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Balkan Representations in Balkans Cinema And Balkan Image

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2. Mediterranean International Congress on Social Sciences (MECAS II)

Balkan Representations in Balkans Cinema and

Balkan Image

Dr. Doğan Aydoğan , Karabuk University

ABSTRACT
In the process of transition from empire to nation-state, there are ethnic conflicts and migrations in Balkans that
are continuous. After 1990 following the fall of Yugoslavia, it seems that nation-states were emerging for good.
However, during this process, violence was removed from its political and historical context and located in a
way to point at the nature of the Balkans and determine the Balkan image in Balkan representations in cinema.
Secondly, Balkans reproduces the Eurocentric perspective and reflect it on their speeches and at the same time,
legitimize the Eurocentric perspective and make it permanent. Balkan representations are produced in a way to
include this essential wholeness and difference or in cases where this wholeness is not shown, they do not get the
opportunity and interest for the demonstration. In that sense, while Balkan movies focus on the singular stories,
they at the same time produce Balkan image. The world considers the movies shot in Balkan countries within the
“Balkan” parenthesis. Representations produced both in Balkans and under Hollywood conditions distribute an
image produced towards Balkans in the world by prioritizing it over the Balkan reality. This study analyzes the
Balkan representations in cinema and the impact of these representations on Balkan image. In this regard, four
important films of post-1990s Balkan Cinema are discussed and repeating codes are analyzed. An Unforgettable
Summer/Romania (Pintilie, 1994), Ulysses’ Gaze/Greece (Angelopoulos, 1995), Pretty Villages Pretty
Flame/Serbia (Dragojevic, 1996) and The Perfects Circle/Bosnia Herzegovina (Kenovic, 1997) are movies that
are being analyzed. The repeating codes and the framework of the style of Balkan cinema are discussed through
these analyzed films. From the narrative of Ali Baba ve 7 Dwarfs film produced in Turkey in the year 2015,
(Yılmaz) distorted representation of Balkan image created by the Balkan representations are studied.

Keywords: Balkan, Cinema, Eurocentrism, Orientalism, Media

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INTRODUCTION

The World Cinema has been enriched by the contributions of different cultures.
Regardless of the ever-increasing singularity pressure of the American Hollywood cinema
over the film style, there were important contributions from various geographies in different
times. Certain geographies are referred with certain styles and some of these styles are
directly related with war, violence and depression. German Expressionism or Italian
Neorealism are movements that were heavily affected by war and violence and reflected these
to their styles. The reason why these movements acquired a traditional name is the specific
styles they have that make up of the specific topics and narratives. There is also a Balkan
cinema in that context and it constitutes a whole within itself. However, different from the
other cinema movements, Balkans cinema does not head towards universal subjects, but
rather deals with the universal themes by privatizing them within local context. In a
geography, where war and violence are continuous, this is an understandable situation.
However the fact that Balkan cinema build the Balkans image as a natural difference and
essential closeness; the domination of the regional subjects over the style brings Balkan
cinema to the forefront not in terms of style but in terms of politics.

Balkans, with the simplest historization, is the intercepting and conflicting area of the
three big socio-economic-cultural structure. Ottoman Empire and agricultural economics,
Soviet Russia and socialist tendencies and its struggle with the capitalist Europe turned
Balkans into a continuous war and conflict field. Even Europe was divided as West Europe
and Germany within itself and interfered with the Balkans. In a region, where the global
conflicts are so intense, connecting the representations of violence and underdevelopment
with the essential nature of the Balkan communities must be seen as disconnecting the subject
from its context. Balkan cinema does not free itself from the political framework of the
conflicts and does not direct itself to shape, style and themes that can be universal. Presenting
Balkans by differentiating it in various forms stands for the implicit re-production of
Eurocentric perspective. However, the Italian neorealism transformed the violence that came
out into a cinematographic style and made it universal while heading towards the results of
the war. German expressionism does not limit anxiety and fear with being German and the
most important contributions to today’s universal horror cinema come from German
expressionism. Balkan Cinema builds its style on the different inner nature of the Balkans
full of violence with the impact of dominant industrial and intellectual structure and this
authentic difference does not offer an opportunity for a style that can be universalized and
also the generalization of the representations makes Balkan reality unattainable. In that case,
the representation of geography in cinema takes precedence over the real knowledge of the
geography, created Balkan image conquers the Balkan reality.

