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Cinema in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Bosnian Literary Adaptations on Stage and Screen

Part of the book series: Adaptation in Theatre and Performance ((ATP))

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Abstract

This chapter presents a brief history of Bosnian cinema. The focus is on film adaptations of Bosnian literary sources. Specific approaches to screen adaptations are analysed and compared.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Chetnik, Serbo-Croatian Četnik, member of a Serbian nationalist guerrilla force that formed during World War II to resist the Axis invaders and Croatian collaborators but that primarily fought a civil war against the Yugoslav communist guerrillas, the Partisans [….] many Chetniks occasionally joined German, Italian, and Croatian units in operations against their communist rivals” (Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chetnik).

    “The Chetniks’ struggle with the invaders came to a complete stop at the end of 1941, and gradually evolved into cooperation with the Italians and the Germans against Tito” (Yad Vashem) https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%20160.pdf.

  2. 2.

    “It is estimated that between 4.5 and 12 million USD was spent on the movie. The film was made for 18 months, and sponsored by 58 major industrial companies. Besides the large number of famous actors, the film also had an amazing number of extras, more than 10 thousand. Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif were at the premiere on the 29th of November 1969 in Sarajevo” (Sarajevo Times Mar. 17, 2016).

  3. 3.

    My translation and further in the text.

  4. 4.

    In 1955, before he wrote Silent Gunpowder, Ćopić angered the Party when he published his “Heretical Story,” in which he criticised the communist elites and the privileges they enjoyed at the expense of the working class. Yugoslav President Tito, in his speech in Zagreb, publicly condemned the writer but stopped short of having Ćopić arrested. On March 26, 1984, Ćopić committed suicide, having for a long time suffered from depression, caused by the terrible political pressure he had endured.

  5. 5.

    My translation and further in the text.

  6. 6.

    In the interview of May 1990, Čengić elaborates on one possible source of Ćopić’s novel: “Ćopić’s realism suppressed the story of an authentic volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, Danko Mitrov,” who came to that part of Bosnia depicted in the novel, and “who disappeared. It never became known if the Party had him killed.” Čengić reveals that in his conversation with the people who were partisans in the WWII in that territory and who knew Danko, they didn’t want to talk but they confessed that it was common for the “people summoned by the court of the Party to afterwards commit suicide … It was their personal sacrifice even though they knew they were morally pure.” Čengić also reveals that he couldn’t find much information about Danko Mitrov in the archives. He used him as a model for the Španac character, but the inspiration was also “the fates of other volunteers in the Spanish Civil War” (Čengić 1990).

  7. 7.

    The designer’s company Fabrika made posters of Sarajevo in the siege, and many include the symbol of Valter. The band Dubioza kolektiv named one of their anti-government protest songs after Valter.

  8. 8.

    BH. FILM 2012/2013 (pp. 11–17) (https://bhfilm.ba/dok/BH.FILM-2012--2013.pdf).

  9. 9.

    My translation and further in the text.

  10. 10.

    My translation and further in the text.

  11. 11.

    Call to prayer in Turkish.

  12. 12.

    My translation.

  13. 13.

    The interview with Pašović, conducted by Nada Salom, is cited in Kreso-Hasanovic (2020).

  14. 14.

    “Strangely, in the film production sense, the war [in the 90s] was a very fertile period. Hundreds and hundreds of documentary films about life and death in the besieged city of Sarajevo were made during the four years of war. These films went around the world and were the only true image of what was really happening in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. MGM SARAJEVO (MAN-GOD-MONSTER) was one of the most successful of these documentaries in 1995 SaGa won the FELIX Award at the European Film Academy for its documentaries made under siege” (BH. FILM 2012/2013 [pp. 11–17] https://bhfilm.ba/dok/BH.FILM-2012%2D%2D2013.pdf).

  15. 15.

    The Association of Filmmakers in BiH lists the awards its members received:

    Oscar, American Film Academy Award for Danis Tanović’s NO MAN’S LAND, [2001] European Film Academy Award for short 10 MINUTES [2002] by Ahmed Imamović, Tiger Award at Rotterdam Film Festival for Srđan Vuletić’s SUMMER IN THE GOLDEN VALLEY, [2003] Silver Leopard at Locarno Film Festival for the film FUSE [2003] by Pjer Žalica, Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival for GRBAVICA [2006] by Jasmila Žbanić, Grand Prix at Critic’s Week of Cannes Film Festival for Aida Begić’s SNOW, [2008] Silver Bears in Berlin for The Best Film and The Best Actor and Ecumenical Jury Award for film AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF AN IRON PICKER [2013] by Danis Tanović and numerous awards for short and documentary films. (BH Film, https://bhfilm.ba)

  16. 16.

    Sevdalinka is from the Turkish word sevda, meaning love. It is a traditional love song: “Her love-melancholic content is constantly met with metaphysical and mystical. It ranges from love and death, like the Greek tragic epic poem” (Huseinović, Avdo. “About Sevdalinka.” https://sevdalinka.info/en/about-sevdalinka/).

  17. 17.

    The film No Man’s Land won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 2002.

  18. 18.

    My translation.

  19. 19.

    Henri Lévy “revisit[ed] Bosnia in June 2014, where he stage[d] a highly symbolic performance of his second play, Hotel Europe, at Sarajevo’s National Theater, with the help of Bosnian director Dino Mustafić, whom he met 20 before in the thick of war. At the time, Mustafić was a young military cameraman. In the performance, he evokes the memory of Europe—its tragedies and its lessons—as well as the honour of those who stood up to barbarism” (BHL | Bernard-Henri Lévy. The Will to See, n.d.).

  20. 20.

    Christophe Barbier reviewed Jacques Weber’s performance of Levy’s play on the stage of the theatre l’Atelier: “Il attaque une Europe impuissante, incapable de résorber la crise économique, d’endiguer la fièvre populiste et de faire le saut du fédéralisme. ‘L’Europe, c’est choisir la raison contre l’instinct’, dit le héros de BHL depuis Sarajevo, en pensant aux ravages du nationalisme et du délire identitaire, hier en Bosnie, aujourd’hui en Ukraine” (Barbier Oct. 25, 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Sanja Garić-Komnenić

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  1. Sanja Garić-Komnenić
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Garić-Komnenić, S. (2024). Cinema in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In: Bosnian Literary Adaptations on Stage and Screen. Adaptation in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47134-6_7

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