The Making of Balkan Wars

The Making of Balkan Wars - 79 Min, 2006

The Making of Balkan Wars
documentary film - 79 Min, GR/MK/SCG 2006
A documentary of an art project that draws on interviews with artists, art critics, writers and curators from South Eastern Europe, presented as a multi-user 3D-videogame that pokes fun at Balkan stereotypes in the literal sense of the word …

The film crew:
Production - Personal Cinema, Prosenghisi, Panos Vittorakis; Direction - Ilias Marmaras; Camera - Maya Bontzou, Panos Vittorakis; Editing - Myrto Patsalidou; Music - Stelios Giannoulakis, Vassilis Kokkas; Programming - Yannis Skoulidas; Associated producer - Biljana Tanurovska, Lokomotiva and Narration - Ian Robertson
Conversation and interviews by:
Nevena Dakovic, Milena Dragicevic- Sesic, Basak Senova, Misko Suvakovic, Vladislav Bajac, Bojan Ivanov, Aleksandar Stankovski, Yane Calovski, Ranko Vukcevic.

The making of Balkan wars: the documentary deals with, having as a basis the history and the polymorphic experience of the Balkan Peninsula and its special characteristics, but taking also under consideration the features of the new technologies. The documentary aims to explore a complex narrative where the viewer can meet, get to know and realize the mechanisms of construction and representation that recycle the –on part- stereotypes that lead to the constitution of the national cultures and on which the hostilities and the fears of one population towards another are based. The making of Balkan wars: the documentary is thematically a composition of what we call Balkan area, of the fantasies and the special characteristics that form it.
In contradiction with the usual way of the visual representation of the narrative used by the media scene, where mythological structures of local identities have roots in the history of every region and collide with the new model of the man – image consumer, this documentary uses different visual linguistic structures of narrative.

It uses and puts in contradiction the TV form of video, the TV interviews and the cinematographic perception of the documentary with the language of digital creation and the software that compose virtual worlds, like those of the video games. The simultaneous people’s narratives and the recording of the environment alternate are continuously transformed, as they are incorporated in the 3D virtual space surpassing the limits and confinements that are usually present in perception by the use of a separate visual language. This way, the viewer can comprehend the fragmentation and the discontinuity of the mechanisms of production that construct the fantasy elements of the peninsula and get to know the complexity that composes the battle field of the spectacle and its representation in the 21st century.

The making of Balkan wars: the documentary, is based on conversations with theoreticians and artists which discuss these conditions, they depict the multiplicity of the meanings related to the Balkan identity/ies, they examine the use and the content of the term of Balkanization and finally they approach the definition of the modes of inclusion and exclusion in the European sphere, as a public sphere of bureaucracy and of relations of force, but also as a potential of communication and cooperation between the different peoples.

A version for TV slots consisted in two parts of 40 min each will be released soon.