This study analyzes the Balkan representations in cinema and the impact of these
representations on Balkan image. In this regard, four important films of post-1990s Balkan
Cinema are discussed and repeating codes are analyzed. An Unforgettable Summer/Romania
(Pintilie, 1994), Ulysses’ Gaze/Greece (Angelopoulos, 1995), Pretty Villages Pretty
Flame/Serbia (Dragojevic, 1996) and The Perfects Circle/Bosnia Herzegovina (Kenovic,

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1997) are movies that are being analyzed. The repeating codes and the framework of the style
of Balkan cinema are discussed through these analyzed films. From the narrative of Ali Baba
ve 7 Dwarfs film produced in Turkey in the year 2015, (Yılmaz) distorted representation of
Balkan image created by the Balkan representations are studied.

CONSTANT RECONSTRUCTION IN BALKANS AND THE DISCONTINUITY OF

THE IDENTITIES

Balkans are the meeting point of three big cultural differences and socio-economic
context in relation to these. The first disintegration affecting the Balkans were the separation
of Eastern and Western churches. The separation of Catholicism and Orthodoxy was the
biggest disintegration defining Europe. Afterwards, the Islamic domination that spread within
the Orthodox geography re-marginalized Balkans in terms of Western Europe. At the end of
19th century and the beginning of 20th century, the withdrawal of Ottoman Empire as a
traditional empire caused a conflict context on the region between Soviet Russia and
Capitalist Europe, following the Second World War, the region remained within the Eastern
Block and was excluded from the “capitalist, liberal” European identity. After 1990, ethnic
conflicts that came out in different regions based on the breakup of Yugoslavia were decisive
in terms of Balkans.

When looked closer, it is seen that all historical contexts were intertwined with the
“immigration” phenomenon. Ottoman Empire followed a conscious settlement policy in the
period when it tried to expand within Balkans and settled the crowds it forced to immigrate
from Anatolia in Balkans and planned to be permanent in this geography (Tabakoğlu, 2016).
In the period, when the Balkan nationalism rose, Ottoman Empire had to withdraw from the
Balkans at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century. The withdrawal of the Ottoman
Empire from the Balkans also caused a big Turkish and Muslim migration towards Anatolia
and this situation played a fundamental role in the birth of Turkish Nationalism (Tekeli, 2008:
44-48). The Muslim population immigration heading towards Anatolian from the regions,
where the Ottoman Empire withdrew as of the second half of the 19th century, caused a
structural and religious-ethnic composition change on the Ottoman Empire (Karpat, 2008:
128). This also was a period that included the structural and religious-ethnic composition
transformation on the lands that Ottoman Empire withdrew from. Ottoman Empire is a nation
compartment that bestows self-determination to the inner lives of the communities (Ortaylı,
2014: 151). This transformation that took place in the second half of the 19th century consists
of the tendency to change the places of the communities and to create a national unity. The
nationality movement that started in the Balkans affected the whole empire and created a
long-term immigration wave.

Following the First World War, the population exchange between Turkey and Greece
created a new immigration wave. The factor that determined post-World War II was the
unification of ethnic and religious differences under the unity of Yugoslavia as a socialist
federation. While Yugoslavia declined throughout the process after 1990, the resulting ethnic
conflicts determined the process in question. Significant numbers of Turks and Muslims from

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various regions of the Balkans and especially from Bulgaria and Greece migrated or were
forced to migrate to Anatolia. As this framework shows, Balkan history consists of the
struggles of empires with different socio-cultural natures and the long-term process of
producing nationality and nation-state. This geography, in which the big conflicts of the
history took place, simultaneously includes the continuity of the migrations and the
continuous shaping of the identities based on the new contexts. The names of the places, the
government types of the states, the definition of dominant civilization and the continuity of
the ethnic conflicts make the identities short-term, makes the production of a long-term and
inclusive identity for Balkans impossible or turn war and conflict into the permanent
representation of the Balkan identity as in practice.

