The Image of the Bosnian War in American Cinema

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Masaryk UniversityFaculty of Arts

Department of Englishand American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature

for Secondary Schools

Bc. Vladimr Zn

The Image of the Bosnian War inAmerican CinemaMasters Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tom Pospil, Dr.

2012


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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

..Vladimr Zn


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AcknowledgementI would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Tom Pospil, Dr. for his valuable advice,

guidance and lending me some of the secondary materials. In addition, I would like to thankNienke van Doorn and Jeff Handley for proofreading my text. Vedrana Mahmutovi, who

provided me with her personal experiences, observations and views regarding the issues thethesis was concerned with. Last but not least I would like thank Duan Kolcn and Charline

Ruet for their support and encouragement


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Table of Content

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2

2. The Bosnian War ...................................................................................................................... 9

3. Inventing Bosnia and Herzegovina. ........................................................................................ 18

4. Bosnia in the Film ................................................................................................................... 33

5. Behind Enemy Lines. .............................................................................................................. 42

6. Welcome To Sarajevo ............................................................................................................. 50

7. Shot through the Heart .......................................................................................................... 59

8. Savior ...................................................................................................................................... 65

9. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 77

10. Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 89

Resum (esky) ........................................................................................................................... 98

Resume (English) ......................................................................................................................... 99


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1. Introduction

Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian

Affairs and later the Special Envoy to Cyprus and Balkans, in his speech entitled No

media, No War, compared the situation in Bosnia with the one in Rwanda. While in

Bosnia the number of dead was only around 100, 000 people, in Rwanda the number

was as high as 1,000,000, but Western media dedicated more space to European

conflict, than to the killing in Africa. Richard Holbrooke links the two events when he

quotes Christiane Annanpour, reporter for CNN in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When

asked why she did not report on the conflict in Rwanda, replied: I was in Rwanda. I didcover it. I knew what was happening but the O J Simpson trial was on and I couldn't get

on the air for CNN. (Holbrooke 20). Compared with the conflicts in Africa, the

Bosnian War received more coverage in Europe and America where the public was

served almost daily portion of horror and tragedy. Bosnia was a perfect place for stories

of bloodshed and terror, as it was located on the border of the civilized, rational West

and dark and mysterious East. Images of the country, where the Winter Olympic Games

took place only a few years before, were juxtaposed with pictures of war crimes, mass

graves, shelling and dead bodies.

In 1946 Winston Churchill in his famous speech at Westminsters College in

Fulton, Missouri, hung the Iron Curtain between free, democratic West and the

communist East. However even after the fall of the communist regimes, the imaginary

line dividing East and West of the Europe still prevailed in some form. This division is

not the invention of the British political leader, Larry Wolff, in his detailed exploration

of travellers accounts on Poland and Russia. In the Enlightenment literature with the

appropriate title:Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the

Enlightenment, dates the origin of this division back to the Enlightenment and writings


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of authors such as Voltaire, and other leading Enlightenment thinkers. Philosophies of

Enlightenment articulated and elaborated their own perspective on the continent gazing

from West to East, rather than from North to South as it were before. (Wolff 5).

According to Wolff: The Enlightenment had to invent Western and Eastern Europe

together as complementary concepts, defining each other by opposition and adjacency.

(5) In the eighteenth century the lands of Eastern Europe were a sufficiently unfamiliar

and unusual destination for the Western traveller, so that each carried a mental map to

be freely annotated, embellished, refined or refolded along the way. Wolff explains the

importance of the mental mapping in the following way:

The operations of mental mapping were above all associations and comparisons,

association among the lands of Eastern Europe, intellectually combining them into

a coherent whole and comparison with the lands of Western Europe establishing the

developmental division of the continent. (Wolff 6)

Edward Said proposed the idea that Europe was defined by Orient, as the Orient was

always part of Western imaginative and material culture. It constituted a reference point

one could define against. (1-2) In a similar way, Western Europe defined itself against

its Eastern part. The Balkan region, as former part of the Eastern Roman Empire and

later Byzantine followed by the Ottoman Empire, was seen as the part of Eastern

Europe. It shares, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, a position between the Orient

and the Western Europe; it was characterized by the industrial backwardness, lack of

advanced social relations typical of the developed world, irrational and superstitious

cultures unmarked by Western Enlightenment. (Wolf 6-7; Todorova 12). The Balkans,

on the other hand, cannot be described precisely under the terms of Orientalism as it

was defined by Said. While Said talks about the exotic Orient and its exotic and


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imaginary realm, which offered an opportunity to dream and possibility a longing for

the exotica as opposed to prosaic and profane West. The Balkans on the other hand was

depicted as place with unimaginative correctness and lack of wealth, with

straightforward, usually negative, attitude. As opposed to exotic Orient, the Balkans had

predominantly male appeal evoking the medieval knighthood. (Todorova 14) In

addition to that, while Islam plays a crucial role in the definition of the Orient, there are

only two places in the Balkans with a significant proportion of Muslim population. One

of them is Bosnia and Herzegovina. However Orthodox Christianity, the dominant

religion in this region, played an important role in its cultural, social and political

definition against the Western Catholicism. While these two faiths mutually represented

the notion of heresy in the region and within the Europe, it was the distinction between

Christianity and Islam which was important. Another important aspect was that the

Balkan countries were never under the direct colonial rule of Western powers therefore

never experienced Western influences through economic, diplomatic and cultural

means, unlike the direct control experienced in the Near East. The same situation

applies in academia. Compared to what Said stated about the study of the Orient,

Balkan studies were found only recently and have almost no tradition. (Flemming1228)

When the communist regimes fell and dichotomy of the East vs. West

disappeared, it was necessary to redefine the whole region. War in the former

Yugoslavia helped to dust out the old images of the whole region, which became

associated with the war and ethnic hatred once again. According to Vesna Goldsworthy,

wars over the Yugoslavian succession were often referred to by the Western media to as

the Balkan Wars despite protests of Yugoslavias neighbours in the Peninsula. This fact

reflects the resonance of the Balkans as a name (32). The War on European soil

between two white nations gained considerable attention in the news media and


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consequently a tide of publications about the Balkans appeared on the bookshelves.

New histories of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo; countless memoirs

by politicians, diplomats, and soldiers engaged in the region; accounts by foreign

correspondents and relief workers; the testimonies of victims, survivors and camp

inmates; diaries kept during the siege of Sarajevo; anthologies of poetry and prose;

reissues of long out of print titles; and a variety of academic explorations of the Balkan

peninsula. (Goldsworthy 28)

Filmmakers did not fell behind in this trend and a number of documentaries and

feature films about the peninsula were made and gained wide popularity. It should be

noted that films produced or co-produced in the Balkans, which tried to explain the

conflict, received number of significant film awards such as the nomination for the

Academy Award for the best Foreign Language Film in 1994 for the Macedonian film

Before the Rain (1994 dir. Milcho Manchevski). The two best films at the 1995 Canes

film festival were Emir Kusturicas Underground(1995) and Theo Angelopoulos The

Ulysses Glass (1995). Both try to explain the present war in the context of the past

conflicts. Hollywood took up the challenge and produced four relatively successful

movies in terms of critical reception as well as the box office performance: Welcome to

Sarajevo (1997 dir Michael Winterbotton), Savior(1998 dir Predrag Antonijevi), Shot

through the Heart (1998 dir David Atwood) and Behind Enemy Lines (2001 dir John

Moore). The Bosnian War appears also in the films such as Peacemaker(1997 dir Mimi

Leder) The Rock (1996 dir Michael Bay), The Hunting Party (2007 dir. Richard

Shepard), the Whistleblower (2011 dir Larysa Kondracki), In the Land of Blood and

Honey (2011 dir Angelina Jolie) and more.

