former belongings can figure in the production of memory. By doing so, I expand Hirsch's concept of postmemory by exploring the interaction between the indexical power of the everyday objects showed in the documentary and the transmission of intertwined communicative and cultural memory. The act of cultural memorisation in the present cannot be understood without shining a light on the performative character of this act, the actual pressing of the skin against the belongings of the previous generation. The close-reading of the following scene will elucidate that the act of touching can stimulate the recollection of memory.
Figure 1: Screenshot of the house in the opening scene.
1.5 Transmission of Memory and Indexical Cultural Artefacts. Scene 1: The House.
It is misty outside. The air is grey and leaves are falling, blowing against the lens of the camera. A truck drives by and in the background the sound of traffic and crowing birds can be heard. On the corner of the street, a stone house is shown, which is partially hidden by the trees that surround it. The picture above (figure 1) illustrates this gloomy, autumn-like opening scene. Piano music begins to play, the rhythm following the movements of the camera that is now filming the streets outside from out a window. The words ‘Belgrade 2015’ appear on the screen. The next moment, we are taken inside the house. A white, small
porcelain saucer stands on a roundtable; it is covered with an antique tablecloth. From a white metallic can, a thick whitish substance drips on the porcelain saucer, which is moistened with a rag held by a wrinkled hand. The hand appears to belong to an elderly woman who then goes on to apply the white substance onto the copper doorknob of a closed door, giving this simple gesture her full concentration.
Figure 2: Screenshot of the close up of the woman. Scene 2: The Main Character and the Sealed Door.
The image above shows a close up of the woman (see figure 2). Her black glasses and blue shirt contrast with her light skin and the white door, while she polishes the lower part of the doorknob with the rag. ‘Can you see how dirty it is?’ says the woman with a low, husky voice. The squeaking sound of the rag on the doorknob can be heard. A female voice from behind the camera asks: ‘You never had the impulse to turn that key?’ ‘No’ is the elderly woman’s straightforward answer, while she coughs heavily. She explains that she never saw the apartment as a whole, mostly because there used to be a curtain in front of one of the two closed doors, so she could not even see the key that was hidden behind it. A cupboard used to stand in front of the other door. The camera pulls back from the woman, revealing her upper body, as well as a blue sofa that stands in front of the white wooden door. The female voice asks: ‘Did you know what there was on the other side?’ ‘No’, answers the low voice of the elderly woman, over another close-up of her hands brushing the doorknob. The woman barely looks up as she answers the voice talking to her, concentrating fully on her brushwork. ‘How could I have known?' The woman keeps on brushing while the camera makes another dolly move by walking back even more, showing an antique interior; a dark brown cupboard on the right sight of the door, a big stuffed bookcase on the left of the white wooden door. ‘And now on the next one’, says the woman.
She shoves away a brown ribbed fauteuil that stands in front of another similar looking white wooden door. The second copper doorknob also gets carefully brushed, while the voice behind the camera asks ‘And behind the doors was?’ ‘Their kitchen’ is the woman’s answer. She goes on by saying; ‘We could hear them doing the dishes’ and musingly she recalls ‘and sometimes the smell came through the door, of coffee.’ The scene of an old-fashioned decorated living room becomes visible as the camera moves backwards; again the same bookcase, a side-table with family pictures, a full ashtray and an old, antique-looking lamp enter the frame. ‘But you could hear their voices?’ asks the voice behind the camera again. ‘Yes’, answers the woman, ‘and they could hear ours, of course.’ The woman takes a deep sigh while finishing her brushwork. The music of the opening scene begins again. The camera pulls further back and presents the rest of the apartment; an antique-looking dining room is shown, decorated with elegant and richly old dark furniture, paintings, and silver ornaments. The scene ends with a shot of the woman standing in front of the first door she was brushing. Finished with her work, she lights up a cigarette while looking at the door that remained closed; the smoke produces wispy curls in the daylight brightening the room.