VIOLENCE AS PART OF AN IDENTITY IN BALKAN REPRESENTATIONS

Violence cases in Balkans are generally caused by the fact that modern state is not
settled and the ethnic conflicts and migration phenomenon experienced during the period of
transition from empire to nation-state. Modernity reconstruct the violence and transforms it
into structural mechanisms. In pre modern period, the state used to resort to intense violence
to control the population however paradoxically was sharing the authority to use violence
with its local autonomies; modern state on the other hand maximized the authority to use
violence by eliminating the local autonomies on behalf of the central state (Keane, 1996: 34).
Violence has not disappeared in modern Europe, it was limited to certain social and
definitional limits (Gümüş, 2008). This points out not towards the elimination of violence but
its restructuring. The fact that violence was not structured under the monopoly of state stands
for not being European and modern. However in Balkan representations, the violence freed
itself from the context of modernity and modernization, and now represented with being
Balkan that refers to an individual, essential and enthusiastic identity. Today, the term
Balkanization is embedded in the popular culture for the violence that escalate without
control. Balkanization is used for regions, in which violence has the potential for
unpredictable, unregulated and increasing multiplication. The situation referred with this
statement is the conquest of the system by the violence specific to Middle Ages that was
unstructured.

Not only orientalist studies in regard to Balkans but also unique works of Balkan
Cinema contain heavy violence and conflict. Due to the intensity of the wars, the articulation
of violence in Balkan representations is a reasonable situation. However, the decisive thing in
Balkan cinema is seeing violence as the limitless and natural resource caused by the nature of
the lifestyle here and continuity shown by violence in determining the daily life. Movie
Underground by Kusturica (1995) is a popular example among the narratives in which
violence goes hand in hand with entertainment, love and enthusiasm as the natural
background of the story. Another work in which the violence can be seen here and there in the
story is 1998 Serbian movie called The Powder Keg (Paskaljevic, 1998). The story is based
on random violence cases. There are joys and jokes in between the violence scenes. In this
framework, the story refers to the uncontrollable libidinal energy and represents the Balkan
identity with this joyful violence. When analyzed in depth, the story is seen to be caused not

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by the joy and passion in Balkan identity but by the unrealized state authority and by the fact
that modern bureaucracy was not applied in the daily life. The police cannot solve a traffic
accident that took place right before his eyes, and the legal events becomes personal. One bus
driver arbitrarily makes the passengers wait; the uncertain and arbitrary process of hour-time
dynamic creates big stress inside the bus and turns into an explosive violence. In another
example, the arbitrary use of state force by the police become an attack aimed against himself
and results in the breaking of all bones. These events that were actually caused by the fact
that state authority and bureaucracy were not settled are considered as violence cases that are
disconnected from its context, individual and full of enthusiasm, not associated with state,
thus the price of the violence full of enthusiasm is paid by the “Balkan” image. Balkan
cinema contains this natural state of the violence whenever it wants to attract the attention
globally in its representations, or the film is not taken into consideration and does not have the
change for distribution. This, paradoxically, causes Balkan representations to express
themselves continuously with representations that are not universal, and based on identity,
discrepancy and violence. As a result, Balkans are represented with violence and moved to a
global platform, and this representation of the Balkans takes precedence over the real history
of the Balkans.

It is likely to see violence everywhere in the world. The history of humanity is in one
sense the history of violence. However, the violence in the Balkans are attributed to essential
nature, and it seems as if the responsibility of the central powers that have a share in this
violence and the ones with imperial goals is looked over. The Holocaust that took place in the
Second World War is not explained with the nature of the Germans or the name German
itself; it is explained through a foreigner ended historically under the name Nazism. Bauman
(2007) explained this violence with bureaucracy as a modern institution while Arendt and
Agamben explained it with the concept of camp (Han, 2017). In both examples, identity is not
the criminal, the violence was divided into pieces and closed. The cause is not the identities
and natures of the ones committing the crime but the disunity of the act and being combined
in a camp. The violence caused by the global powers in different regions of the world is not
associated with identity, this situation is shown as the necessary and structured status of
violence, which is as old as the history of humanity. When it comes to Balkans, the violence
is approached by essentializing it as much disconnected from its context and historical
relations as possible and together with its relation to culture and thus violence get localized as
a natural pattern of the Balkan identity.

