Page 125 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 125
robar-dor in‘s mir ror: r ams and mammoths in the context of yugoslav history
The final section of the chapter discusses Filip Robar-Dorin‘s film Ovni
in mamuti (Rams and Mammoths, 1985), which revealed ethnic tensions in
Slovenia at a critical time before the demise of communism and the im-
pending break-up of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Even putting aside the ques-
tion of the specific cinematic qualities of Robar-Dorin’s Rams and Mam-
moths, this film should be perceived as a very important work of Slovenian
post-modernism. Unfortunately, knowledge of the film is restricted to rath-
er narrow audiences in Europe and elsewhere. The film is not mentioned
in any critical or analytical literature dealing with cinema in the Balkans.
It seems that this movie, which even won the grand prize at the Mann-
heim-Heidelberg international film festival in 1985, experienced the fate of
many artistic or other intellectual endeavours that happen to expose criti-
cally a social phenomenon “a bit too early”. In this case, the view is critical
and ironic, and from the perspective of later historical events, it even ap-
pears prophetic.
In the case of Robar-Dorin‘s film, the object of irony and criticism was
explicitly nationalism in its daily and also vulgar manifestations, specifi-
cally regarding the position of Bosnian immigrant workers in Slovenia. It
is highly probable that this insightful aspect of the film was one main rea-
son the film was not presented to audiences with greater enthusiasm, be-
cause any promotion of films from a country such as Slovenia depends on
official presentations abroad in the context of cultural events. Perhaps the
film was not considered “representative” enough for such purposes, or per-
haps the company Viba film that owns the film simply was not proactive
enough in selling it to distributors. Therefore, even film experts interested
in the region somehow missed it for the most part. One of the rare observa-
tions that I managed to find was only published on the web by the (presum-
ably young) German writer Otto Reiter, who said that
[...] only a few [Yugoslav filmmakers] prophetically addressed the
shock of the 1990s, such as Slovenian director Filip Robar-Dorin.
In his film Ovni in mamuti (Rams and Mammoths, made in 1985,
camera: Karpo Godina) he shows in a sarcastic and semi-docu-
mentary fashion the lives of Bosnian “guest workers” in Slovenia
that are marked by prejudices on both sides. (Reiter, 2004)
One of the most interesting recent contributions of film analysis to the
recent readings of the history of Yugoslavia and the ideology that aided its
disintegration is by Pavle Levi, but this did not include Robar-Dorin‘s mov-
123
The final section of the chapter discusses Filip Robar-Dorin‘s film Ovni
in mamuti (Rams and Mammoths, 1985), which revealed ethnic tensions in
Slovenia at a critical time before the demise of communism and the im-
pending break-up of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Even putting aside the ques-
tion of the specific cinematic qualities of Robar-Dorin’s Rams and Mam-
moths, this film should be perceived as a very important work of Slovenian
post-modernism. Unfortunately, knowledge of the film is restricted to rath-
er narrow audiences in Europe and elsewhere. The film is not mentioned
in any critical or analytical literature dealing with cinema in the Balkans.
It seems that this movie, which even won the grand prize at the Mann-
heim-Heidelberg international film festival in 1985, experienced the fate of
many artistic or other intellectual endeavours that happen to expose criti-
cally a social phenomenon “a bit too early”. In this case, the view is critical
and ironic, and from the perspective of later historical events, it even ap-
pears prophetic.
In the case of Robar-Dorin‘s film, the object of irony and criticism was
explicitly nationalism in its daily and also vulgar manifestations, specifi-
cally regarding the position of Bosnian immigrant workers in Slovenia. It
is highly probable that this insightful aspect of the film was one main rea-
son the film was not presented to audiences with greater enthusiasm, be-
cause any promotion of films from a country such as Slovenia depends on
official presentations abroad in the context of cultural events. Perhaps the
film was not considered “representative” enough for such purposes, or per-
haps the company Viba film that owns the film simply was not proactive
enough in selling it to distributors. Therefore, even film experts interested
in the region somehow missed it for the most part. One of the rare observa-
tions that I managed to find was only published on the web by the (presum-
ably young) German writer Otto Reiter, who said that
[...] only a few [Yugoslav filmmakers] prophetically addressed the
shock of the 1990s, such as Slovenian director Filip Robar-Dorin.
In his film Ovni in mamuti (Rams and Mammoths, made in 1985,
camera: Karpo Godina) he shows in a sarcastic and semi-docu-
mentary fashion the lives of Bosnian “guest workers” in Slovenia
that are marked by prejudices on both sides. (Reiter, 2004)
One of the most interesting recent contributions of film analysis to the
recent readings of the history of Yugoslavia and the ideology that aided its
disintegration is by Pavle Levi, but this did not include Robar-Dorin‘s mov-
123