1.6 The House as Index
The doors were sealed off more than seventy years ago during the communist nationalisation of private property in 1947. The polishing woman is Srbijanka Turajlić, who was only two years old when the doors got shut. She, therefore, knows no other way than to live in only half of the apartment. The voice that speaks behind the camera is the voice of Srbijanka’s daughter, Mila Turajlić, the film’s director. Srbijanka’s narration of the moment the door got sealed is not from her own memory, as in a later scene she reveals that she cannot remember the event herself. The story she narrates is, therefore, a combination of Srbijanka's individual memories of the door as well as the transmitted collective memory of the family. These
transmitted oral memories that the documentary shows can be seen as communicative
memory, it is the memory of an event that was transmitted and framed by Srbijanka’s parents and grandparents. Mila, who was born in 1979, grew up in the same apartment (with the closed doors) as her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, who passed on the
memory of the door’s sealing for generations. The memory of this event that happened in the past occurs in correspondence with the touching of the doorknob, Srbijanka’s pressing of her skin unto the copper material that has been polished before. This transmission of memory is part of the intergenerational chain of memory which is a combination of oral transmission and memories linked to cultural artefacts.
Figure 3: Screenshot of the interior of the apartment.
The apartment interior shown in the scene, with its grand chairs, long dining table, chandelier, woven carpets and cupboards full of antique tableware and silver plates, appears unchanged since its inhibition by previous generations (see figure 3). As it is the place where three generations have left their marks, the house is, like the objects that Srbijanka touches,
indexical in itself. Just as Hirsch argues that a photograph has an indexical power because it refers to the person photographed, a doorknob, being an object that is used daily, refers to the fact that other people have used the doorknob to open and close the doors as well. Although a curtain covered the door during Srbijanka's childhood, the moment she touched the doorknob she performs the act of opening the door like her parents and grandparents used to do before 1947. Through touching the doorknob, it can be suggested that Srbijanka is even performing the moment that the communist UDBA agent had sealed the door. Because of the object’s indexical quality, it becomes part of the memory chain, together with the oral transmission. The sealed doors that are described in the first scene differ from the everyday objects in the way they transmit memory. The doors are liminal; they exist between and connect the two halves of the apartment. The objects that ‘trigger’ the process of memory in this scene are only in Srbijanka’s part of the apartment, whereas the belongings of the family Turajlić that got lost after the division remained in the other part of the house, as witnesses of the
unknown space. The house is in itself an index because of the history, events and things that the previous generation has experienced there. It is just the intergenerational transmission of memory that points out to relation between the object—the former inhabitants — and the signs (the doorknob). The documentary visualises the indexical quality that the family ascribes to the space. The intergenerational transmission of communicative memory as being intertwined with the touching of cultural artefacts will be expanded in the following
paragraph. In this scene, Srbijanka is polishing everyday objects that she also remembered when she was younger, they were present and used during her youth, instead of the doorknob that was only used before the doors were sealed off.
1.7 The Family as a Space of Memory Transmission.
We are taken back in the apartment of the Turajlić. The camera focuses on a close-up of an antique jar, inlaid with blue and red stones, before panning to the left to show a variety of pottery, silver jars and porcelain tableware that are displayed on the table. It is dark inside the room; the silver pots reflect the little light that shines through the window. Srbijanka takes out a porcelain cup and saucer out of a large dark brown cabinet, which displays a variety of platters, silver cutlery, tableware and porcelain painted jars. Only her hands which hold the tableware are filmed. The glass door of the display cabinet shows the reflection of Mila’s upper body, which is holding her camera (see figure 4).
Figure 4: Screenshot of Mila’s reflection.
The reflection is not very clear, but Mila’s facial features and the camera in her hands can be recognised. Earlier in the documentary Mila also filmed herself this way; the film does not show Mila directly, only her reflection. Srbijanka takes out more tableware as she babbles to Mila: ‘One day, you and your sister will not be happy to inherit all this stuff to clean’, as she points to the cabinet. Srbijanka wears a black turtleneck; the room feels cold, only a thin beam of light shining into the room from the window inside. While Srbijanka gets on with her polishing work, the frame remains centred on a blinking silver teapot. ‘If your film does
not show how well I polish the Silver, I will kill you!’ says Srbijanka’s voice in the background. The camera zooms in on Srbijanka hands while she polishes a silver jar.
Figure 5: Screenshot of Srbijanka sitting at the table.