BALKANS AND ORIENTALISM

It is possible to approach Balkan cinema in a single context. Balkans was Europe

under the rule of the Ottomans and mainly due to this reason was the marginalized region.
Therefore, it is relevant to talk about the supra-nation Balkan image and historization instead
of singular administrative wholeness (Iordonova, 2007: 3). In that sense when it comes to
Balkans, it is possible to talk about two different orientalist discourses. While in the
beginning Balkans was a name produced by the Western Europe that referred to a geography,
later on it turned into an imaginative function that made up the inner reflection of the

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European identity that indicated the orthodox, socialist and Islamic “other”. The word
Balkans that referred to a geography up until 20th century, turned into a way that included
political connotations and contempt in the 20th century (Todorova, 2015: 67-82). This
orientalist approach produces Balkans as a negative reflection of its own identity. In dualities
such as law/violence, negotiation/war, order/chaos Balkans assumes what is the opposite of
modern identity and show an essential wholeness/otherness. For Europe, Balkan discourse
was produced in a way to point out regions that fell under the impact of Eastern despotism of
Europe (Todorova, 2015: 51). As the identity patterns and ideological requests of Europe
transform, its definition of otherness towards Balkans changes as well. Since Balkans became
Orthodox, Muslim and socialist respectively, they represent the unwanted other. However
during this process, new concepts are produced based on the current needs such as Central
Europe, and the regions of Balkans that were capitalist or that were not under the rule of the
Ottomans were included in the Central Europe. A power like Germany was removed from the
context of Central Europe and included in the Western Europe, arbitrarily Greece was
separated from the Balkan region and it can be located as the geography of the ancestors of
the Western Europe identity. In a general framework, it is seen that religion motivation is
determinant in naming. Balkans are marginalized as Orthodox and Muslim. From time to
time, Russia and Turkey also are included in the definition of Balkan based on the purpose of
the study, but general are kept outside. Russia and Turkey play the role of big Eastern other.
Balkans is the Europe that is provincial, behind the time, under the impact of the East and
undeveloped within Europe. While creating the discourse for the development of Western
Europe, dealing with the European Balkans in relation with the east and finding the source of
development in cultural patterns of the West assumes a functional role in terms of orientalist
purposes. The proposition that Europe that was under the influence of the East is not
developed implicitly produces development from the culture of Europeans that are not
Eastern.

However, this marginalization and Eurocentric perspective are reproduced within the
Balkans and orientalism increasingly spreads itself. The ones that fell under the rule of
Habsburg in the Balkans marginalized the ones that fell under the rule of the Ottomans. The
northerners marginalized the southerners, the Christians marginalized the Muslims thus
reproduce the orientalism inside (Hayden, 1995). The common discourse in all variances is
the fact that the culture claiming to be dominant defines itself as European. Moreover, many
identities show themselves as power protecting Europe from the East, Islam and Ottomans
and try to prove that they are Europeans. Thus Balkans continuously and increasingly spread
the discourse that European culture is the superior form.

As a result, in the process of transition from empire to nation-state, there are ethnic
conflicts and migrations in Balkans that are continuous. The emerging states cannot show
any continuity and the discontinuity of the state makes violence prevalent. After 1990
following the fall of Yugoslavia, it seems that nation-states were emerging for good.
However, during this process, violence was removed from its political and historical context
and located in a way to point at the nature of the Balkans and determine the Balkan image in
Balkan representations. Secondly, Balkans reproduces the Eurocentric perspective and reflect

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it on their speeches and at the same time, legitimize the Eurocentric perspective and make it
permanent. Balkan representations are produced in a way to include this essential wholeness
and difference or in cases where this wholeness is not shown, they do not get the opportunity
and interest for the demonstration.