This work deals with four of the films: Welcome to Sarajevo (1997 dir Michael

Winterbotton), Savior(1998 dir Predrag Antonijevi), Shot through the Heart(1998 dir


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David Atwood) andBehind Enemy Lines (2001 dir John Moore). Its aim is to prove that

images of the Balkans and the Bosnian War found in previous texts were reproduced in

these films. The question is in what way did these films reproduced the old stereotypes

and in what instances did they differ. There are few reasons for choosing these

particularly four films. First of all, they were produced around the same time, shortly

after the end of the war and therefore they might capture the best sentiments of the West

regarding the war depicted in the images presented every evening in the news and still

present in the public collective memory. All of the analysed films offer images of war

whether it is fought on the streets or Sarajevo or Bosnian countryside. Another reason

why those four films are analysed is their mainstream appeal and the fact that they were

co-produced by the Hollywood studios, which serves as one of the common

denominator. At the same time, these movies were co-produced by different companies;

some of them included the companies from the Former Yugoslavia and received various

degree of support from the Former Yugoslav countries. They achieved various

commercial successes which could be measured on the scale from blockbusters to total

failure. Moreover each of the films is a work of different directors with unique artistic

vision. This all offer perfect opportunity to compare different approach the filmmakers

took in depicting the region, its people and the war. We will observe how depictions of

the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, fits into the paradigmatic pattern of imaging the

Balkans set earlier and repeated throughout the nineteen and twentieth century..

In order to do so, first we will see how the actual events of the Bosnian war

developed. Then we need to understand the evolution of the imaging of the whole

region of Balkans and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular both in the Western,

predominantly British and American literature and culture and then especially in the

British and American film. Therefore in the next few chapters we will see how the


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image of the region evolved throughout centuries PublicationsImaging The Balkans by

Maria Todorova and Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture, and the Media written

by Dina Iordanova were indispensable to my work, as they explained evolution of the

image of the regions in the Western mind with complexity and especially the first

sources served as the base for research most of the other sources dealing with the

problematic. Appart from these Nevena Dakovics article The Treshold of Europe:

Imagining Yugoslavia in Film offered a comprehensive list of the movies depicting

Serbia in the last century and therefore served me as the ground work for my further

research. Second part of this work (Chapters 5 to 8), consist of the analysis of four

films Behind Enemy Lines, Welcome to Sarajevo, Shot through the Heart and Savior.

We will look at the film through the lens of semiotic analysis and narrative theory.

James Monaco in his bookHow to Read a Film claims that film language, although

it lacks its grammar and vocabulary, but even eight or ten years old child can

understand it the way the adults do (152). Film language as in any other means of

human communication is made of system of signs and therefore can be analysed. Power

of the cinema comes from the fact that unlike other language systems, where is a great

difference between signifier and signified, in film it is not. Film is not composed of

units as such, but rather continuum of meaning. Shot contains as much as we want to

read in it and whatever units we define within a shot are arbitrary (Monaco 153).

Several publications have influenced the way we analyse films in this work, specifically

in relations to defining elements within the single shot as well as combination of the

shots into sequences. The referential publications for this analysis were except the

above mentioned publication by James Monaco also Understanding Movies by Louis

Giannetti and Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. In

addition, when we describe film settings and different ways of characterization of


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heroes from different nationalities and roles they play within the plot, apart from the

above mentioned publications we took references from Manfred Jahn and his Guide to

Narratological Film Analysis and Story and Discourse as well as Story and Discourse:

Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film written by Seymour Chatman.

All of the results found in this thesis depict the Bosnian war in Welcome to

Sajevo (1997 dir. Michael Winterbotton), Savior(1998 dir Predrag Antonijevi), Shot

through the Heart(1998 dir David Atwood) andBehind Enemy Lines (2001 dir John

Moore). It analyzes the films as the art forms and does not attempt in any case to

comment on the actual events or side with and of the party involved in of the war.


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2. The Bosnian War

It is difficult to find a single cause of the Bosnian war. The territory of Bosnia

and Herzegovina was the cultural and religious intersection for many centuries. After

the death of Marshal Tito, a sense of nationalism grew in all republics of the former

Yugoslavia. Nationalist tendencies grew stronger with the increasing public debt and

rising inflation and decrease of the living standard of the regions population. In Serbia

these nationalist tendencies were powered by the unrest in Kosovo region, which has

historical ties to the Serbia, but presently, Serbs are a minority in the population.

In 1991 the situation reached the point, where holding the country together was no

longer plausible. On June 25th first two federal republics, Slovenia and Croatia declared

their independence. This act resulted in war, which lasted in Slovenia only 11 days and

after small number of casualties, the Yugoslavian National Army 1 withdrew their

forces. The situation in Croatia was different and the war left many casualties and lasted

until November 1991. It continued until 1995 with the climax occurring during

Operation Storm in August 1995. The outcome of the war was total control of the

Croatian military forces over its territory and mass exodus of the local Serbian

population predominantly to Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the time Croatia and Slovenia declared their Independence, Alija Izetbegovi

the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina faced the decision of whether to succeed or

stay in the Yugoslavia coalition. Jasminka Udoviki and Ejub titkovac quoted him

when he compared his dilemma to choice between leukaemia and a brain tumour. He

chose leukaemia, because he saw the war in Bosnia as unlikely due to a lack of will for

war among the Serbian conscripts, many of whom fled rather than being recruited for

Croatian war as well as a weakening Serbian economy. (176)1

Later YNA


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Prior to this decision, the political situation seemed to be leading to conflict. In

1990, the Serbs began to form their own military in Bosnia. These formations were

supplied and trained on the clandestine basis by the Serbian controlled Yugoslavian

National Army (Ramet 203; Udoviki, titkovac 180 - 181) Guns were smuggled into

the country and were sold to members of all ethnic group. Fear was used as very

successful technique. Where words were not enough, the brutal force and rumour

encouraged people from all ethnic group to sell their livestock and other valuable items

to buy pistols, rifles, bazookas or other kinds of armoury in order to protect themselves

(Udoviki, titkovac 181-182). Rumours spread amongst the people by the gun

smugglers and trained agents were supported by state propaganda which was heard and

seen in the media. Many Serbs believed the propaganda spread by the national media

which promoted the idea of all Serbs in one state as the mean of security, not the

imperialist ambitions of Serbia. (Herman, Peterson 2; Udoviki, titkova 176) The era

of the Independent State of Croatia during the World War II were still alive in the

collective memory of Bosnian Serbs.2 (177 - 178)

As soon as April 26th 1991 the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the Municipal

Community of Bosnian Krajina and chose the town of Banja Luka as their capital. By

September 1991 the Serbian Autonomous Oblast Hezegovina was formed with the

capital Trebnje and soon the other municipalities followed. (Udoviki, titkovac 180;

Ramet 203). The autonomous republic were supported by the Yugoslavian Army,

which alone sent 5,000 soldiers to SAD Herzegovina. An Army with heavy artillery

encircled the great cities of Sarajevo, Biha and Mostar. Between December the 31st and

January the 2nd 1992 the governments of Yugoslavia coalition and Croatia agreed on a

truce in Croatia, which allowed Miloevi to relocate some of his troops to Bosnia. At

2. It is estimated that Ustaa regime had killed between 1941 and 1945 in total between 320,000 and

340,000 ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. (The Holocaust Memorial Museum).


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the same time the Serbian President issued a secret order to transfer all the Bosnian Serb

officers to Bosnia, so when Bosnia and Herzegovina seceded, and the YNA would be

required to withdraw its forces, the majority of the military were citizens of Bosnia,

rather than citizens of other possible combatant regions. (Ramet 205)

On August 1991, the Arbitration Commission of the Conference on Yugoslavia

(commonly known as Badinter Arbitration Committee) was set up by the Council of

Ministers of the EC. The commission was handed fifteen opinions concerning the split

of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Opinion no. 2 concluded that that the Serbian

population in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia were entitled to all the rights

conferred minorities and ethnic groups[...]" and "that the Republics must afford the

members of those minorities and ethnic groups all the human rights and fundamental

freedoms recognized in international law, including, where appropriate, the right to

choose their nationality" (Pellet 179) Opinion no. 4 suggested that recognition of the

independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia was not appropriate until a

referendum on the issue was held. Bosnian Serbs organized their referendum on

November 9, and 10, 1991 in their territories where the majority voted for staying

within Yugoslavia. However this referendum was not recognized by the Muslims and

Croats, because it was unilateral and expressed the opinion of only one ethnic group. A

later referendum required by the Badinter Commission was declared on February by the

government in Sarajevo for the entire country, with the overwhelming majority voting

for secession. Radovan Karadiv told Bosnian Serbs to boycott the plebiscite which the

majority of the Bosnian Serb population did (Udoviki titkovac 179; Ramet 206). The

Badinter Commission made mandatory the favourable answer to secede by all three

ethnic groups; however the EC considered only the Bosnian and Croatian referendum

valid, as they represented the majority of population. According to Udoviki and


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titkovac, both EC and the Badinter Commission left unaddressed the key questions of

the Serbian question. What guarantees of their political status, their sovereignty, and

their human rights were the Bosnian Serbs to expect after Bosnias eventual secession

from Yugoslavia? When the EC recognized Bosnian independence, despite the

overwhelming boycott of one third of the population, it made the things worse.

