Page 134 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 134
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
to provide an element of multiculturally-based tolerance. Of course, these
topics, which are evident in the movie, could be related to a number of
universally existing political and cultural exclusion phenomena (such as,
above all, racism). These phenomena form particular social contexts into
which various schemes of community forms and formations are inscribed.
As an independent filmmaker, Filip Robar-Dorin, who opted for the
formula of alternative film in permanent conflict with the national cine-
matic establishment, reacted against the narcissistic construction of na-
tional identity in Slovenian cinema. Of course, I am not claiming that
national (i.e., ethnic) narcissism is in any sense an exclusive attribute of Slo-
venians. However, compared to larger nations, this Slovenian “syndrome”
can be deciphered through some specific expressions. As mentioned above,
in the late 1970s and 1980s, the Ljubljana school of (Lacanian) psychoanaly-
sis, led by Slavoj Žižek, contributed much to an academic and wider public
discussion on profiles of Slovenian identity, within which the idea of eth-
nic narcissism also became quite legitimate. This attitude became obvious
in Robar-Dorin’s earlier documentary Opre Roma (Stand up Roma!, 1983),
in which he confronted the Slovenian population with a radically different
identity of Roma people. Unlike other Yugoslav artists at that time, who
portrayed this ethnic minority as an idyllic metaphor of untamed freedom
and spontaneity (supposedly lost in civilization), Robar-Dorin made an in-
volved statement concerning the problem of tolerance in relations between
Slovenians and the Roma. In this way he started the work of demystifying
the “artistic” cinematic phantasm of the Slovenian, whose particular iden-
tity in many films was constructed from various mythical, historical, met-
aphysical, and other such determinations. Of course, one could say this
about almost any other construction of a national identity, but in each case
a critical observer (philosopher, social scientist, or artist) is concerned with
particular local narratives, mythologies, intellectual and political projec-
tions, and so on. On the other hand, Robar-Dorin’s film can also be un-
derstood as an aesthetic answer to some modernist achievements within
a cosmopolitan trend in Slovenian cinema of 1960s and early 1970s. Some
films from the 1960s, and especially films by Boštjan Hladnik and Matjaž
Klopčič, dealt mostly with some universal existential topics and worked
on introverted “psychological” themes, emphasizing the cinematic form or
new wave kind of approach to directing, disregarding troubling social real-
ities in the process. Robar-Dorin’s film thus turns his camera-eye towards
the existing social realities.
132
to provide an element of multiculturally-based tolerance. Of course, these
topics, which are evident in the movie, could be related to a number of
universally existing political and cultural exclusion phenomena (such as,
above all, racism). These phenomena form particular social contexts into
which various schemes of community forms and formations are inscribed.
As an independent filmmaker, Filip Robar-Dorin, who opted for the
formula of alternative film in permanent conflict with the national cine-
matic establishment, reacted against the narcissistic construction of na-
tional identity in Slovenian cinema. Of course, I am not claiming that
national (i.e., ethnic) narcissism is in any sense an exclusive attribute of Slo-
venians. However, compared to larger nations, this Slovenian “syndrome”
can be deciphered through some specific expressions. As mentioned above,
in the late 1970s and 1980s, the Ljubljana school of (Lacanian) psychoanaly-
sis, led by Slavoj Žižek, contributed much to an academic and wider public
discussion on profiles of Slovenian identity, within which the idea of eth-
nic narcissism also became quite legitimate. This attitude became obvious
in Robar-Dorin’s earlier documentary Opre Roma (Stand up Roma!, 1983),
in which he confronted the Slovenian population with a radically different
identity of Roma people. Unlike other Yugoslav artists at that time, who
portrayed this ethnic minority as an idyllic metaphor of untamed freedom
and spontaneity (supposedly lost in civilization), Robar-Dorin made an in-
volved statement concerning the problem of tolerance in relations between
Slovenians and the Roma. In this way he started the work of demystifying
the “artistic” cinematic phantasm of the Slovenian, whose particular iden-
tity in many films was constructed from various mythical, historical, met-
aphysical, and other such determinations. Of course, one could say this
about almost any other construction of a national identity, but in each case
a critical observer (philosopher, social scientist, or artist) is concerned with
particular local narratives, mythologies, intellectual and political projec-
tions, and so on. On the other hand, Robar-Dorin’s film can also be un-
derstood as an aesthetic answer to some modernist achievements within
a cosmopolitan trend in Slovenian cinema of 1960s and early 1970s. Some
films from the 1960s, and especially films by Boštjan Hladnik and Matjaž
Klopčič, dealt mostly with some universal existential topics and worked
on introverted “psychological” themes, emphasizing the cinematic form or
new wave kind of approach to directing, disregarding troubling social real-
ities in the process. Robar-Dorin’s film thus turns his camera-eye towards
the existing social realities.
132
