Chicago Serbian Film Festival

The Serbian Film Festival was presented at the Muvico in Rosemont from Friday, Dec. 6 to Sunday, Dec. 8. I had the pleasure of attending Saturday’s screening of “Krugovi,” a movie set during the Bosnian War in which a Serbian solider saves the life of an innocent Muslim who was being beaten by members of the Serbian Army. The Serbian solider dies for his troubles.

Needless to say, the movie was dark, but the camaraderie in the theatre amongst the viewers was beautiful. In my 11 years of being part of the Serbian community in Chicago, I have never witnessed such a feeling of togetherness from a group of about 200 Serbs.

At the end of the movie, the audience gave a standing ovation for the film and the group of individuals who organized the event. After the show, I stuck around the lobby just to listen critiques of the movie. I was sure I would hear people say “Fu** the Muslim” or “He should have died, not the Serb,” but I didn’t.

I heard person after person commenting on how courageous both the Serbian soldier and Muslim civilian were. (Later in the movie, the Muslim civilian puts his family on the line to help the ex-girlfriend of the Serbian solider.)

During the movie, a Serbian who I recognized was appalled and shouted “look at us, no wonder everyone hates us,” referring to America’s involvement in the war and Kosovo.

While that comment was harsh (not every Serbian soldier antagonized Muslim civilians), it did show me something I didn’t know existed – Serbians who were nationalistic, but at the same time compassionate and reasonable.

The entire three-day event was held with professionalism and class. I was proud to see people working so hard to bring a part of Serbia to the United States in a positive light.

Microcosm of Sarajevo

The bloody civil war in Bosnia during the early 1990’s is summed up through one street that is supposed to be a microcosm of the entire ethnically and religiously diverse city of Sarajevo.

The six-block stretch of Logavina Street included roughly 240 families of Muslims, Serbs and Croats. The author, Barbara Demick, a war correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, tries best to depict how all families, hailing from all religions, were impacted.

The key word there is tries.

Demick focuses on four families from the street, all ethnically diverse. And yes, if you wanted to describe Sarajevo at the time, this would be a perfect street to do so. The problem is, Logavina Street wasn’t nearly as impacted as some other areas. A few of the family members of Logavina Street lost their lives, but at the end, the families Demick focused on survived.

Being from the area, I have an unfair (or fair) advantage of how other area really was. Granted, I never been to Logavina Street, but I did live in areas that Demick mentioned such as Grbavica, Dobrinja and Bascarsija.

All the facts in the book are correct. One can easily tell Demick did extensive research on the street and the people of Sarajevo. The number of people that died and the inhumane way people were treated was correctly depicted, just not on the right street to represent the city.

How the families survived was also spot on.

Demick notes that one woman from the street used a variety of canned good, airlifted by the United Nations, to create baked goods, if you can call them goods. Most families survived only on the canned goods, but families such as the Stanic’s, a Serb-Croatian family on Logavina Street, improvised to make the food more edible and enjoyable, mainly for their children.

The chapters were fast-paced and hardly connected. Reading through it, I had to go back to the character list to figure out who was who and where they came from. Some scenes made no sense. For example, Demick spends a good amount of time talking about a “unified” soccer team from Logavina Street that earned national recognition. But the team was hardly unified. Only one Orthodox (Serbian) teen played on the team.

It would have been better to use the soccer team as a microcosm of Logavina Street then it was to use the street to represent the entire city.

Demick mainly focuses on the hardships of Ajla, Haris and Delila, teenagers living in the orphanage house on Logavina Street. Their journey deserves to be told. But the way Demick describes it; it wasn’t true in all cases.

However, Demick beautifully captures the mood of Sarajevans during the war. As she notes, most residents weren’t religious before or during the war. In one scene, Demick describes how 2,000 residents, Muslims, Serbs and Croats, went to mass for Christmas. During the scene, Zijo, a Muslim character in the book, recounts how this was done for tradition, not religion.

There are many instances in the book where the characters describe how they lived in harmony, but towards the end, it turned into bitter spite and hatred.

For example, a resident of the street was Jovan Divjak, an ethnic Serb that was second in command of the Bosnian militia. Throughout the book, Demick notes the mistrust he felt from the Bosnian soldiers, even Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic.

But, it was not uncommon for ethnic Serbs to fight for the Bosnian side. At the beginning of the war, Demick notes that roughly 30 percent of Ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo fought with the Bosnian side. Towards the end, the number dwindled to the teens. Yet, Demick continually notes that Divjak was not trusted and an ethnic Serb.

That was the tone for the majority of the book. As its own body of work, the book describes horrific scenes and general feelings from the Bosnian War through the eyes of long-time residents of Sarajevo. However, it does not paint the entire picture of Sarajevo how Demick intended.

The book is boiled into beautifully written short stories of a few families, mainly Muslim families, and their hardships of the bloody war that let over 100,000 people dead.

The autobiography of Jovanka Broz

Following the death of the former first lady of Yugoslavia, Jovanka Broz, I decided to educate myself more on the woman behind the man.

I picked up a copy of My Life My Truth, the autobiography of Broz, written by Zarko Jokanovic. In the beginning, I was reading what I already knew. I knew that she was a guerilla war fighter. I knew that she lived a life of luxury. But almost half way through, I never expected to read her thoughts on some of her husband’s policies.

