Ana Krsinic Lozica 1 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb , Croatia
Discussion
The paper deals with the recent film production on Jasenovac, a WWII system of camps where the Nazi-aligned Croatian Ustasha regime imprisoned and killed Serbs, Roma, Jews and political opponents. Known for its brutality, Jasenovac made a significant impact on the (post)Yugoslav space as a cultural trauma that was often (mis)used for various mnemonic politics. The history of Jasenovac memory is heterogeneous and complex: it played its role in building the supranational socialist identity, its deconstruction, and the 1990s memory wars between Croatia and Serbia. The focus of the paper is the surge in contemporary film production on Jasenovac in Croatia and Serbia. Although they relate to the previous mnemonic battles, films also take up new approaches to reshaping collective memory and its related group identities. The aim is to consider subject positions from which the story of Jasenovac is represented while detecting how the victims and perpetrators are portrayed, to whom is the trauma attributed and who is the targeted film audience? Since the context of film production varies considerably, the paper will also take into consideration different agents behind film production as well as the reach of the films through its (in)visibility to the broader public. Will the increased interest in old traumas impact the formation of new group identity constellations? Or is the troubled past on the screen just a reflection of long lost memory battles repeating themselves yet again?
