Time networks: history and synchronicity in contemporary Croatian cinema

Abstract

Th e paper demonstrates the prominence of network narratives ( fi lms with several autonomous storylines, globally popular since the mid- 1990 s) in post-Yugoslav, particularly Croatian, cinema, with examples such as Metastases ( 2009 ), Th e Reaper ( 2014 ), You Carry Me ( 2015 ), Th e Constitution ( 2016 ), Th e Trampoline ( 2017 ), etc. Unlike network narratives elsewhere, these fi lms o ft en thematize history, with parallel stories typically set during World War II and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990 s. Th is has been said to suggest as a circular, synchronic vision of history, a “transhistorical dance macabre” as a leitmotif of Balkan cinema. Th e fi lms Witnesses ( 2003 ) and Th e High Sun ( 2015 ), together with a group of multi-narrative plays, i.e. Th e Last Link ( 1994 ) , 3 Winters ( 2014 ) and Men of Wax ( 2016 ), are analysed as vehicles of counter-memory to such self-Balkanizing representations.