Srbijanka is sat at a table, which is laden with all kinds of vases, chandeliers, jars and crystal that she took out of the cabinet (see figure 5). She gazes down at her hands dusting a jar, the bottle of silver polish standing right next to her while the smoke of a cigarette curls up in the air. The shot alternates between the table with the jars and a close-up of Srbijanka’s wrinkled hands, routinely polishing. Srbijanka holds a thin silver box in her palms, which has an ornament engraved on the box with two initials in the middle. ‘D.P’ says Srbijanka, the image still showing only her hands and the box. ‘This cigarette-case was from my
grandfather, your great-grandfather Dušan Peleš.’ Srbijanka’s fingers polish the little cigarette-case as Srbijanka’s voice continues: ‘Everything started from him, here in
Birčaninova Street’ (see figure 6). A younger looking hand with shiny red painted nails enters the frame and lays down a wooden stamp with a black signature on a silver tray. Mila's voice accompanies this gesture- which suggests the hand was Mila's hand- asking ‘and whose is this emblem?' ‘Let's see,’ says Srbijanka, as she takes the stamp from the other side of the tray. ‘Olga Peleš, You see? O.P., it was her stamp.’ ‘You never told me much about my
great-grandmother’ says Mila’s voice from behind the camera. The camera follows
Srbijanka’s hands which now hold another, even smaller box that she polishes at its ribbed outside. The little box is gold-coloured. Srbijanka opens the box and takes out a little old black and white portrait of a woman. ‘My grandmother gave me this box for my birthday, and put this picture inside,’ narrates Srbijanka. The camera zooms in on Srbijanka’s hands
holding the little box with the image of her grandmother, Olga Peleš. The image holds still for a moment, showing the photograph that is inside the box (see figure 7). The documentary ends with this scene, showing Srbijanka lighting a cigarette.
Figure 6: Screenshot of the cigarette box. Figure 7: Screenshot of the box and the photograph.
1.8 An Indirect Touch across Time
An everyday task is shown in the scene described above: the brushing of the silverware that has been done in this same house over generations from the moment Dušan Peleš had built the house in the early 1920’s. When recalling memories of her and her family’s past, Srbijanka often brushes objects from that past. The technical intervention of the camera zooming in on the objects, like the bases, jars and the silverware visualises the indexical quality of the objects even when they are not being touched by Srbijanka. In that sense, the camera seems to touch the objects. The audience is engaged here to contemplate the image, instead of being directly immersed in the narrative flow of the film. The camera’s focus
suggests that these objects are important for the story the documentary tells. The fragments of the past that Srbijanka narrates are both personal memories and collective memory that is transmitted through the family. The documentary only visualises a small anecdote that
Srbijanka has ascribed to the box with her grandmother's photo. The words that are spoken do not give much information to the audience or Mila; the connection Srbijanka makes with the memory-loaded objects is instead shown by the movements of the camera. The camera is focused on Srbijanka’s hands that hold the cigarette box, and follows her hands as they grip the box with the picture of her grandmother.
In this scene, the documentary shows how Srbijanka has ascribed both memories she has of her grandparents and memories that her grandparents have transmitted to her to these objects. Holding the cigarette box, Srbijanka starts to talk about her grandfather, which also leads her to perform the memory of her grandmother by touching her stamp and the box with the photograph. The camera zooms in on the way in which Srbijanka’s hands hold cultural artefacts like the cigarette box, the doorknob or antique silverware.
‘To press’, says Ahmed, is the experience of having an emotion when one surface is pressed upon another (Ahmed 6). It is an affect that leaves it mark or trace. A handshake with a person you admire is more remembered by the warm feeling you feel afterwards than that you remember the act of shaking hands. This warm feeling of the handshake takes you back to the event. The documentary shows that the act of polishing the cigarette box affects Srbijanka; she recalls that the box was her grandfather’s. There is a difference between shaking someone’s hand and holding someone’s possession; it is the knowledge that someone has touched the same object that you are holding that makes it indexical. When touching the cigarette case, Srbijanka is not feeling the warmth of her grandpa’s hand, but she might recall the image of his hands holding the cigarette box. This cigarette box in this scene can be seen
as a conductor of indirect touch between two different set of hands that have touched it across time.