Recognition of Bosnia appeared to place the will of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats

over the will of Bosnian Serbs, which only provided Radovan Karadzic fodder to his

claim that foreign powers were against the Serbian sovereignty as they had been in the

past. (Udoviki, titkovac 179) On January 2, 1992 the Bosnian Serbs left the Bosnian

Parliament claiming that the Bosnian law no longer bound them and formed the

Republika Srpska. On April 6, 1992 the EC have recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina

and a full scale war erupted. (Udoviki, titkovac 180; Ramet 206-207)

On April 6 1992, the fifty first anniversary of the day Hitlers bombardment

levelled Beograd, the EC officially recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina (Udoviki,,

titkovac 185). On this day the Bosnian Serbs opened a military front in the eastern part

of the Republic and pushed westward. Within a week Bosnian Serbs controlled 60 % of

the Bosnian territory. The Serbs began their offensive with the two objectives. In

addition to turning Sarajevo to ruin, they aimed to conquer eighteen mile wide strip

along the Serbian-Bosnian border and consolidate Banja Luka as its capital. On April 4

1992, Serb paramilitary forces lead by eljko Raznatovi-Arkan entered the Border

town Bijelina, brutally killing the local Muslims. Arkan invited the foreign

photographer Ron Haviv to document the operation and the images shocked the public.

(Udoviki, titkovac 186; Husejnovi; Milner, Gates of Hell 10:55 - 12:10) . Other

towns such as Zvornik, Bratunac, Srebrenica Viegrad, Gorade and Foa as well as

smaller towns followed, and from each of them fled thousands of refugees. Serbian


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authorities made everything possible to cleanse the areas they governed from all the

non-Serb population either forcing the Muslim and Croats to emigrate, sending them to

concentration camps or killing them in various brutal ways (Udoviki, titkovac 186 -

190; The Gates of Hell 16:20 - 23:55).

The day after recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the UN, the Serbs built

barricades and started a siege which lasted until February 29, 1996. It was the longest

siege in modern warfare. On May 2, YNA tried to take the city and despite better

equipment, their efforts failed. On May 2 they completed the establishment of

blockades of all major roads leading to the city, cutting off food and medical supplies.

They also cut utilities such as electricity, gas, and water. The new Serbian general Ratko

Mladi decided to break down the psyche of the city defenders and inhabitants when he

issued the following order: Shell the Presidency, shell the Parliament. Shoot in slow

intervals till I order you to stop .... Target Muslim neighbourhoods - not many Serbs live

there. Shell them till theyre on the edge of madness.(The Gates of Hell 47:43 -

48:11)

In June 1992, when the General Secretary of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-

Gali, visited Zagreb, he received a report that Croatia, now heavily armed and

confident, was using Serbian shelling of Sarajevo as a smoke screen to pursue their

goals in Bosnia. Because Croats were perceived as victims of Serbian brutality in the

Croatian War of Independence in 1991 and it was a country where democratic elections

took place, Croatian activities were sporadically covered by the Western press. Thus

two separate wars were fought against the Bosnian Muslims, one by Bosnian Serbs and

one by Bosnian Croats. On July 3, 1992 Mate Boban, leader of the Bosnian Croats

declared the independent republic of Herzeg-Bosna and integrated the ultranationalist


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units of the Croatian Defence League into his militia force and expelled Serbs from the

areas in Western Herzegovina, which he considered to be the heart of Croat nation.

On May 7 1992 Boban met with Radovan Karadi in Graz to outline the strategy of the

partition of Bosnia, which was their long term objective. On the same day Bosnian

Croats declared their independence, they signed a treaty of cooperation with the

Bosnian Muslims, whose inadequately armed forces were needed for military support.

The same year the concentration camp in Konjic was opened. Here treatment of the

Serbian population mirrored that of Serbian treatment of other nationalities in their

concentration camps in Kerarterm and Trnopolje. Despite the cooperation agreement

Croats signed with Bosnian Muslims, they were buying arms from Serbian government

in Belgrade and sold fuel to the Army of the Repoublika Srpska. (Udoviki, titkovac

191-192) Much of the 1993 was marked by the Croatian and Bosnian conflict. Fights

around the Gorni Vakuf, in Leva Valley were accompanied by the ethnic cleansing by

the Croatian forces. During the nine month siege of Mostar, the historic Turkish centre

of the town was destroyed including the bridge over the river Neretva, This bridge was

considered as one of the most handsome structures of the Balkan region. The bridge to

most Bosnians, symbolized the emblem of diverse community of faiths and emblem

ethnicity. In November 1993 the partition of Mostar was concluded and the Croatian

forces openly displayed the symbols of the Ustae era (Ramet 211 212; Udoviki,

titkovac 192 195). Despite these hostilities, Croats signed a treaty proposing the

federation with Bosnian Muslims, under the threat of economic embargo of Croatia by

the American government,

In June 1992 the United Nation Peace Forces (UNPROFOR) were sent to Bosnia

in order to protect the Sarajevo International Airport. UNPROFORs mandate and

strength were enlarged in order to ensure the security and functioning of the airport in


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Sarajevo, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance to that city and its environs. In

September UNPROFOR's mandate was further enlarged to enable it to support efforts

by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to deliver humanitarian relief

throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to protect convoys of released civilian

detainees to the the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 1993 the UN

established five safe area zones that were under the protection of the international

forces. One of these towns was Srebreneica.

In the summer 1994 the luck of war turned on the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian

side and they experienced their first victories, taking back the territories they had lost

whilst the Serbs continued in ethnic cleansing of the territories they held.. On July 1995

Ratko Mladi decided to capture the thirty kilometre wide band of territory along the

western bank of Drina River, including the safe areas of Srebrenica, ep and Gorade.

Bosnian government realized that without the support of Western countries, it was

unable to save Srebreneca when the Serbian armed forces approached. Bosnian military

forces left the area leaving only 400 Dutch UNPROFOR peacekeepers, who were

unable to protect the population. The Srebrenica Memorial in the Potoari list 8.372

victims of the massacre, but the number might be higher. The U.N. Security Council

issued a resolution demanding the withdrawal of the Serbian forces from Srebrenica, but

by that time the entire population of the town had been driven away and the concept of

safe area had collapsed. (Pax Americana 00:50 07:50 Ramet 236 237; Udoviki,

titkovac 197) On August 30, 1995 NATO launched the airstrikes on the Bosnian Serb

military infrastructure and units. In the following two months Bosnian and Croatian

armies advanced as far as twelve kilometres from Banja Luka, the capital of Republika

Srpska. (Ramet 237 240 Udoviki, titkovac 197-199)


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On November 1995 delegations representing Bosnian Muslims lead by Alija

Izetbegovi, Bosnian Croats , lead by Frranjo Tudman and Bosnian Serbs, who were

represented by the Serbian president Slobodan Miloevi met. Radovan Karad and

Ratko Mladi as convicted war criminals were banned from negotiations. The peace

treaty known as Dayton Accord was signed on November 22, 1995 and brought an end

to fighting. According to the Accord, the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was split

into two self governing entities, Republika Srpska and Federation of Bosnia and

Herzegovina. The state is governed by central government with rotating system of

Presidency. The state would retain a central bank and a constitutional court.