CINEMA AS REPRESENTATION

Cinema is a way of representation. However the stylistic similarity between the

signifier and the signified in cinema makes seeing the intervention between representation and
reality difficult. Cinema is actually a produced text and open to discussion. The text is
created and read via codes that are culturally produced (Fiske, 2014: 287). While the cinema
producer creates the text, he also creates a cultural discourse. This discourse is built around 4
principles; emphasize positive things about us, emphasize negative things about them, do not
emphasize negative things about us, do not emphasize positive things about them (Dijk, 2015:
53). The ideological difference, in which the us and them category can reflect itself on the
discourse in the simplistic and distinct way possible, is nationalism. Literature played a quite
institutional function in the creation of nationalities and their representation in the public
space in the 18th century Europe. Literature became a significant institution in the
distribution of public norm, value and symbols (Anderson, 1995) (Jusdanis, 2015). Thus,
individual interest were transferred into a bigger whole and nationalist ideology was able to
actualize itself. Literature, which created its inner wholeness and aesthetic codes in time,
became autonomous and created its own identity. In societies that suffer late modernization
problem, literature and even education and educators were not able to escape from this
nationalistic motivation64. However in societies with late modernization problems where the
rural population could not be totally settled and urban population could not emerge, the power
of impact of the written cultures is very limited. Therefore, visual culture that does not
include limitations of topography and necessities of the written culture, plays a functional role
in spreading nationality and common culture65.

In that sense, films and visual media are really effective in spreading the national
project assumed previously by literature and written culture over the popular culture.
Especially in societies where the written culture developed late, visual media and cinema texts
are more effective and functional. Post 1990 Balkan movies were faced with the crumbling
empire, the creation of nation-state, nationality and the problem of living together, and during
this process it produced the concepts of us and others in increasing and varying forms. While
especially movies that are about ethnic conflicts (Example: Perfect Circle) produce us and
others categories heavily; the movies that try to reject these categories can escape from the
nationalism language only through Yugoslav nostalgia (Example: Pretty Villages Pretty
Flame). The perspective that has hard time in facing the problems of today increases the
ethnic harmony nostalgia (Iordonova, 2007: 302). Movies such as Unforgettable Summer

64
See for relation between Greek Literature and Nationality (Jusdanis, 2015).
65
For example, although transition from empire to nation-state took place in 1923 in Turkey, the transition from
society to national community and cultural homogeneity did not take place at the same period. The national
discourse after 1960 became widespread through cinema (Güney, 2007) and community production was heavily
influenced by this popular tool.

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represents the continuity, increase and change of concepts of us and other historically. All
these different perspectives come together and produce the repertoire of the identity stated as
Balkanization and the Balkan image. The social structuring that constantly divide within itself
is known as Balkan by the rest of the world and Balkanization as the continuously increasing
marginalization, assumes a meaning that is isolated from the concrete reality of the Balkans.
As a result, a discourse produced in the Balkan countries has two subjects as National and
Balkan, and for the rest of the world, Balkans stand for a general whole. Ulysses’ Gaze,
which surpasses the shattered structure of the concepts of us and other and moves to the first
and collective perspective towards singular and natural reality of the Balkans, ends this search
in the middle of a conflict in Bosnia.

In that sense, while Balkan movies focus on the singular stories, they at the same time
produce Balkan image. The world considers the movies shot in Balkan countries within the
“Balkan” parenthesis. When Balkan movies attempt to get out of this discourse, it has no
opportunity for demonstration. Balkan movies, which need to produce the expected discourse
to be on the market, is faced with this contradiction. Representations produced both in
Balkans and under Hollywood conditions distribute an image produced towards Balkans in
the world by prioritizing it over the Balkan reality.

ANALYSIS

The purpose of this analysis is not to reveal the ideological notions behind movies one
by one. The system produced by the movies analyzed within the study, the distinct codes
produced by this system within the Balkan parenthesis and its reflection on the world is the
basic map of the analysis. The study aims towards context analysis.

As the first movie to be analyzed, the movie An Unforgettable Summer (1994) focuses
on the administrative discontinuities, cultural discontinuities caused by these administrative
discontinuities and never-changing ethnic marginalization in Balkan geography. The story
talks about the events experienced by a Romanian cosmopolitan family in Bulgarian border in
the year 1925. The cosmopolitan structure of the family encounters nationalist pressure and
the conflict arises out of this conflict.