1.9 The Double-edged role of the Director
Family history is transmitted in fragments through family-albums, conversations between parents that we catch; an anecdote that grandmother tells or a unique object that has been within the family for many ages: taken together they constitute our memory. Memory that we experience as our own, but which cannot exist without the collective memory. Hirsch argues that ‘postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right’ (Hirsch 103). The closure of the door has had a significant impact on the family, as their property– the house that was built by the family– has been taken away. The effect of sealing the doors is transmitted to the second generation (Srbijanka) and the third generation (Mila and Nina) through the doors that are still closed, and the objects that remain in the house.
Srbijanka emphasises the responsibility that comes with the inheritance of the silver by saying that Mila and Nina (the other daughter) will not be happy when they will inherit all the silver and have to maintain it properly. At this point, Mila films her reflection in the glass door. The reflection is so vague that you can still see the tableware and the silver inside the cabinet through the mirroring of her body. The reflection creates a direct link between
Srbijanka’s voice, Mila and the tableware. It is in this scene that the documentary emphasises Mila’s double-edged role as both daughter and director. In some scenes, Mila’s hands enter the screen or she—like in the scene above— films herself in the mirroring of the glass. Through filming herself the documentary foregrounds its subjective nature and the personal connection Mila has with the location and the story the film presents- it makes no pretence of
being an impartial documentary. The documentary makes Mila part of the network of
memory by also showing her presence within the house, and showing her touch the objects of the previous generation just as her mother does. Moreover, it is precisely these kinds of gestures that present their conversations as intimate mother-daughter dialogue rather than the investigation of a film director. The documentary, therefore, shows both sides of Mila’s role in the film.
For Hirsch, it is tropes within the family that mobilise the work of postmemory, like the box with the photograph. In this part of the scene, it becomes clear that both the
photograph and the box that contains it has an indexical power; the box used to be Srbijanka's grandmother and she has given it to Srbijanka. Hirsch uses a quote from Jill Bennett's book Empathic Vision to argue that ‘sight is deeply connected to affective memory’ (Bennet 36). Hirsch explains that images can address the viewer's physical memory. The audience that watches the documentary does not touch the objects the way the protagonist does; they watch the transmission of memory through touching of cultural artefacts on screen. For Marianne Hirsch, ‘Postmemorial work’, like the documentary, ‘strives to reactivate and re-embody more distant social/national and archival/cultural memorial structures by reinvesting them with resonant individual and familial forms of mediation and aesthetic expression’ (Hirsch 111). Because of the visualisation of this transgenerational memory transmission through the connection, Srbijanka makes with these cultural artefacts, the documentary in itself becomes part of this affective chain.
1.10 Conclusion
The house of the family Turajlić can be seen as a frame in which the memories of the past, stories, histories and anecdotes come together. The space within the house and the space outside are all related to this framework to which the objects are connected. The
documentaries visual reference to what the ‘outside’ is, is not clearly defined, but I use it to refer to the outside of the house, as well as the outside space of the country and the area of former-Yugoslavia. In the next chapter, I will look at the house and its neighbourhood and close-read these surroundings as it is framed by the narrative that Srbijanka recounts. Srbijanka’s view on the world is framed by the transmission of memories and the house wherein she lives.
The two scenes analysed in this chapter demonstrate both the communicative
transmission of memory and the transmission of memory through objects. The documentary shows Srbijanka’s skin touching objects that her grandparents’ skin has also touched,
producing an affective reaction and triggering a memory of the moment that her grandparents touched the object. The affective content of the memory is not shown by the documentary;
her relationship with her grandparents is unknown. Nevertheless, the objects trigger a
narration of the past and the transmission of memories to the next generation. The objects
none withstanding trigger the narration of the past and the transmission unto the next
generation. The memory that is recalled and transmitted to others occurs in the mind as well as on the skin.
Chapter 2:
Conflict in the Frame: Cinematic Montage and the Framing of the House
Nije fijasko, Srbijanka! U osvajanju slobode, baš kao i u životu, ponekad je važnije, kako smo putovali nego da li smo stigli tamo gde smo naumili. It is not a fiasco Srbijanka! in winning freedom, just as in life, the way we travelled is more important than arriving where we had planned.
- Tamara Skrozza.