There is no precise statistics concerning the casualties of the war and the number

of victims has been subject to the political debate. The Research and Documentation

Center in Sarajevo, on its website, published statistics from research done in 2007. The

results were positively evaluated by three international institutions. (Programske

aktivnosti) The research aimed to identify all the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina

as well as missing persons, whose remains are not yet found and whose death or

disappearance was a direct result of military operations. The statistics showed that from

1991 to 1995 in total 97.207 people died or were missing. From these, 60 % were

soldiers and the rest are civilians. 66 % of victims were Bosnian Muslims, 26% were

Bosnian Serbs and 8 % were Bosnian Muslims. 83% of the civilians killed were

Bosnian Muslims. 7,3 % of all of the civilian victims were children. (Ljudski gubitci u

Bosni I Hercegovini 91 -95). The number of causalities caused by indirect causes of

the war might be even higher. According to United Nation Refuge Agency the Bosnian

conflict forced more than 2,2 million people to leave their home of which more than one

million returned home. (Pohl, Husein)


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Bosnian War was certainly the conflict which shattered the views of many people,

who hoped that fall of communism would bring better and more peaceful world

configuration. It tested the ability of the Western world to solve the conflicts occurring

in its immediate proximity, directly on the European soil.


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3. Inventing Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Even before the war in the former Yugoslavia, the perception of the whole region

of South-Eastern Europe was marked by the stereotypical views held in the West. These

views continue colouring information about the region today. The whole Balkan region

is viewed negatively with connotations of instability, and backwardness. How this

image of the Balkans was shaped and how the picture is reflected in the images of

Bosnia and Herzegovina are projected by the British and American mass media are

important issues to be analysed to gain a fuller understanding of the subject area.

Until the end of the nineteenth century the word Balkans was known only to a

few travellers3. (Mazower 1 -2) Over time, the meaning of the term widened to denote

the whole peninsula. The connotation that the Balkans where the other of Europe, the

tribal, backward and violent Europe was gained during wars and political unrest at the

turn of the nineteenth century. (Todorova 2) In the preface of the 1913 Report for

Carnegie Peace Endowment, Nicholas Murray Butler, acting director of the

organization used the expression civilized word to denote the countries of Western

Europe putting it in contrast to the Balkan world. He states The circumstances which

attended the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 were of such character as to fix upon them

the attention of the civilized world. (7) This expression appears several more time

always to refer to otherness of the Balkan countries. Balkan people are described as the

brave soldiers, whose morality, courage and devotion in combination with nationalism

empowers them to win any war, however on the other hand Folk-songs, history and

oral tradition in the Balkans uniformly speak of war as a process which includes rape

and pillage, devastation and massacre. (108) In another instance the report found out

3

Until the nineteenth century the mountain chain, that divides Bulgaria from east to west and runsparallel to the Danube, was known in the English language and world travel literature under the ancientterm Haenus. (Mazower 1-2; Todorova 22)


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the common feature which united Balkan nations was that the war was not waged by the

armies but by the whole nations as the report confirms:

The local population is divided into as many fragmentary parts as it contains

nationalities, and these fight together, each being desirous to substitute itself for

the others. This is why these wars are so sanguinary, why they produce so great a

loss in men, and end in the annihilation of the population and the ruin of whole

regions. We have repeatedly been able to show that the worst atrocities were not

due to the excesses of the regular soldiery, nor can they always be laid to the

charge of the volunteers, the bashi-bazouk. The populations mutually slaughtered

and pursued with a ferocity heightened by mutual knowledge and the old hatreds

and resentments they cherished. (148)

In 1993 the same institution decided to republish the 1913 Report with an

introduction by George Keanan. The Report was titled grandiosely: The Other Balkan

Wars; A Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect. The former ambassador to Russia

and Yugoslavia was, according to the then director of the Carnegie Peace Endowment

Fund ,Morton Abramovitz, about to serve as the bridge between the wars that happened

at different times during the century(Todorova 4). The Balkan Peninsula and its people

have always created this feeling of the other, different world in the eyes of Westerners.

Since the time when Ottoman forces set foot to the Balkan land, there were two

conflicting views in European thought. The first was the notion of crusade against the

infidel and the second the notion of admiration of the Ottoman Empire. Christians saw

the fall of Constantinople as the proof of degeneracy of Orthodoxy, the ultimate failure

of Byzantium as the imperial system and a divine punishment for mans sins. (Mazower

6) In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a fragmented Europe floundering in the


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numerous religious wars and political unrest looked upon the Ottoman rulers as the

Grand Signores. He was depicted as the most powerful man of the known world and

admired for the power, reach and efficacy of his Empire and the grandeur of its capital.

(Mazower 7) As the Ottoman military power declined the attitude towards the empire

changed. Now the Ottoman government was described as tyranny or despotism. The

religious tolerance and peace admired before, was no longer mentioned in connection

with the Ottoman Empire. Instead there was more emphasis on the question of its lack

of legitimacy, its reliance on corruption extortion, injustice and the natural

unavoidability of its decline. The enlightenment with its emphasis on the secularity put

the political and religious nature of the Ottoman state in the basket of backwardness.

Besides, the West was undergoing an industrial revolution and a transformation of its

economic system, the growing importance of industry on the economy in contrast to the

still predominantly agrarian society of the East. Balkan became the Volkmuseum of

Europe.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the region of south-eastern Europe was

gradually gaining its significance on the geopolitical map of Europe, especially with the

political ambitions of the European Powers. Intensifying activities of the Balkan nations

for the political sovereignty, drew attention to the population that had been up to this

time lumped into one category, that of Turkish Christians. A mixture of nineteen

century romanticism and the Realpolitik on the part of observers, created a polarized

approach of demonizing these populations. After the War for Greek independence, the

British favoured the policy of balance of powers in Europe, which included the

suggestion that Ottoman Empire must be preserved. The literature of the time reflects

this view with few exceptions. Between 1861 and 1863, two British women, Georgina

Mackenzie and Adeline Irby, travelled extensively through Serb Macedonia, Bulgaria,


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Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, publishing their travel account in 1866 under the

title Travels in Slavonic Province of Turkey-in-Europe. It was accompanied by the

drawings of Felix Kanitz and it introduced the British public to a virtually unknown

subject: the plight of the Slavs. Both travellers were pro-Serbian and in 1869 they found

the Orthodox School in Sarajevo and were involved in relief works. After Mackenzie

died in 1874, Irby continued the school until her own death in 1911. They were

Victorian ladies of their era, who had great faith in their religion, great belief in

progress, great confidence in their nationality and their background; and they were

possessed of a passionate call that drove them on. (Todorova 98) In Bosnian, Irby had

found a purpose for dedication and was their unswerving champion, although she never

forgot her class and country and was proudly conscious of her superiority of birth,

breeding and civilization. She wrote: The Bosnians always remained semi-barbarians,

and despite the efforts to produce a better class of peasant woman, the dishonest

outweigh the honest, and their lasting weakness was their inability to work hard.

(Todorova 98)

In the summer of 1876 it was no longer considered bad to have Serbian friends.

New books on Southern Slavs were published which criticized a Western public for

paying little attention to the state of dominant nations of the peninsula. William

Gladstone commented in 1876 on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina: more than

a third of the population is exiled or homeless and where the cruel outrages . . . are more

and more fastening themselves, as if inseparable adjuncts, upon the Turkish name.

(XII) The passionate debate about the contemporary issues in the English society found

its analogy in the awareness of the other nations and in both cases the intellectual

society could see no resolutions of the contemporary issues except through charity.


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American travellers in the region were quite rare in the 19 th century but began to

be more numerous towards its end. Numerous accounts were written by tourists,

diplomats, journalists and missionaries. In the eighteenth century Greece was

considered an essential destination of the grand tours to Europe that American wealthy

gentlemen undertook. Many published their travel memoirs. In 1819 the first American

mission was established in Smyrna. Its aim was the conversion of the predominantly

Muslims and to a lesser extent, Christians to the right faith. In 1869 there were

already 21 missionary stations, with 46 missionaries and 185 schools. At the end of the

century the number reached 17 principal stations and 256 substations with 184

missionaries. U.S. diplomatic relations in the Porte sought firstly to protect the rights of

the U.S. citizens. Journalists, particularly Januarius McGahan correspondent for the

English liberalLondon Daily, played an important role in informing the western public

on the situation in the Balkan. McGahan was granted the accreditation by the Russian

army to cover the Russian-Turkish war in 1877-78. Another American journalist to

cover the war was Edward Smith King a reporter for Scribners Monthly, a veteran

journalist who had made his name by reporting the American Civil War and the Carlist

War in Spain. In 1880 he wrote the first book from Turkey in Europe portraying the

Balkans as the border zone between the West and the Orient. In his book of poems, he

was inspired by the Balkan legends and folk songs. In his first novel The Gentle Savage

about the Oklahoma Native Americans trying to resist the European sophistication he

compares the Balkan mountaineers to Native Americans inhabiting the land and his

Herzegovinian guide, Tomo, reminded him mostly of the stalwart bronze- coloured

men who I had seen in the Indian Territory.(Todorova 107)) William Curtis,

correspondent of the Chicago Recordwrote a book about his travels through Romania,

Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece titled Turkey and His Last Provinces, which describes


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Serbia as peasant state with its lack of anti-Semitism which he contrasted to Romania.