Romanian Captain Dimitri and his Hungarian wife Marie-Therese settle in a border
village. Captain Dimitri fights against the Bulgarian bandits that disturb the border security
here. At that time, it was decided to execute 20 Bulgarian villagers caught and captured.
Bulgarian villagers are Romanian citizens. According to the Bulgarian villagers, the real
criminals are the Macedonian villagers that speak Bulgarian while passing the border. Ethnic
differences and marginalization constantly occur. Many times in the movie Dimitri’s wife is
called with bad names and marginalized among the local public for being Hungarian. Marie-
Therese gets into a conflict with his husband so as not to have the Bulgarian villagers, who
served the Romanian army and whose crimes are not for certain, to be executed. Although
Captain Dimitri, who is stuck between his wife and the assimilating system, is looking for
solutions, at the end the villagers are executed. In a dialog between the Bulgarian villagers
prior to their execution points out to the discontinuity the administrative discontinuities in the

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Balkans had over the identities; the villagers say that as the borders change the definition of
the crime change as well. The one who was once Czar Ferdinand now became King
Ferdinand, the history and the interpretation of history change along with the borders and
these are not considered to be important by the local villagers. The dominant codes of the
story are the conflict between the bandits and the soldiers, the world of violence and men,
historical continuity of the marginalization and outside perspective by the family of the
soldier to the events in question.

Story of the Ulysses’s Gaze made in Greece in 1994 starts in Greece and ends in
Sarajevo. In the meantime, the story that travels the cities such as Albania, Bitola, Skopje,
Bucharest and Belgrade together with director A, spreads its perspective over the whole
Balkan geography. The theme upon which the story builds itself is the passion of capturing
the first glance towards the Balkans and its impossibility.

Regardless of today’s Balkans, director A is looking for a movie of three bobbins that
were shot by the Manakis brothers in 1905 but got lost. The reason of his search for these
movies is to reveal the first perspective that could present what Balkans are for the Balkans.
This pursuit is expressed in a following way in the movie; to the woman next to him while
traveling on train towards Skopje: “I am looking for three bobbins, first film, first glance, an
innocent glance... Maybe that is my glance that I lost it many years ago.” Within this
framework, the director states that Balkan discourse is a perspective that is constantly
changing and in discontinuities, and his struggle to find a beginning is to create a historical
line for himself. The life story of the Manakis brothers had turned into an exile due to wards
and they had to get rid of the movies they shot. Story of the Manakis brothers start with the
First World War and ends with the Second World War in the city of Bitola, while Director
A’s story starts with the Second World War and continues with the Bosnian war in the 90s.
When he arrives at the city of Bitola, he finds out that the cinema, in which the Manakis
brothers’ movies were displayed, was demolished during the Second World War. The
Manakis brothers left the city. Director A hits the road following this story, and thus the
sentence that points out this travel in a historical line is formed: “This road starts and ends
with war.”

Due to the First and Second World Wars, Cold War, establishment and destruction of
Yugoslavia and finally the Bosnian War made it impossible to create a stable beginning and
discourse in the Balkans. While Director A was passing from Plovdiv to Bucharest, a war of
words takes place between him and the border patrol. Director A says Filibe while the patrol
calls it Plovdiv; this dialog repeats itself for couple of times. The names of places in the
Balkans show discontinuity based on the political context. In the movie Unforgettable
Summer, the constant change in the names and concepts can be seen in this movie as well.
Director A, during a night in Bucharest, joins a magical New Year’s party together with his
family, and the family celebrates the end of Second World War by saying happy 1945, and
towards the end of the sequence the house is seized, thus a new context is formed and the
family continues to have fun by saying happy 1950. The re-established context in 1950 will
be dissolved in 1990 and will cause violence. When the sequestratior seizes the piano at

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home, the family decides to have a photo to overcome this discontinuity and there are also the
soldiers can be seen in the background of the photo. The constant transformation of the state
and states goes through personal memories and identities. Therefore Director A trusts in the
impartial memory, which is the cinema recorded by the Manakis brothers. However, the
movie theater was targeted during the war as well as their movies and subjects. It seems
difficult to reach the memory. Discontinuity in state apparatus generates discontinuity in
memory and perspective towards history. The unity of Christian and Muslim graves, the
United Nations powers that do not function, the demolished Socialist context represented
through the moving of Lenin sculpture and the prevalence of the continuous violence are the
distinct codes of the story. The story is expressed via the perspective of Director A with a
traveler’s point of view.