La Mémoire des Murs (The Memory of the Walls), a novel written by the French author Tatiana de Rosnay, tells the story of a woman who moves into a house where an awful accident happened. She becomes to live in a home where the walls are carrying the memories of what happened in the past. As she lives alone with the memories of the walls, the woman has to face her past (de Rosnay). The sayings ‘the walls can speak’ or ‘the walls have ears’ are used in languages all over the world. The feeling that the four walls around hold a story can result in a feeling of oppressiveness and may influence the manner in which the house is experienced. Of course, some are more receptive to those feelings than others, experiences are not the same for everyone. The events that happened in the house frame the way you look at the place you live in, the neighbourhood and your neighbours that live next to you. The house becomes a framework of memories, anecdotes and histories that live on in the present.
This chapter explores how the documentary deploys the apartment as a framework through which the inside space and outside world are framed. With the term ‘framing’ I refer to the way things in the world are contextualised, by how we are framed by our experiences, social, cultural or religious context affect how we look into the world. Through suggestive
editing of the scenes, the audience is engaged in the documentary’s visualisation of how the families’ story frames the image of the national story. Furthermore, the editing of the scenes shows how the perspective that the documentary gives is limited to the view that can be seen out of the window of the apartment of the family Turajlić. This one-sided view also results in viewer’s realisation that the documentary presents the ‘other’ perspectives, even by not showing them.
The principle of montage is to bring two images together that have at first glance nothing to do with each other, and so produce a space for the audience to create new meaning out of this sequence. In this chapter, I will investigate how montage technique is used as a tool of suggestion to follow the family’s perspective, as well to give space to imagine the other side of the story. A side note to this is that the audience —and so do I— can only guess what the ‘whole’ image is, and which elements have been cut out. My central question in this chapter is therefore how montage works as a tool of suggestion and how this relates to the framework of the house in which individual memory and national history meet.
The paragraph-outline is as followed. The first paragraph of this chapter introduces the scene I propose to close-read with the concepts of montage and framing. After that, I will give an introduction to montage technique according to the Russian Filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, and explain how montage is related to the way the documentary represents the families view on their country. The differences between the human and the mechanical eye of the camera must be acknowledged to understand the working of montage. This fundamental difference will be explained by the principles of ethnographic filmmaking, proposed by visual anthropologists Christian Suhr and Rane Willerslev. Montage is not ‘misleading’ the audience, the eye of the camera is just different from what the human eye can perceive. This difference in human and camera eye as can be seen in the documentary can be explained by using the concept of framing. Both ‘eyes’ show the world through a different frame. I will
elaborate on the function of ‘a frame’ by bringing Sergei Eisenstein’s concept together with K. Malcolm Richards’s concept of framing as concerning my object. This chapter in itself can be seen as a metaphor of the framework that the walls of the house constitute. Situated
between the first chapter that starts at the level of the family and the third chapter that is more focused on the memory of the past as seen on a national level, this chapter can be seen as a metaphor for the walls of the house. In this thesis, this chapter functions as a ‘wall’ that connects the private space inside the house with the political space outside.
2.1 Suggestive Frames and Limited Views
The documentary shows how Srbijanka is not satisfied with the freedom achieved in today’s Serbia, which results in the downgrading of her role within the resistance during
conversations she has with her daughter Mila. The discussion between mother and daughter is visualised by the scene that follows upon this discussion. Mila’s argues that she has
experienced her mother’s act of resistance as very risk full and brave. This argument that is made inside the house is brought into relation with a scene that takes place outside. There, a man is balancing on a crane without any security cable: as if he is risking his life like the way Srbijanka has done during the war. The relation between the two images is suggested by putting them in sequence after each other. By looking at details like the warmth of the sun and the clothes of Srbijanka, the audience understands that these scenes were not filmed at the same moment.
The relation between Mila’s argument and the metaphor of the man that is balancing on top of the crane can only be distilled because the two images are brought together to suggest a new interpretation. What is remarkable about this sequence of scenes is how the image of the inside space is connected to the outside by showing only the view that can be seen from out the window. It seems as if the man on the crane walks there precisely on the
moment mother and daughter are having this interview, which synchronicity is very unlikely. To explore how the editing of the film suggests a certain framework of the house, I need to examine how the concept of framing and montage are integrated, and how they interplay with the documentary I which will elaborate on in the following paragraph.