Curtis was taken aback by the general feeling of equality which he considered as the

greatest obstacle in Balkan countries to achieve progress. All through these years the

Americans showed signs that their views were clearly in line with England and that they

belonged to the same cultural sphere as England. (Todorova 101 - 108)

Accounts from later years suggest two opposing views. First was the aristocratic

sympathy with the ruling elites and disdain for the peasants and the new states. The

second view was a notion originating from the enlightened linear thinking of evolution

with its dichotomies of progressive-reactionary, advanced-backward, industrialized-

agricultural, urban-rural, rational- irrational, historic-non-historic and so on. This view

saw the Ottoman as the obstacle to progress, which had become the key word of the

time. The new parliamentary democracies were characterized as the classless states of

equality, which were seen as threat by some and the positively by other writers. What

the two views shared was the total dislike of the peasantry, which was seen as belonging

to the economic and social order. From the most sympathetic view it was seen as class

retreating from the stage and serving as a source of curiosity and repository of archaic

customs and beliefs. In the other extreme, it was predicted for disappearance. (Todorova

110-111) Maria Todorova sums up the aristocratic bias against egalitarian society as:

urban bourgeois rational culture against what was perceived as the superstitious,

irrational, and backward rural tradition of the Balkans, whose sole value lay in

providing the open-air Volksmuseum of Europe. (111) The aristocratic view gave way

to the burgois attack on corruption and sensuality, the oriental and exotic was

substituted with a preoccupation of propriety and accompanied by intolerance.

(Todorova 111)


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The Balkan became the focus of larger scale attention during the Balkan Wars in

1912 and 1913. The First Balkan War was seen as just war to push out the Ottoman

Turks, as the opposition of progress and give freedom to the inhabitants living there.

The second war was viewed with discontent as the result of greed over the territory of

the newly established states. In a way it resembled the enthusiasm and the discontent of

the previous generations with the states of the Balkans and their consequent

development. The Balkans then, were disdained for its backwardness and nationalism,

which were ascribed by some as the result of the ancient hatred among the nations.

Despite the Western nations building their empires overseas, they were looking with

discontent on the imperialistic ambitions of the Balkan states. The final blow to the

image of the Balkan was given by Gavrilo Princip and the shooting of Franz

Ferdinand de Este in Sarajevo, which signalled the outbreak of the World War II. The

Balkans were described before the war as the Powder Keg of Europe which exploded on

the 28th of June. There was prevailing spirit blaming the Balkans and especially Serbs

for the horrors of the war.(Todorova 120)

An English traveller to the Balkans, Mary Edith Durham returned the Order of

King Sava that she has received from the Serbian state with the letter addressed to King

Peter considering him and his nation guilty of the biggest crime in history. Durham

travelled through the Balkans from 1903, leaving behind the travel accounts

accompanied by her drawing. On her travels she had a Balkan guide who explained to

her that the Balkan people knew only to love and to hate, they are not capable of

something medium and this should describe the Balkan man in general no matter if he is

Albanian, Serb, Greek or Bulgarian, Christian or Muslim. (Durham Chapter 1)

Durham described her experience as coming several centuries back in time and wipe

out your western prejudices. (Chapter 1) Violence was the term associated with the


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Balkans also for Agatha Christie. She writes in her detective novel: Secret of Chimneys

with the character Boris Anchoukoff coming from Herzoslovakia, the land of violence,

brigandry, and mystery, where the national hobby is assassinating kings and having

revolution. (Todorova 122; Flemming 1218) K.E. Fleming comments that:

Syldavia and Herzoslovakia, then, are sort of Balkan everycountries,

composites (both in name and character) based on several assumptions: that

Balkan countries are more or less interchangeable with and indistinguishable from

one another, that there is a readily identifiable typology of politics and history

common throughout the Balkans, that there is such a thing as a Balkan ethnic or

racial type. (1218)

The assassination of King Alexander in 1934 drew another English traveller

Rebecca West to travel across the former Yugoslavia, which she described in the highly

praised travel book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. She expresses her prior knowledge

about the peninsula in the following way:

Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans -- all I knew of the South Slavs.

I derived the knowledge from memories of my earliest interest in liberalism, of

leaves fallen from this jungle, of pamphlets tied up with string, in the dustiest

corners of junkshops, and later from the prejudices of the French, who use the

word Balkan as a term of abuse, meaning a rastaquouere type of barbarian.(West,

chapter IV)

This book was published in 1941 at a time, when the Yugoslavian kingdom was to

be invaded by German and Italy. West described the discomfort her German co-

travellers felt when they crossed the border of Croatia as the train was getting late and

the food was bad. She felt uneasy about the reception of the Balkans and their wish to


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travel to the Dalmatian coast. According to the Germans she was travelling with, they

were accustomed to the presence of Germans and thus the services of the local hotels

were more similar to those in Germany. (West Chapter V In the same manner

Archibald Lyall noticed the uneasiness with which Westerners see the Balkans and

ascribe it to a certain lack of comfort, a certain indifference to rules and timetables, a

certain je-men-fichisme with regard to the ordinary machinery of existence, maddening

or luminously sane according to temperament and circumstance. (Todorova 127) Except

for the lack of punctuality of the means of transportation, Lyall noticed strong presence

of the cult of gun which lead to the Skuptina murders in Beograde, yet he expresses

feeling of safety walking the Balkan cities as, the Balkans kill only to manage affairs

among themselves not interfering with strangers. It was the ethic complexity which

frustrated the Westerners. As Lyall remarks: Everywhere east of the Adriatic there are

at least ten sides to every question, and it is in my mind that one thing is as good as

another. (Todorova 128). This complexity of the Balkan states was ascribed to the

earlier stage of their development than the nation states of the Western Europe.

After the World War II the borders dividing the Orthodox and Muslim from the

Western Catholic were substituted by the new borders of the Iron Curtain dividing free

West from communist East. Communist Russia was viewed by some scholars as the

successor of the Ottoman Empire and the countries of the Balkans were left to fall under

this regime with the exception of Greece, which was considered as the cradle of

Western civilization as the only Balkan nation worthy to fight communism. (133-136)

Robert D. Kaplan in his book The Balkan Ghosts describes this birth of the Greek

tourism myth, which started in late 1950s and lasted despite the military dictatorship of

George Papadoupoulos between 1967 to 1974. (249-260) While in Yugoslavia it did not

matter who should rule, in Greece the communist were called gangsters and Greece was


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the only Balkan member of the NATO from 1982 until 2007, the only member of the

EEC. During the Cold War the Yugoslavian regime was tolerated as it opposed

Moscow, it was granted generous loans from the Western banks to revitalize its

economy after the war. During this time, the Balkans as geopolitical notion Balkan as

derogatory term disappeared from the conversation of the Western politicians and

journalists in favour of the term Eastern Europe. The Balkans and Balkanization came

into prominence in 1990 and the wars in Yugoslavia. (Todorova 135 -136)

Robert D. Kaplan in foreword to the second edition of the Balkan Ghosts: A

Journey through History writes: Balkan Ghosts was completed in 1990, before the first

shot was fired in the war in Yugoslavia. It was initially rejected by several publishers,

who thought the Balkans too obscure a region for significant book sales. (X) Few years

later in 1993 the book became international bestseller and although it tells very little

about Bosnia, it is believed to be one of the books that influenced President Bill Clinton

against intervention in the conflict. The failure of Communism and the consequent wars

in former Yugoslavia caused increased interest for the region in South-East Europe. As