The Serbian movie Pretty Villages Pretty Flame was made in 1996 and focuses on the
Bosnian War and prior to that. The two enemy soldiers Halil and Milan come together at the
same hospital, and their common past creates the story of the movie. Halil and Milan were
born and grown in 1980 in the same village. Their union continues until the year 1992.
However, the ethnic conflicts and the media’s impact on strengthening this conflict turn the
events into a full scale war. During the process, ethnic differences that live together in a
mixed way under normal circumstances start to perceive each other as threats and move
towards ethnic conflict. However, ethnic unions do not create a while either and Milan and his
friends are stuck in a cave by a Muslim group; meanwhile it is seen that Serbian group are
divided among each other as socialists and Chetnik militia. Ethnic differences separate the
cosmopolitan societies; ideological differences cause vertical separation of the societies from
within. Regardless of these, one Chetnik militant from the Serbian group that is stuck in the
cave grab a fork and say that “while Western Europe and USA were eating with their hands,
we were eating with fork” in an attempt to prove the historical superiority66. In the story it is
emphasized that the attitudes of the rock music played by the Chetniks that use violence and
attitudes of the militia that burn villages were disconnected from context and meaning, and
carry the context of producing violence for the sake of violence. The apparent theme of the
story is the gradually increasing ethnic and ideological disintegration, violence and
Yugoslavia nostalgia aggrandized against all these.

The 1997 Bosnian movie Perfect Circle carried the violence in Bosnia into an
international platform. The movie, which talks about the Bosnia under Serbian violence,
delivers the story via Hamza, who is a desensitized poet. Hamza sends his wife and daughter
outside of Bosnia. He, on the other hand, stays in Bosnia because going means surrendering
and contributing to the ethnic cleansing. Bosnia is surrounded by violence; it is almost
impossible to access water, food and other humane needs. Hamza’s story intersects with two
children, whose village was destroyed by Serbian militia. The relatives of the children living
in Sarajevo either died or immigrated. A relationship forms between these two orphan

66
The identity created by the Balkan nationalisms wholly against the Western image as a late modernization
experience while at the same time fighting against each other can be seen in many movies. The 2002 Romanian
movie Philantropy/ Filanthropia (Caranfil) is exactly based on the metaphorical narration of the tension of being
in need of the West and being obliged to ask money from them.

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children and Hamza. The fact that these children survived and left Bosnia gives a new reason
for Hamza to live. Perfect Circle is at a context different from orientalist implications that
move from outside and with a wandering perspective towards Balkans. The movie is not
established on a wandering perspective, but on a tension between staying and leaving based
upon the forced immigration of the people living inside. It is not a matter of a perspective that
is produced from past and future towards Bosnia or Balkans. Whenever Hamza dreams, he
sees himself suiciding. The families, lifestyles and villages of the children are destroyed.
There was no memory for children to return to, the paths of the past are blocked. The only
way of creating a new identity for children is in the unknown future. The distinct themes
within the story are violence, ethnic conflict, uselessness of the United Nations and non-
existing state apparatus.

As a result, though countries change, it is seen that violence, male violence and
nationalism are the general themes of the Balkan movies. While Ulysses’ Gaze goes back to
the years of First World War so as to search for the collective first gaze and record for
Balkans above all else, Unforgettable Summer starts the violence and division in the year
1925. While movies that approach the Balkans with an external point of view use travel
writing structure just as in Ulysses’ Gaze and Unforgettable Summer, the movies made at
home such as Perfect Circle and Pretty Villages Pretty Flame build upon the theme how
settled structure is forced to immigrate. All these create a common Balkan image and
Hollywood, which feeds on them, spreads a distinct Balkan image to the world.

