LECTURE:

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About “Balkan”

(But Were Afraid to Ask Kusturica)

A lecture by Nebojsa Jovanovic

Saturday October 31st - Kriterion 2
16.00 / free entrance

What we talk about when we talk about “Balkan cinema”? A particular
mode of filmmaking? A distinctive regional poetics? Or films that
somehow capture elusive yet recognizable substance of “Balkan-ness”?
And, do they merely “capture” it at all? “Si les Balcans n’existaient
pas, il faudrait les inventer,” said Hermann von Keyserling back in
1928, and cinema certainly has its share in this invention of
Balkan-as-spectacle, both for the non-Balkan “others” and Balkanites
alike.

The lecture draws on the theoretical plea for “Balkan cinema” as
elaborated by the eminent film theorist Dina Iordanova over the last
decade. The formidable merits of Iordanova’s project will be
underlined, and some of its effects problematized. The gist of my
critique of the “Balkan cinema” is its structural tendency to
homogenize the variety of socio-political, historical and ideological
contexts. One can never be careful enough when it comes to the concept
of “Balkan cinema”: every time we take it for granted, we are in
danger to depoliticize the complex political constellation Balkan is
part and parcel of. That way “Balkan cinema” (just like “Balkan”
itself) might become conceptual stopgag, preventing us to engage in
more nuanced critical analysis of the specific characteristics of
cinema in different intra-Balkan contexts. This critique will be
supported with an account of the problems one faces in the case of
Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cinema.

This lecture is supported by:

Film

Arts

Talks

Music

Food

LECTURE:

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About “Balkan”

(But Were Afraid to Ask Kusturica)