Reconciling the Balkans through video letters AMSTERDAM, May 14 (AFP) - "We are still friends, none of you are guilty, we don't blame all Serbs," a Croatian man says on the screen; on the couch a Serb family is in tears as t hey watch the video letter of their friend whom they have not seen since the 1990s wars that tore the former Yugoslavia apart. The family had thought their Croatian friend would have come to hate all Serbs during the war, themselves included. The video letter, brought to them by Dutch documentary filmmakers Katarina Rejger and Eric van den Broek, showed them that old friendships have endured the 1991-95 war in Croatia which pitted Croats against ethnic Serbs. by Isabelle Wesselingh The video letter is one of many featured in the new documentary by Rejger and Van den Broek, who received worldwide praise for an earlier documentary about the Serb student movement Otpor. The idea is simple: find people who have lost contact during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and let them make a video letter for a family member, friend or colleague to whom they have not spoken since the war because they were angry, hurt or because they ended up on opposing sides during the conflict. the filmmakers then bring the video letter to the addressee. The recipient replies and, if possible, the two parties meet. "During our earlier filming, mostly in Bosnia, we noticed that there was an invisible barrier between the people from the different communities. One-time friends hated each other, were angry, felt betrayed, abandoned and very afraid. Instead of telling their friends how they felt, they told us," Van den Broek told AFP. "We wanted to force them to break the silence, to go beyond the rumours and the lies and to address their one-time friends directly so they would not live on hating each other," he explained. In the documentary series "Videoletters" a Serb factory manager, opposed to the oppressive regime of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, contacts his former colleagues who are ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Two childhood friends from Bosnia, one a Muslim, the other a Serb, talk about the war which they both survived on different sides and share the worst rumours they have heard about each other. All the people in the documentary get a chance to finally ask the questions that have haunted them over the years and they get some surprising answers. "Videoletters, reconnect you" is the slogan Eric and Katarina used for their reconciliation project. The filmmakers have decided to give television stations in the former Yugoslavia the opportunity to screen the documentary first, for free. "We wanted to use television as a medium to reconcile people because during the conflict is was used for propaganda and to incite hatred," they said. Their dream was realized when in April the directors of the public television stations of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo met with them in the Slovene capital of Ljubljana. Katarina and Eric showed them a ten-minute presentation of the documentary series. "Many of them were crying at the end. Several people who had not spoken before went to get a coffee together afterwards," said Katarina. Every public television station in the former Yugoslavia agreed to broadcast at least ten of the video letters. It is the first time since the war that the stations have worked together on such a project. The series will be broadcast in 2005, ten years after the Dayton peace agreements that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia were signed. The filmmakers said the screening of the video letters is only a part of their reconciliation project. They hope viewers will follow in the footsteps of the documentary and try to contact long lost friends and colleagues. To help the process they have set up an interactive website (www.videoletters.net). |
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