In that sense, the Turkish movie of 2015 called Ali Baba ve 7 Dwarfs is important.
This comedy film talks about the story of a businessman named Şenay, who wants to expand
his business by vising an expo in Bulgaria. During his stay in Bulgaria, Şenay and some
Turks, who fall into the hands of the mafia, find themselves in a hunting party that has the
purpose of killing people. Şenay frees himself from the hands of the mafia leader Mançov via
“Rambo” patterns picked from the American movies. While Şenay is escaping from Mançov
and his men, he encounters an Azeri soldier spying the forest. In this event, which is the clear
reference to Kusturica’s movie Underground, the Azeri soldier does not know that the Soviets
were dissolved and thus he has continued to spy underground thinking that the war goes on.
In fact, the mafia leader Mançov and the Azeri soldier worked together in the Soviet army.
The Azeri soldier was exiled due to the greed of Mançov and he found himself underground.
The duality of underground Azeri soldier and the upper ground rich mafia leader directly
reminds us of the movie Underground. Azeri soldier and Şenay get together and defeat
Mançov. The story “Sovietizes” the Balkans and marginalizes it.

The movie has no characteristic importance for the Turkish cinema. It was not
successful in the market either. However, the codes used and language produced by the movie
are problematic in terms of Turkey’s sociology. In general, there is no negative and
derogatory attitude towards the Balkans in Turkey. Although there is a negative approach to
the Serbians because of Bosnia wars and the Bulgaria because of the migration in 1990, there
is no wholesome and derogatory attitude against the Balkans. Moreover, the region with
which Turkey has the most intense and close relationships historically outside its lands is the

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Balkans. Also, there is no negative coding against the Balkans in the Turkish cinema.
Although there was the pattern of Vlad the Impaler throughout the series called Battal Gazi,
which was shot between 1971 and 1974 and talked about the conquest of Byzantium, this
pattern was not used against the Balkans but against the Christian Europe. Elveda Rumeli,
television series made in 2007, talks about the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the
Balkans through the Macedonian family. In the series, the conflicts that the love stories
between religions and ethnicities faced with the ethnic disintegrations are the topics dealt
with. Though the subject approaches a historical period with a romantic perspective, it does
not contain stereotypes against the identity of “Balkans”. The movie Ali Baba ve 7 Dwarfs
made in 2015 is not based on the relationship of the Turkish society with the Balkans, but on
the relationship of the Balkan image with the American cinema. Emir Kusturica’s movie
Underground is enriched with the Russian and Bulgarian mafia stereotypes seen in American
movies and its content is narrated with the patterns that are not quite related with the Turkish
sociology. Another factor that attracts the attention in the story comes from Cem Yılmaz
filmography. Cem Yılmaz, who is actually a stage comedian, shoots comedy films with
stories that take place in abnormal places. Made in 2004, the movie GORA talks about a love
story taking place in space, AROG made in 2008 talks about a love story taking place in the
first age between dinosaurs, and Yahşi Batı made in 2010 talks about the events that take
place in the wild west as part of the Western genre. In Yılmaz’s filmography, it is allowed for
places to be abnormal, events to be exaggerated and extraordinary. The fact that the Balkans
entered into this catalog of extraordinary places in the year 2015 seems to be related with the
fact that the image caused by the American and Balkan cinema precluded the reality of the
Balkans. Otherwise it seems inconceivable to portray Balkans as an unknown geography of
violence within the cinema of a society that has a past of 500 years with the Balkans.

CONCLUSION

The constant change of the administrative structures in the Balkans makes the history
interpretation and identity stability discontinuous. Today, the artists wanting to focus on the
problems in the Balkans often refer to the past as a resource of crime, violence and identity.
This historization on the other hand causes the representation of Balkan history with violence
and disintegration. The world cannot recognize the singular differences in the Balkans and
approach the events in terms of Balkans and Balkanization as named by the Western Europe.
In total, the film texts that were produced separately create a singular Balkan image. If these
movies do not re-produce the expected Balkan image, they cannot get on the World platform.
As a result, the produced image is re-produced in a problematic way in Hollywood and spread
in the world. Hollywood deals with the Balkans more together with or in relation to the
Russian image that is its other. The created image during this process precludes the Balkan
image and stereotypes such as violence, disintegration, passionate behaviors, exaggeration
and irrationality become part of the Balkan identity. Balkan countries on the other hand
consciously or subconsciously re-produce the provincial identity attributed to themselves by
the Western Europe. They re-produce the orientalist view towards their nationalism and
identity to the point of self-authenticity. For Balkan cinema to get rid of this contradiction, it

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must deliver the themes such as war, peace, violence and love in a universalistic way without
essentialization.

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Ohrid, October 10-13, 2017

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