07/03/2005 By Olaf Tempelman “I can no longer hide it: I just miss you. I’d be so happy to see you again. I still do not understand what happened with us. All that garbage, that dirt and insanity… All that’s left is emptiness. Nothing can make one happy anymore like in the old days. There are only memories. How stupid of me not to make contact with you. I can blame Milosevic for his politics but only myself for not calling you.” The sender of this videoletter can no longer control his emotions. Neither can the person to whom the letter is addressed. Looking dazed, he takes his place in front of a video camera so he can begin his response. “It was also my fault. I know that you are a good person; it’s not your fault that all that trash happened. I do not blame you at all and I miss you too. Those wars were idiotic. Stupid and unnecessary…” A wound begins to heal. From April 7th, all the major public broadcasting stations of the former republics that once made up Yugoslavia will broadcast these v'ideoletters. Perhaps this will also help in the healing of some macro wounds. It is always easier to appeal to the bad feelings than the good ones. Multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured violently 15 years ago in part because of the texts of hatred that were propagated by nationalistic politicians using those very same public broadcasters. During the wars in Yugoslavia, over 300 000 people died and 2 million were driven from their homes. It looked as if the ethnic groups had always hated other. But this is simply not true: the violence also worked to destroy hundreds of thousands of cross-ethnic friendships. In 1996, when the war in Bosnia had just ended a few months previous, the documentary film-makers Katarina Rejger and Eric van den Broek took the first train that started to ride again between Mostar, in the Croatian section, and Sarajevo that is now 90% Muslim. Van den Broek: “I was editing in a destroyed building belonging to Bosnian television. The Muslim technician that was helping me was staring obsessively at the footage. She wanted to know exactly how it was going with the Croats and how they thought about things. Other Muslims asked us about Serbians they once knew. We intuitively sensed that many people still have good feelings for each other on a strictly personal level.” Rejger: “Everywhere we went, people told us the same story: before they had a friend from a different ethnic group but they never called after the war started. We always asked: ‘But did you try to call him?’ That’s how we came up with this idea of getting people to exchange videovletters with all the participants trying to answer this one fundamental question: how could we ever let ourselves disappear out of each other’s lives?” Since the late 1990s, Rejger & Van den Broek – also a couple in their private lives – travelled with video cameras as “travelling film salesmen” between ethnically cleansed areas in search of friends and families that had been driven apart. Rejger: “There was such a radical difference between the millions of dollars that the international community was pumping into rebuilding infrastructures and the total lack of money for programs that dealt with more personal inner pains. Sure you can build new bridges but if the psychological bridges between people are still destroyed then no one will actually use them. All is doomed until people start asking each other ‘how are you’.” Almost 20 different videoletter exchanges have now occurred. While all of the stories arose from different situations, the general process remained the same. Rejger & van den Broek would find someone who wanted to send a videoletter to a lost friend. They would track down these lost friends and hand them the letter and offer a video camera so the receivers could make their own answer. The resulting exchange and the reunion that often followed were all filmed as a documentary. Van den Broek: “We knew from the beginning that we wanted to make a long and in-deapth series. Almost everyone has lost someone. Only an extended series would show how deeply these feelings are still alive. We also knew that this series had to be broadcast by all the public broadcasters of all the former republics of Yugoslavia. The same channels that once spread hate could now be used for reconciliation. We could literally reach everybody. All over Bosnia we visited completely destroyed houses but there was always a TV set blasting. The first thing refugees do when they return home is re-install the television cable ” The major hurdle was to overcome the fear people still felt. Many ex-Yugoslavians wanted to make a videoletter but were afraid of the repercussions within their own milieu – especially when it came time for the actual broadcast. Almost everyone has nationalistic neighbours who call anyone “a traitor” who tries to make contact with the “enemy”. The people who did end up involving themselves can be seen as a very brave vanguard. Crucial for the project’s success was the trust that Rejger & van den Broek built up with the various ethnic groups. Katarina Rejger, who spent her first years in Belgrade, is difficult to put into one specific ethnic category. She still speaks a Serbian-Croatian, speaking the same accent as the people they filmed. Rejger: “You develop ways to break through the natural defence mechanisms of the different ethnic groups. Muslims often portray themselves as victims. Serbians are often very hostile at first. You have to look through all this. Everyone is just deeply unhappy.” The resulting video letters are moving without being artificial or overly sentimental. Each one depicts people who have survived a tragedy that they themselves would have avoided if they had any say in the matter. Muslim Emil and Serbian Sasha grew up together in Pale, Bosnia. They called themselves Yugoslavian and were inseparable friends. At the beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992, they were suddenly separated. Sasha had to go serve in Bosnian-Serbian army while Emil fled to the Netherlands. The war left them both disillusioned. In his videoletter, Sasha asks for forgiveness. At first Emil is not prepared to do this since he had heard a rumour of Sasha being involved in a mass murder. But after Sasha explains in his next videoletter that the rumour was false, they are later reunited as friends. During the Milosevic era, the Serbian Velimir was the director of a brick factory in Kosovo that had mostly Albanian employees. When the Milosevic regime accused them of sabotage, Velimir publicly defended his workers. He was fired. After the NATO bombardments, Albanian guerrillas murdered Velimir’s family. From his exile in Macedonia, Velimir sends a videoletter to not one but four old colleagues because he does not expect any of them will actually answer. He asks them to forgive what the Milosevic regime did and to help him visit his family’s graves. The four all answer immediately to say that they are prepared to help him in any way possible. One of the more moving videoletter exchanges occurs between the Serb Vlada and the Croatian Ivica. In a surprisingly simple manner, this episode clearly shows how families can get separated even when they truly wish the best for each other. Vlada and Ivica are sons of air traffic controllers. Their families spent many years of shared vacations together on the Adriatic Sea. In 1991, both families found themselves in the same downward spiral: “When your cities are getting shot at, you develop a natural aversion. Gradually you start to think differently and you start noticing symptoms of nationalism within yourself.” All contact was broken between the families. More than a decade later, Vlada and his father send a videoletter. They ask forgiveness for the Serbian crimes in Croatia and they ask that most burning of questions: “How is your family doing?” The answer came immediately: “We did not dare to make contact because we thought it would be dangerous for you. We have never blamed you for anything. We know you as good people. We never blamed the Serbs collectively.” Ivica even refers to Croatian crimes in Bosnia as being “equally horrible”, and thereby increases the understanding that the videoletter inspired. The fact that some enlightened souls have made contact with each other is all very well and good. But the overall effect will remain neglible if the vast majority keep avoiding contact. In April 2004 in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, a meeting took place involving the directors of the public broadcasters in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. They all watched a compilation of V*ideoletters. Van den Broek: “Before the screening, they were all their own islands. Afterwards, everyone was crying. Then they did exactly as we had hoped: they all hugged.” The end result is that from April 7th, the series will be simulcast at 9pm on all the public stations. Many ex-Yugoslavians who have seen V*ideoletters are often inspired to track down their own lost friends. So Rejger and Van den Broek have been working hard to make sure that an infrastructure will exist when demand skyrockets after April 7th. There will be special Internet search programs that will help people track each other down and even buses travelling the country where people can record their own video letters. Rejger: “We are trying to do everything possible to break through the silence left by the war.” [Translated by Steve Korver] |
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