Kaplan further continues in the region, where there were only a few Western journalists,

became the central stage of the world events. American soldiers were deployed in

Macedonia to prevent spreading of violence from the bustling regions of other

Yugoslavian countries to the south. This was a country, which he describes as a place,

where he could barely meet stranger. (X) American historian Barbara Jelavich in 1983

wrote:

To the outside observer, the Balkans appears to be a puzzle of confusing

complexity. A geographic region inhabited by seven major nationalities [sic!],

speaking different languages, it has usually impinged on the Western


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hand Bosnia, was portrayed as sometimes centre of the cosmopolitan Europe,, where

different nationalities, cultures, religions were co-existing side by side in peace, As such

it was viewed as the failure of Europe and civilized world, which was partially guilty of

inactivity. On the other hand, Bosnia was portrayed from the Orientalists or Balkanist

perspective portraying the old ethnic problem, which the British public could not

understand. It was accompanied by a discourse of return to the tribal, primitive, barbaric

side of Balkan, with its mysterious bloodthirsty inhabitants (Robinson 390). After the

images of Penny Marshall and Ed Vuliany from Omarska and Trnopolje concentration

camps media drew analogy between the Ustae concentration camps in Jasenovac and

World War II and the present, which even increased the pressure for international

intervention in the conflict. Sarajevo was compared to Warszawa ghetto and President

Izetbegovi compared himself to Czech president Bene. In Geneva, talks about the

Vance-Ovens Peace Plan in January 1993 were compared with the Munich Conference

in September 1938 (390). Quite opposite to the Balkanist interpretation of the war

presented by Todorova (152) Myers, Klak and Koehl presents us with a comparative

study of the national U.S. newspaper coverage of the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda.

In their finding, unlike the conflict in Africa, European conflict was rarely viewed as

tribal and the warring sides as blood thirsty. More than about the ethnic cleansing and

tribal hatred, newspapers were reporting about the military strategies and emphasizing

the countrys place within the civilized world (30-43)

Throughout the war, media presented its two competing images. First of them was

the civil war theory, backed by the U.N, which saw all of the warring sides responsible

for the war. Another theory was the idea of an aggressive Serbia trying to seize

neighbouring territory and create Greater Serbia. This interpretation was favoured by

the United States. First interpretation ignored the fact that external forces, especially


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Serbia and Croatia were involved in a war. Second, one focused on Sarajevo forgetting

the other parts of the country especially Mostar. One dimensional reporting often did

not mention the multi-ethnic dimension of the people, nor that people of different

ethnicities might intermarry. Moreover, some of the commentators expressed the

cultural determinist view ascribing predispositions to murder others.(Robinson 392-396)

For reporters providing information from Bosnia, still faithful to the notion of

objectivity, left the requirement of neutrality, which according to Kursaphic has a place

in civil society but not during the war. (80) Journalists who reported from the war were

often trapped in the quasi-Stockholm syndrome and their reporting depended on which

side they were reporting from. This trend was described by Dutch journalist Ruigrok

and in Germany by von Oppen. A term coined by Michael Bell former correspondent in

Yugoslavia who describes the effect in the following way:

In place of the dispassionate practices of the past I now believe in what I call the

journalism of attachment. By this I mean a journalism that cares as well as

knows; that is aware of its responsibilities; and will not stand neutrally between

good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor. This is not to back

one side or faction or people against another; it is to make the point that we in

the press [] do not stand apart from the world. We are a part of it. (8)

Journalists serving in Bosnia saw their role as influencing the public to pressure

political representatives in their countries to action leading to cessation of violence.

They appealed:

to the international community to bring peace into the country, and bring the

responsible for the war crimes in front of the justice. Some of them like Ed. Vulliany

and Roy Gutman later witnessed in front of ICTY. (Kurtasic 80). Media theorist in the


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late 80s and early 90s termed the effort and power of the 24/7 news media to influence

the foreign policy as CNN effect. Media may function alternatively or simultaneous as a

policy agenda-setting agent, an impediment to the achievement of desired policy

goals, and an accelerant to policy decision making (Livingston 2). The positive role of

the media was seen when the infamous Serbian and Croatian internment camps were

closed soon after being reported on the media. On the other hand it had also the negative

effect when France and Great Britain enforced the role of UNPROFOR as Peace

keeping not Peace enforcing units. Commander adhered to what they considered as

strict impartiality to avoid becoming participants in warfare (Malik 148). Journalists

serving in Bosnia on one hand realized their power to influence public opinion, but on

the other hand they were faced with the continuing bloodshed and inability of the

international community to stop the killing.

The Balkans, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been view throughout history

as the bridge between the East and the West. Not quite the oriental East and not quite

the West. It was often characterized by its lack of civilization and backwardness, and

yet the land of chivalry and brave soldiers. It came into prominence in the Western

media and literature especially during the times of war, due to its proximity to the main

European centres. In these times it was often presented as the European moral failure

and the Civilized World had to intervene in order to stop the bloodshed. Violence

was often presented as the work of dark forces hidden within its inhabitants and the

present conflicts as a part of continuum of Centuries old ethnic conflict, interrupted by

the brief periods of peace. The image of the region often depends on which nation did

different authors choose as their favourite ones and the following interpretations of the

region is presented in favour of this nation views disregarding others.


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In this chapter we saw the evolution of the image of the Balkans in the literature

and the news media.discriminating the other ones. The inhabitants of the peninsula are

either viewed as backward bloodthirsty peasant-soldier always ready to pull the trigger

in order to kill or an exotic noble savage who reminds the West the long forgotten

medieval values and who needs to enlightened by the civilization. In the past authors

presented the Balkans as the predominantly rural region; however this picture has

changed with the Bosnian War and the siege of Sarajevo. Besides from the traditional

Balkanist view, media presented Bosnian people of all ethnic groups like the ordinary

Europeans or Americans and the war was not caused by the Balkan mentality, but was a

side-effect of the fall of the Communist regimes throughout the Eastern Europe. In this

chapter we saw the evolution of the image of the Balkans in the literature and the news

media. Nonetheless we have left out one important medium, the film. In the next

chapter we will see how the region, more specific countries of the Former Yugoslavia

were presented in the moving pictures.


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4. Bosnia in the Film

There are several publications written about the Balkan image in Western film.

One such publication was an article written by Nevena Djakovi titled The Threshold

of Europe: Imagining Yugoslavia in Film which gives a brief overview of

Yugoslavian image in American films. Bulgarian born scholar, Dina Iordanova in her

book Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture, and the Media, provides a description of

the Balkan depicted by the Western as well as Balkan filmmakers themselves. Alexej

Timofejev focuses on the depiction of Former Yugoslavia during the World War II in

the American, British, German and Soviet cinematography.

Dakovic dates one of the first cinematic images of Serbia by foreign filmmakers

to 1904. It was footage of the coronation of the King Peter I by Englishman Arnold

Muir Wilson. The film is composed of several thematic blocks, procession, coronation

and travel though the Oriental parts of the country. According to Dakovic, the film is

marked by strong local ethnic colours such as Turks, Albanians and the highlander

population shown in a variety of costumes. This was the first film to present the exotic,

historic and other motifs which contributed to the romantic curiosity and attention by

the public and this image was broadly used to depiction the Balkans in later

productions. (Dakovic 70) Since that time, Serbia and the Balkans were represented in

Western cinema in two forms; either the films were set in the region or film characters

came from there. Nevena Dakovic identified three patterns of Balkan representation in

film; the romantic pattern, ironic pattern and historical pattern. However there is no

clear border between these styles of representation, all have used the established exotic,

romanticised characterisation of the Balkan region.


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Films, which see the Balkans under the romantic pattern comes predominantly

from the classical Hollywood era. According to Dakovic, this pattern refers to Serbia as

an idyllic, make-believe place; an image that joins the Hollywood pastiche scenery

album of romantic places like Scotland of Brigadoon (1954, dir. Vincent Minelli), or

the Shangri La ofLost Horizon (1937, dir. Frank Capra). (70) In this bucolic world, love

is the way opposite cultures are brought together, and the predictable melodrama

premised on fascinating haunted love and rendered more exhilarating by being set in a

regional unpredictable history. (Dakovic 70) Cecil DeMille found the commercial

potential of stories set in the Balkan when he shot Unafraid(1915) and Captive (1915).

