Page 167 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 167
identity in a notion of the eastern and western european cinema
tion loosing characters, who seem psychologically and socially deprived of
the sense of identity, is in a class of his own. Characters in his films are ap-
proaching the limit of the constitution of subjectivity through desire in the
psychoanalytical terms, as they seem to be without an idea of the true ob-
ject of their desire, of course, apart from Antonioni’s own manifested de-
sire to see through the eye of the camera, what is very difficult to see other-
wise. Following the trace of identity as a topic in the European modernist
cinema, we could of course go on and on citing and analysing many films,
which were shot in the period also in Great Britain within the movement
of free cinema, and of course in Germany within the Young German Cine-
ma. But we can as well stop here, since my aim was mainly to map the Eu-
ropean context of a case of a film, which I shall try to use as an example for
a view in the Balkan‘s cinematic reality of the time.
Sand Castle
As in most other Central and Eastern European countries, which were lib-
erated from Nazism in a flame of socialist revolutions, also in Yugosla-
via, film production developed relatively quickly thanks to a high degree
of support by new revolutionary authorities. In any case, Yugoslav cine-
matography eventually developed in many respects as the strongest film
production in the Balkans. The initial period after the Second World War
was marked by a sub-genre of the war genre, namely so called partisan
movies, and a number of adaptations of the local canonised literature and
drama for screening. Especially the latter sort of films, which were mostly a
priori supposed to bear an “artistic value”, could be studied nowadays as an
expression of tendencies to form a cinematic version of identity aiming at
the collective aspect, the so-called national (ethnic) self-image. Hence, we
can say that in a quite early period of the socialist Yugoslavia the constitu-
tive parts – federal republics, which were founded on the ethnic principle
– worked upon some aspects of their traditional, cultural and ethnic dis-
tinctions in film, as they did it as well in the other art forms in spite of the
so called internationalist political and ideological rhetoric. Each of the fed-
eral republics was autonomous in its cinematic as well as all other cultural
endeavours. Not all of these films could be easily dismissed regarding their
aesthetics, cinema craftsmanship or sophistication, but they predominant-
ly represented a pre-modern view of film in tune with signifiers of a belat-
ed romantic vision of the ethnic identity and occasionally with “obligato-
ry” class messages. A matter of a discussion of another kind is a question
165
tion loosing characters, who seem psychologically and socially deprived of
the sense of identity, is in a class of his own. Characters in his films are ap-
proaching the limit of the constitution of subjectivity through desire in the
psychoanalytical terms, as they seem to be without an idea of the true ob-
ject of their desire, of course, apart from Antonioni’s own manifested de-
sire to see through the eye of the camera, what is very difficult to see other-
wise. Following the trace of identity as a topic in the European modernist
cinema, we could of course go on and on citing and analysing many films,
which were shot in the period also in Great Britain within the movement
of free cinema, and of course in Germany within the Young German Cine-
ma. But we can as well stop here, since my aim was mainly to map the Eu-
ropean context of a case of a film, which I shall try to use as an example for
a view in the Balkan‘s cinematic reality of the time.
Sand Castle
As in most other Central and Eastern European countries, which were lib-
erated from Nazism in a flame of socialist revolutions, also in Yugosla-
via, film production developed relatively quickly thanks to a high degree
of support by new revolutionary authorities. In any case, Yugoslav cine-
matography eventually developed in many respects as the strongest film
production in the Balkans. The initial period after the Second World War
was marked by a sub-genre of the war genre, namely so called partisan
movies, and a number of adaptations of the local canonised literature and
drama for screening. Especially the latter sort of films, which were mostly a
priori supposed to bear an “artistic value”, could be studied nowadays as an
expression of tendencies to form a cinematic version of identity aiming at
the collective aspect, the so-called national (ethnic) self-image. Hence, we
can say that in a quite early period of the socialist Yugoslavia the constitu-
tive parts – federal republics, which were founded on the ethnic principle
– worked upon some aspects of their traditional, cultural and ethnic dis-
tinctions in film, as they did it as well in the other art forms in spite of the
so called internationalist political and ideological rhetoric. Each of the fed-
eral republics was autonomous in its cinematic as well as all other cultural
endeavours. Not all of these films could be easily dismissed regarding their
aesthetics, cinema craftsmanship or sophistication, but they predominant-
ly represented a pre-modern view of film in tune with signifiers of a belat-
ed romantic vision of the ethnic identity and occasionally with “obligato-
ry” class messages. A matter of a discussion of another kind is a question
165