2.2 Conflict in the Frame: Eisenstein’s Montage Technique
Montage technique is based on the theory that when two pieces of film are placed after one another, the audience immediately draws the conclusion that the two shots must be directly related in some way (Nelmes 422). Cinematic montage emerged in the 1920s; the prior years of Soviet experimental filmmaking. Soviet filmmakers like Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod
Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein produced their experimental films in line with the ideological ideals of the Communist Party within the newly created USSR. Lev Kuleshov was the first to experiment with the combination of two shots to generate meaning. Kuleshov and Pudovkin believed that the sequential following up of shots should be seen as building blocks that together form a scene. Pudovkin developed this theory and used montage to create in his words a ‘linkage’ between shots. For Pudovkin applied the idea that: A+B = AB.
Pudovkin’s colleague Sergei Eisenstein had a contradicting view on Pudovkin’s idea about the working of montage. Eisenstein believed that maximum impact could be achieved if shots in a scene conflicted. Eisenstein based his theory on the general philosophical idea that ‘existence’ can only continue when there is constant change. Put differently, everything that surrounds us represents a result of a collision of opposite elements. The existing world in itself is a temporary state until the subsequent collision of elements produces a new state. It is only through ‘collision’ that changes can be created (Nelmes 424). The collision of opposites to create meaning is called dialectical; Eisenstein’s theory of montage can be seen as the notion of change and the creation of a new order (Nelmes 424). In contrast with Pudovkin’s
perception of montage as a linkage between shots, Eisenstein argues that the collision of shots created ‘conflict in the frame’. According to Eisenstein, conflict within the frame could be any form of a dialectical film. Eisenstein suggested that the ‘cinematographic’ conflicts within the frame could be: ‘Conflict of graphic directions. Conflict of scales. Conflict of volumes. Conflict of masses. Conflict of depths. Close shots and long shots’ (Eisenstein 34).
Conflict in the frame is not limited to the juxtaposition of opposing content in a scene. It is also the dialectical use of technology that can create a different outcome of the scene than the shots alone would give (Nelmes 424). Eisenstein brought the philosophical idea of dialectically to film and proposed that the combined result of two shots would construct utterly new meaning, instead of that they are seen as building blocks as Pudovkin proposed (424). In Eisenstein’s theory shot A+ shot B would create C (meaning). As Eisenstein wrote down in his notes: ‘from the collision of two given factors arises a concept’ (Eisenstein 35).
Ethnographic filmmaker Christian Suhr and anthropologist Rane Willerslev add to Eisenstein’s explanation that montage is in the broadest sense used as a production technique (Suhr and Willerslev 285). According to them, this is evident both in the shooting of the film and in the juxtaposition of shots during editing. Whether in the filming process or the editing room, montage can be defined as a cinematic rearrangement of lived time and space (285). The writers empathise how Eisenstein, but mostly his colleague Dziga Vertov, another Russian filmmaker of the early ’20, argued that the important element to keep in mind when analysing film is the distinction between the mechanical eye of the camera and the view of the human eye (283). Concerning the documentary, this distinction should be made to explore the framework the documentary provides, which I will do next by elaborating on Willerslev and Suhr’s explanation on the difference in perspective.
2.3 The Difference between the Human and the Mechanical Eye
In their article ‘Can Film Show the Invisible? The Work of Montage in Ethnographic Filmmaking’ anthropologists Christian Suhr and Rane Willerslev highlight the fact that within visual anthropology (ethnographic filmmaking), the filmmaker is often aware of the difference between the human and the mechanical eye of the camera, but he or she tries to transfer the lived-world as realistic as possible. The human eye, rather than showing a continuous stream of vision, provides a series of frames that have a limited range of contrast, depth of field and angle (Suhr and Willerslev, 285). The authors Suhr and Willerslev argue that ‘the real wonder of cinema lies not in its inferior imitation of the human eye, but rather in its mechanical capturing of footage, which subsequently can be put together with other pieces by way of montage’ (282). Ethnographic filmmaking can thus expand one’s horizon of experience only when the key differences between the camera and the human eye are taken seriously, and when ‘the use of manipulative film devices for transcending the limitations of human vision’ is taken in consideration (281).
