Rediscovering nationalism in the Balkans: the early moving image in contemporary memorial spaces

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe transition from state socialism to democracy in Eastern and South-Eastern European countries has produced revisionist political, historical and social discourses, and consequently a renewed interest in national cinema historiographies, accompanied by early film re-assessments. In 2004, the discovery of the Serbian epic film Karađorđe ili Život i dela besmrtnog vožda Karađorđa/Karađorđe or The Life and Deeds of the Immortal Vožd Karađorđe (Serbia, Ilija Stanojević, 1911) in the Austrian Film Archive prompted a ceremonial premiere in Belgrade and subsequent screenings on national television and at silent film festivals. In Romania, Nae Caranfil used the making of the first Romanian feature fiction film Independenţa României/The Independence of Romania (Romania, Grigore Brezeanu and Aristide Demetriade, 1912) as a backstory for his big budget fiction film Restul e tăcere/The Rest is Silence (Romania, Nae Caranfil, 2007). For the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Albanian independence, a documentary Albanie 1912 (Albania, Eol Çashku, 2012), which combines earliest surviving footage of Albanian views and autochrome photographs from the Albert Kahn archives in Paris, was produced and consequently screened throughout the country. This essay argues that these films function as contemporary memorial spaces (Pierre Nora) for a renewed national discourse due to the fact that the archival images predate the socialist history of each country. The contemporary reuse and reinterpretation of these early moving images allows them to become visible, collapsing the time–space distance and blurring premodern and the postmodern nationalist ideologies.