In these films, the vivid mountain area of Montenegro serves as the backdrop for its

heart breaking love stories. Three screen adaptation of Antony Hopes Prisoner of

Zenda (1894) were important points in framing Serbia. It introduced to the screen

Ruritania, a country somewhere beyond the forest like Transylvania. Ruritania, which

became the archetypal symbol of the Balkan land because of its historical allusions

evoked dynastic, melodramatic adventure and drama of errors are more specifically, and

more easily, identified as the barely disguised turbulent Serbian monarchical chronicle.

The aura of the Balkan mystery is expressed in Jacques Tourneurs Cat People (1942)

which can be associated with the regions in two ways. First its heroine Irena Dubrovna

is of Serbian origin. Secondly, the story connects to the Balkan region in its utilization

of medieval legends dealing with Werewolves. Irene initiates a line of cursed Balkan

beauties, a combination of Slavic sacrificing self-destructiveness and erotic, sensuous

southern/even half gypsy women that inspire passion trimmed with death. Serbia and

the whole Balkan region caused filmmakers to look at it in the romantic way, where

love could solve all of the problem or a place of mysterious and dangerous exotica,

which could have dire consequences. (Dakovic 70 72)


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On the other hand, the Balkans were represented on the screen in yet another

image. According to Dakovic, this ironic pattern is recognizable in narratives that do not

explicitly deal with, or mention, but rather peripherally imply Serbia/Yugoslavia to be a

semi-developed, godforsaken, impoverished or economically backwards Third World

State. From 1950s Yugoslavia started its Westernization and modernization in an

attempt to reshape its identity. While the communist countries of Eastern Europe might

have symbolized the intermediary between two regimes, in the Westerners mind

Yugoslavia was a place of cheap tourist resorts, economic decline and industrial

products of poor quality such as the Yugo which appears as the unreliable car in Die

Hard(1995). Other subthemes such as tourism or economic immigration in search of

better living condition are of no better faith. The later theme is often covered by

Yugoslavian migrs like the screenwriter in Arthur Penns Four Friends (1981).

Dakovi sees the film as the Bildungs-film dealing with the coming to maturity of a boy

of Yugoslav origin. Danilo's (Craig Wasson) journey to adulthood meanders between

the American sixties, traumas of Vietnam, work in the steel mills of East Chicago and

the patriarchal customs of the "old country" cherished by his hardworking, homesick

father who dances "kolo" with his compatriots. In the cultural clash the second

generation immigrants pay the high price for their assimilation and acculturation. A vast

number of examples confirm that the downplayed role of Yugoslavia in this mode is

hugely deceptive: tourism: Murder in the Orient Express (1974, dir. Sidney Lumet;)

Evil Under the Sun (1982, dir. Guy Hamilton), /The Hunter's Bag (1997, dir.. Maurizio

Zaccaro) Yugo: Dragnet (1987, dir Tom Mankiewicz;) The Crow (1994, dir. Alex

Proyas).Backfire (1994, dir. A. Dean Bell);Drowning Mona (2000, dir. Nick Gomez;)

emigration:Broken English (1997, dir. Gregor Nicholas).(Dakovic 72-73)


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On the other extreme is traditional, historical pattern. Yugoslavs are seen in the

war resulting from the 1914 assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo depicted in De

Mayerling Sarajevo (1940, dir.. Max Ophls) and Ultimatum (1938, dir. Robert

Wiene and Robert Siodmak). The assassination is seen both as an admirable fanatic

gesture against oppression and as the ironic, even stupid end of an epoch regarded with

nostalgia, undoubtedly done by Serbian conspirators (Dakovi 73). During World War

II, Serbs are depicted as the only ones who still fight fascism in Europe. American and

British propaganda used armed resistance of Draa Mihailovi as the tool to mobilize

the public morale. American film Chetnik - The Fighting Guerillas (1942 dir. Louis

King) casts Philip Dorn, as the main character of Draa Mihailovi, a Dutch migr,

who, between 1937 1939, was shooting action movies in Berlin. His wife Jelica was

played by another migr, Anna Sten, a successful actress in the USSR. The film uses

several of facts such as a name of Mihailovics wife and number of their children and

place where the anti-fascist movement took place wrong, but otherwise Alexander

Timofjejev says, the creators depicted quite reliably the living condition of the guerilla

leader. Timofejev explains that scriptwriters of the film were not asked to search the

real details in depth, but their task was to show the spirit of the freedom of first

European guerilla fighters. British producer Michael Balcon and director Sergej

Nolbandov shot a film in London inspired by the positive image of the Yugoslav

royalists in the British press which was called Chetniks. Later, though the British

government shifted their support from Draa Mihailovi and his supporters to the

partisans of Josip Broz Tito, the film plays on the abstract motives of partisans fighting

Germany. Producers changed the name from Chetnik to Undercover. (Timofejev 40-

43). Films shot after the World War II dealt with the resistance against German fascist

occupation, Civil war between the two resistance groups and the socialist revolution


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going on at the same time. This notion is mirrored in films concerned with either

flimsy, illegal operations behind enemy lines, Operation Cross Eagles (1969, dir..

Richard Conte) The Secret Invasion (1964, dir. Roger Corman), Bomb at 10:10 (1966

dir. Charles Damic) or with the relations between the patriotic anti-communist Chetniks

and the revolutionary yet equally patriotic communist partisans and their international

supporters (Dakovic 73-74).

During the Cold War period, Belgrade and the whole of Yugoslavia served as a

dangerous spy nest where human life had no price, corruption was common practice and

military secrets were betrayed. One of the most notable films is Mask of Dimitrios

(1944 dir Jean Nagulescu) based on the Eric Ambers 1939 novel with the same name.

It tells the story of writer Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) who searches for Greek spy,

arch criminal and womanizer Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott). Retracing

Dimitrios takes Leyden to Belgrade, which resembles Budapest, people have non-

Serbian names and their language reminds one of a soft Slavonic whisper. He

encounters two corrupt government officials Wladislaw Grodek (Victor Francen) and

Karel Bulic (Steven Geray). In the scenes of their encounter, we are exposed to the

typical Balkan imagery such as macho gambling in smoky coffee houses, desirable but

unfaithful wives and betrayal of military secrets. According to Dakovic it seems like a

concentration of all of the typical motifs, crystallized collective images of the Balkans

where accuracy is of no importance to an audience that does not know much about the

topic. (74) An important part of James Bond From Russia With Love (1963 dir. Terence

Young) is set in the Orient Express travelling through Yugoslavia. It stops in Zagreb

and Beograd, which looks very much like dim military towns resembling the towns in

Russia. During the stops in these cities, the Russian agent manages to get onto the train,

but does not accomplish his mission. The idea was to emphasize Yugoslavia as the


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hole in the Iron Curtain enabling the loosening of the Eastern Bloc Grip. Also Bonds

thinking On whose side is Tito? alludes to Titos policy receptive towards the both

sides of the Cold War.

In 1990s the Balkans as an actual war zone became a profitable topic for various

filmmakers. Nevena Dakovic says that Yugoslavia became the equivalent of the Third

World anguish in Europe and is frequently spoken of in different ways. For example

hunger in Bosnia is mentioned in with blissful indifference during courteous dinner

chitchat inHome for the Holidays (1995 dir Jody Foster). The Bosnian War provides a

background for displaying the skills of almighty protagonists such as Nicolas Cage

presents in the movie Rock (1996 dir. Michael Bay) when he prevents an emotionless

Serbian anarchist from hiding a deadly weapon into a toy sent to a Bosnian refugee

camp. Another such display is presented in the movie Peacemaker (1997 dir. Mimi

Leder), where Dusan (Marcel Lures) a man, who lost everything in the war, seeks his

revenge and plants an atomic bomb in the UN building in the heart of New York.

(Dakovic 74 - 75)

War torn pictures of Sarajevo started to appear on screen as early as 1992.