For a film, but also for documentary filmmaking, it is the art of montage in which it can transfer a message to the audience. Just by editing the pieces that conflict with each other, the audience is given the space to create meaning. When looking at how the documentary frames the image the audience sees, it necessary to imagine that the camera cannot film everything the human eye is able to see. The camera has after all only one eye, and most humans have two. The human eye can see depth in a way the camera eye cannot. It is film however, that can be pressed-forward or show the image in slow-motion; qualities of the camera that the human eye does not have. The perspective of Srbijanka is nonetheless visualised by showing only what she can see from out her window, and brings this view in relation to her memories of the past. In the following paragraph, I explain how the frame of
the house is shown through the editing of the scenes, and how the emerged frame within the documentary can be explained by the concept of framing by K. Malcolm Richards.
2.4 Framing our Worlds
In his text ‘Framing the Truth in Painting’, K Malcolm Richards elaborates on his interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s ‘The Parergon’ (1979). By expanding the idea of the frame of a painting, Richards shows that the museum that exhibits a painting, as frames the artwork by putting a label underneath and naming the exhibition. Richards point out that us as spectators are also already ‘framed’ by our social and cultural background in the various ways in which we perceive the painting. The way that birth frames us ensures that we look through that ‘frame’ into the world. ‘Our framing’ relates to the context of where we grow up and how we see the world around us. The residence of the family Turajlić shows how the camera films the frame that the family has on the world. The walls around the house frame as it were the interior space, as well as the walls between the two parts of the apartment frame these two parts. Looking at the walls around the apartment, the windows of Srbijanka’s apartment do not show the same view as the windows of her neighbour Nada Lazarić show; they both have therefore a distinctive experience of what happens outside the apartment and also what happens on the other side of the wall inside their houses.
If your bedroom is on the backside of the house, you most likely will experience merely the noise of your neighbours and their children playing in the garden, which gives you the feeling that you are living in a peaceful neighbourhood. Imagine if your bed stands at the street side of the house, the experience of your neighbourhood will be different since you hear the noise of the traffic and the chatting of people who are passing by your window.
These differences in context, and thus differences in point of view can influence the way you experience your neighbourhood.
Thinking about the dialectic idea of generating a new meaning by putting the shots in sequence, I argue that the movement of the camera from a scene that is shot inside the house to a scene that is set outside the building will bring two different settings together without explaining the direct connection. Furthermore, it combines two ‘truths’ about what is happening outside: the viewpoints are different and so will the image that the eye perceives. The juxtaposition of the images of inside-outside makes the audience aware of the one-sided view the family has outside of the window; the trees and the streetlights also block a part of the view of the camera; just as it does for the inhabitants of the flat. Likewise, the sequence of images inside and outside of the house creates a new context for the viewer in which the relation between the two realms is suggested.
The following scene explains how the documentary and its editing can be a suggestive tool for the audience to create meaning, by constructing a story out of the images that the human eye cannot see in this sense, because of the difference in time and space. Through the Sergei Eisenstein concept of montage, the variety of possible ‘frames’ or views within the documentary can be revealed. Six small scenes that are brought together will be described, the little changes in scenery make clear that these scenes were not all filmed on the same day; that they are brought together to suggest a storyline that the audience actively should
distillate. Small details like the differences in weather, realms or clothes suggest the difference in the scene, which the following paragraph will make clear.
Figure 9: Screenshot of the television in the room.
2.5 Who is Srbijanka Turajlić?
The scene opens with a living room captured. On the right side of the room is a sizeable black flat-screen depicted (see figure 9). Left of the flat screen, an open window lets the sunny daylight shine in, the white linen curtains flow in a light breeze. The flat-screen plays a video that portrays a middle-aged woman on a small stage that stands in front of a microphone. Her hands contain a paper, of which she starts reading out loud: ‘Srbijanka Turajlić. Who is Srbijanka Turajlić? Srbijanka Turajlić is Srbijanka Turajlić! Everyone knows that. Only she knows what it cost to fight for freedom when it is not there.’ The image on the screen is not very sharp, as if it was made by a phone or an old handheld camera, the filming of the screen makes it even worse.
