An Essay on the film „Enclave“ by Goran Radovanović: what we experience and what we remember thinking about the watching of a contemporary historical cinematographic work

Abstract

The essay uses elements of anthropological (Steven Caton and Marc Augé), cinematographic (David Bordwell), philosophical (Stanley Cavell and William Rothman) and historiographical approaches to studying film (Robert Rosenstone) in order to develop a suitable framework for an encompassing anthropology of one specific film – Enclave (2015, 92 mins) by Goran Radovanović. The aim is to achieve a more complete understanding of the author's actions through which the logic of this "contemporary historical film", a film that deals with "history which is still ongoing" practically influences the viewers of the film. Specifically, the paper attempts a precise uncovering of the way in which Radovanović's audio-visual story of the painstaking rise of a friendship between an Albanian and a Serbian boy in an enclave in Kosovo struggles with, resists, but simultaneously blends with the knowledge, expectations and memories carried by those who had the opportunity to view the film, including, foremost, the author of this essay. In a nutshell, the key question addressed by the essay is how, or rather, why certain films become meaningful in the lives of those who watched them, or, as Stanley Cavell would put it, what are the reasons of one's own (or anyone else's) understanding of a specific film, such as it is?