2001-08-03 - Yugoslavia
SERBIA IN THE YEAR ZERO
The new film by Goran Markovic - "Serbia in the Year Zero" - will be shown at this year's Venice Festival as part of the "New Territories" festival program.
The film is co-produced by Paris-based "Les Films du Lendemain" and Belgrade's B92. Commenting in the festival programme, director Goran Markovic says:
"The most important questions left over from the Milosevic era are: Why did what happened to us happen? Where has the demon come from and how did he appear in our lives?
Is one man to blame or are we all responsible?
"Serbia In the Year Zero" does not attempt to answer those questions. It is content with becoming a kind of inventory of the horrors unfolding inside the heads of my compatriots, inside the heads of people close to me, and, finally, inside my own head. In addition, this film-collage attempts to table the cases of dishonour I witnessed or heard about, without striving to draw any conclusions from them. This chronicle of the disease that infected us all, which some people did not survive, does not explain anything. It does however serve one useful mission: it saves from oblivion the things we would rather sweep under the carpet."
Veran Matic, editor-in-chief of co-producer B92, says of the film: "Goran Markovic's "Serbia in the Year Zero" is the first result of a thorough confrontation with one's own life under Slobodan Milosevic. This is the work of a director who has constantly resisted the criminal regime while feeling guilty for the wrongs committed, who has publicly called for those guilty to be held responsible whilst feeling responsible himself, who has asked for forgiveness for something he personally did not commit but in fact simultaneously resisted.
The dictator has gone and we are now alone. Our identity that was built on the resistance to him has also disappeared. Now we have only the painful process whereby individuals and society as a whole must confront the crimes. For the first time the results of the war are being tallied. Goran Markovic begins with himself, his family and his surroundings. After a retrospective of his films at various festivals, and a retrospective book, the director creates a retrospective of the last fifteen years of his life."
Source: nettime - B92 press release by MT