The next moment the camera finds itself inside this congress, which was first filmed when it was played on television. Srbijanka is part of the audience, as well as many other people. The quality of the film is the same as could be seen on the television; it is different from the other scenes of the documentary that seem more contemporary. This similarity suggests that the video on the television was a record of the conference, which we now see in ‘real life’. The conference that is filmed awards a prize to Srbijanka for her role in the
democratic opposition group OTPOR! during the wars in the nineties. The woman on stage is captured from the view of the audience that sits in the congress room. When Srbijanka
receives the price she says: ‘This is the first time I win a prize for a complete fiasco’ in which she refers to the current political situation that she does not feel satisfied with. She goes on by stating that if she really had achieved freedom, it would be without a doubt the ‘worst failure of my life’. The change of scenery shows that the scenes are edited in sequence; at first the audience is inside the apartment, the next moment the camera films inside the congress hall. The same presenting woman who stands in both scenes on stage creates the space for the audience to understand that the scenery is the same, but only filmed from another perspective. The woman’s introduction speech about Srbijanka’s acts of resistance is not fully shown, but her statement is expanded in the next two scenes that follow upon this one and which I will describe in the following paragraph.
Figure 11: Screenshot of the house as seen from the outside.
After the shot of Srbijanka’s speech, the scenery changes again. A shot of the corner house is made from across the street, suggesting the return to the inside space again (see
figure 10). The next moment we are inside, and the camera films a close-up of Srbijanka who is holding a magazine in her hands, which she is reading in front of a large bookshelf. On the opened page the text: ‘Award for a Fiasco’ can be read. Her hands are holding a paper, of which she starts reading out loud: ‘Despite her role in the October 5th revolution, which removed Milošević from power, Srbijanka Turajlić feels her fight was in vain.’ The camera slides asides a bookshelf on which a picture of the revolution is standing (see figure 11). Srbijanka reads further: ‘Like many, she is disappointed in the democracy in Serbia.’ Throughout Srbijanka’s reading, Mila’s camera moves to Mila’s mirroring in the window glass. Knowing that the daughter is the same person as the director and cameraperson, we see how the director includes herself in this scene (see figure 12).
Figure 11: Screenshot of the bookshelf. Figure 12: Screenshot of the reflection of Mila.
Now the camera returns to Srbijanka, showing that she is also summery dressed in a light blue polo shirt, which is highlighted by the sunlight that brightens the room and suggests the shot was taken early in the day. Mila’s hands enter the frame, applying a little microphone on Srbijanka’s T-shirt. Besides the mirroring in the glass, she now comes directly in front of her camera. Mother and daughter are discussing the author of the article, Tamara Skrozza, who presumably was a student during the revolution in the late ‘90 (figure 9.0). Srbijanka keeps on reading: ‘a personal message of the author: “It is not a fiasco Srbijanka. In winning
freedom, just like in life, the way we travelled is more important than arriving were we have planned.’’’ Srbijanka looks up, smiling astonished and holding a cigarette in her right hand. ‘Well, that is beautiful!’ Mila’s voice behind the camera confesses that Srbijanka’s speech at the conference made her cry. ‘It is awful for me to see how much energy you spent’ (figure 13). The camera focuses on Srbijanka who looks at the magazine again. ‘How much you gave of yourself,’ adds Mila. Srbijanka does not smile anymore; she clamps her lip.
The images alternate in a split second; this little movement is already taken in by the eye to create significance out of the sequence of images. The montage of different parts of scenes becomes visible at the moment when Mila films herself in the mirroring of the glass, which is followed when she in one instant after that is attaching the little microphone on her mother’s t-shirt. The time in between is short, the moment she walked onto her mother must have been cut out of the film. This little aspect shows how montage can frame the scenes filmed; the editor decides what is shown and what is hidden.
2.6 The Framing of the Outside.
A next shot represents another young woman —later on, it becomes clear that she is Nina; Srbijanka’s other daughter —who looks out of the window (see figure 14). The green leaves that led the light shine through serve as the background of the image filmed. The tree is standing in front of the window. ‘What happened?’ asks Mila’s voice from behind the camera ‘There is a man up there…’ answers Nina. Srbijanka rushes to the window, the shape of her body is looking dark because of the camera films against the light. ‘Move!’ says Srbijanka to Mila while she opens the window to have a look outside. ‘I cannot move I am filming’ protests Mila. Srbijanka peeks outside; the audience cannot see what she is looking at yet until an astonished sight sounds. Srbijanka wears now a black short sleeve. The sky is bright blue; the scene seems filmed during summertime (see figure 15).
Figure 14-17: Screenshot of the crane-scene. Nina looking outside the window, Srbijanka taking a sneak-peek, the man who stands on the crane and the men who look up at the crane from the streets.