Sarajevo gained the war torn city reputation, as it was destroyed several times and again

resurrected and reconstructed by the artists. Sarajevos reputation as the originator of

the apocalypse of the World War I. was forgotten and replaced by the image of dynamic

cosmopolitan location that had now fallen prey to the dark forces. Before the war, the

city was an ordinary city, with an Oriental, not quite European look, but still modern

with its architecture and the place where the 1984 Olympic Games took place.

(Iordanova 235). Media scholar Dina Iordanova thinks that if there was no war, the city

would be depicted as the larger summary of the Balkan cities, thus urban monsters


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symbolizing the incompetence of all communist undertakings littered with depressing

housing projects and marked by the characteristic urban architecture of socialism (235 -

236). After the war, the cinematic image of the city has changed and into the foreground

came the pictures of suffering, appreciation and respect for Sarajevos martyred citizens

with a degree of attentiveness not normally granted to inhabitants of the region. These

pictures were put in contrast to the earlier city photographs, which captured the

European look or the Oriental character of the city, diverse landscape of Christian

Churches and Mosque inhabiting the same landscape stressing the contested

multiculturalism. (236) Iordanova then denies Sarajevo its cosmopolitan status before

the war, because cosmopolitanism implies mobility and involves people coming from

all over and dispersing again in all directions, while Sarajevo was a crossroads with

steady traffic flow arriving from known places and travelling in established directions.

Iordanova claims that the city gained its cosmopolitan status because of the siege.

Contrary to the claim that this crazy but charismatic town was the place that most

embodied tolerance and multiculturalism and that is why it had to be destroyed,

Iordanova believes that Sarajevo came to embody tolerance and multiculturalism

precisely, because it was destroyed -its crazy charisma emerged parallel with its

destruction. (237)

Decisions on comings or going on leaving or staying were crucial in the politics of

representation - the way Sarajevo was narrated depended on the arrival and departure of

the film-makers, who portrayed the city. Tensions arouse between the Westerners and

their perception how the city and its inhabitants should be represented, which was only

partially told by the people who lived there. Films made by Sarajevans, which had only

limited exposure, usually documentary footage produced by the Sarajevans was widely

used in Western productions, but largely unaccredited (Iordanova 237). Western


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tradition dictated that the city was to be depicted as a Balkan location, where Western

travellers could face controversial experiences and then reassert their superiority by

resolving the problems competently. Without the massacres, the city would still be

considered semi oriental and its inhabitants would not be known beyond the borders of

the republic. Had the massacres not been witnessed by international eyes, they would

have appeared briefly at the end of the news and been forgotten for next day - had the

images of suffering not been transmitted worldwide. Bosnia was conceptualized as a

secular melting pot and this atmosphere enabled the intellectual to establish the project

of intellectual solidarity, fully comparable to that of Spanish Civil War, but this time

dark forces were fought not with arms, but with art and creativity. (Iordanova 238 -241)

This fight was not visible only during the cultural activities that were sponsored

by the Western intellectuals in the city during the war, but also on the screen. Western

filmmakers left their own comfortable homes and environment and moved to Sarajevo

where they told their stories from being present point of view in an attempt to depict

what the war really meant. Marcel Ophuls left Paris in 1993 for a few months to shoot

The War Correspondent (1994). Bill Tribe leaves London to shoot his personal war

account titled Urbicide (1993). (Iordanova 242) Australian director Tahir Cambis

desired to leave civilization and Sarajevo was the place for his exile. The film Exile in

Sarajevo (1997) was a product of this journey. It covers last six months of the war and

its impact on the life of civilians. His personal account depicts such moment as the

killing of young girl after winning a dance contest and falling in love with his Bosnian

sound recordist Alma Sahbaz. (Iordanova 243; Stratton)

Apart from documentary, the Bosnian War was topic of numerous feature films

that shaped the public view of the region as a whole. Even they follow the travelogue

structure, where a Westerner arrives in the Balkans, explore or undergo controversial


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experience and who then report on them on the safety of their home. British Welcome to

Sarajevo (1996 dir. Michael Winterbotton) and Spanish Comanche Territory (1997 dir.

Gerardo Herrero) are written from the perspectives of journalist reporting on Bosnia.

Savior(1998 dir. Predrag Antonijevi) follows a mercenary fighting for Serbs, Behind

Enemy Lines (2001 dir. John Moore) tells the story of American pilot shot down in

enemy territory. In Harrisons Flowers (2001 dir. lie Chouraqui) wife of a Pulitzer

Prize winning photographer travels to Croatia to find her husband. Another way to

depict the conflict in the Balkans is through the human interest stories which include

intensified emotional appeal such as Shot through the Heart(1998 dir David Atwood),

which is a story of friendship and gradually shifts to depiction of one of them as a

monster killing woman and children approaching a water tank on a Sarajevo street. The

two most recent Western films about the Balkans, As If I Am Not There (2010 dir.

Juanita Wilson) and In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011 dir. Angelina Jolie) tell

about the atrocities and raping that encounter Muslim women in Serbian prison camps.

To add authenticity, some of these films are shot in the local language with local actors.

However authentic these films might appear, use of the topics and images only reiterate

the old stereotypes of the Balkans as the troublesome region on the periphery of Europe.

Dina Iordanova, in her book Cinema of Flames: Balkan Films Culture and the

Media, describes drama, blood and tragic mindset as the essential part of the general

Balkan narrative. The narrative of the peninsula is about the area doomed to cyclical

conflict, and which can never escape the shadow of its history.(72) Balkan and

especially Bosnia and Herzegovina appears as the dark place on the map of civilized

Europe, mysterious, exotic and romantic region of the past with inferior products of

industry and love for war and armed conflicts.


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5. Behind Enemy Lines.

There are not a lot of movies of which its directory says: "It [the script] was so

horrendously out of whack I had studied the wars in Bosnia. I'd been there. I took that

stuff very seriously. [This script] was genuinely ridiculous with the actors escaping in

World War I biplanes and stuff." (Piccalo) This Director was Irish born John Moore and

he was speaking about the original script of his debut film Behind Enemy Lines. Even

later, when the scriptwriters David Veloz and Zak Penn rewrote the script, Moore told

Owen Wilson, who was about to play the leading role of Lt. Chris Burnett, that there

was not a single good line in the movie. Despite this, he accepted the role of director

film with estimated budget $40,000,000. Until this film, Moore was shooting short films

aired on Irish networks as well as television commercials, most notably for Dreamcast

video game, which was aired during the MTV Music Awards 1997. Many reviewers of

Behind EnemyLines see the quick editing of the movie and larger than life hero

performance on the battlefield resembling a video game itself. (Harrison; Wilmington)

The plot of the film bears slight similarities to the story of Air Force Pilot Capt.

Scott OGrady, O'Grady was an F-16 pilot who was shot down in Bosnia in 1995.

Subsisting on a diet of ants, O'Grady hid from Serb soldiers for six days before a

dramatic rescue by Marine forces. (Harrison; Humphries) Although this title has been

used for discovery channel about OGrady, this film is not the true story. It is set in

Southern Bosnia, however the map of the U.S. headquarters show events occurred in the

Srebrenica region and Dayton Accord becomes, in the film, Cincinnati Accord. Despite

Moores effort to shoot the movie in Bosnia, producers of the movie chose a safer

location in Slovakia. Nor did the efforts to cast Serbian actors succeeded. Serbs refused

to play in the movie because of its anti-Serbian sentiment. Instead actors coming from


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Reigart to reroute Burnett to the safe area. While he is escaping his prosecutors, Burnett

accidentally falls into the mass grave, he hides under a dead body. Reigart watching

Burnetts hiding via a thermal satellite, decides to report the situation to the media.

Burnett encounters Tracker in deserted factory riddled with landmines, which in

impressive way gradually explodes one by one. While travelling, Burnett is picked up

by a car with Bosnian civilians. He befriends one, listed in the credits as Ice Cube. He

offers Burnett bottle of Coca Cola and impresses him with his knowledge of the Public

Enemy songs. When they arrive in the town Ha.he is confronted with the Bosnian

civilians living in poor conditions and discovers they were photographing the mass

murder of local Muslim population by general Miroslav Lokar. Lokar arrives in the

town, just when a Bosnian man threatens to kill Burnett, accusing him of causing the

troubles. When Lokar arrives, Bu

The Image of the Bosnian War in American Cinema

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