In particular, she mentioned how she didn’t agree with the dealings surrounding Kosovo and Albania in the 1980. She said if it was handled differently, the ethnic conflict in the region, more than 30 years after her husband’s death, would not have occurred.

It was shocking to read that she foresaw then what would occur if the two nations mixed.

When Jovanka Broz died, articles came out that either painted her like a hardened criminal or a wrongfully imprisoned saint of former Yugoslavia. Those articles made me aware of why she was arrest, but until I read the book, I had no idea how she has been treated since 1980.

Even before Tito died, his cabinet speculated that Jovanka Broz would take over the throne, and they would allow that to happen. The stole all her goods, threatened her, kicked her out of multiple homes and stole and erased all of her identification, forcing her to be a house prisoner for over 30 years.

What was especially interesting to me was that they would not let her attend Tito’s funeral. Indira Ghandi was the one who forced them to allow her to attend.

When I talked to a few close friends, and some not so close acquaintances about her death, they all said it signified the death of Yugoslavia. While most weren’t happy that someone died, they were happy that the countries history was finally being erased. But not all felt like that.

My mother and grandmother woke up at 3 a.m. to watch the live broadcast of her funeral on Serbian television.

But, for the overall Bosnian and Serbian communities in Chicago, it was a day that will go in history.

Telling a large story through a small problem!

In early October, the Bosnian National Soccer team cemented their place in the 2014 World Cup Finals in Brazil. Shortly after, Daria Sito-Sucic and Gordana Katana wrote an article about the continued ethnic divide in Bosnia amongst Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks, using the success of the team to tell the story.

The article explains why this was such a big deal for the national team and how communities within Bosnia were effected by the game. In Banja Luka, the main city of the Serb Republic in Bosnia, the game was not aired. People who wanted to watch the game had to order special channels that broadcast the event. It was a great way to show how such a large story can impact the smallest community in an already small country.

The writers used the success of the ethnically diverse Bosnian team to highlight the dysfunctions of the country’s government.

“The Bosnian federation was on the verge of bankruptcy. Three former officials, one of them an ex-commander of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army during the war, were jailed last year for tax evasion and embezzlement.

Many foreign-based players and devoted soccer fans boycotted the national team, angry at political interference which they said was spoiling otherwise harmonious relations among players and coaches.”

It reminded me of my experience working on my midterm project. Because I am Bosnian, I had trouble talking to Serbian parents that sent their children to St. Sava Academy. I clearly had no dog in the fight, but it was hard knowing that people didn’t want to talk to me because of who I am or where I come from. I thought I left that back in Bosnia in 1997.

My article isn’t as much about the dysfunctions of the school, but the importance of the school to the Serbian community. The article about the Bosnian National Team is the same. The article mentions the success of the team, but it’s more about the dysfunction of the government and the effect of that on national pride.

Former First Lady of Yugoslavia Dies

Zeitoun

If you wanted to know what conditions are like at refugee camps in countries where war is prevalent, look no further than the graphic, yet poetic descriptions in “Zeitoun.”

Author Dave Eggers chronicles the life of one Syrian-American construction worker with the heart of gold as he stays behind in New Orleans to salvage his house, business and properties during Hurricane Katrina.

The lead character, Abdulrahman Zeitoun is Muslim. His wife Kathy, after a failed marriage, converted to Islam. Their faith and relationship give a glimpse into what kind of life they lead, a happy, pure and understanding life, but one where their faith is the cause of concern; in their business and with Kathy’s family.

The stage is set just days before Hurricane Katrina hits. Everyone else is in panic, including Kathy, but Zeitoun doesn’t seem phased by it. Kathy and their four children leave, but Zeitoun, to the dismay of Kathy, decides to stay and look after their properties.

As the storm comes, Zeitoun, an established construction worker is able to salvage most of the valuables in his house. Only about a foot of water encompasses the city, and slowly drains. When the levees break, even Zeitoun couldn’t predict what would happen.

Very soon, the city is engulfed by 15 feet of water. Zeitoun, carrying a deep nostalgia of being at sea as a young man, find his aluminum canoe and embarks on his own version of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Instead of encountering sirens and one-eye monsters on his way to Ithaca, Zeitoun encounters helpless neighbors, friends and dogs as he paddles throughout the city in hopes of salvaging some valuables from his other properties.

During his quests, Zeitoun helps as many people as humanly possible. He gives his food and water to strangers and dogs. Zeitoun tells himself this was God’s plan. It was in God’s plan for him to stay behind and help as much as he could. He has a new, fresh sense of belonging; purpose. Soon after, Zeitoun succumbs to the same fate many of God’s messengers faced.

He and his three friends were arrested, humiliated, interrogated and forced to live in make shift cells that the author compares to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The day he was arrested was the first day Zeitoun was unable to contact his wife, and the author foreshadows a series of unbearable and drastic conflicts.

After about a week, his wife presumes he’s dead. His children notice their mothers’ worries and Kathy tries to imagine life without Zeitoun. Hell. Zeitoun encounters his own hell, thanks in large part to failed efforts by President George W. Bush’s administration and the Federal Emergency Management Authority. Eggers, however, doesn’t impose his personal views. He lets his writing explain how flawed the system became during Hurricane Katrina.

Zeitoun was a Muslim. A Syrian. That was enough to put him in prison.

In large part, the book provides insight into a weak moment in America’s history but a strong moment for one particular family.

St. Sava Academy

I was able to interview Marko Bojovic, the principal of St. Sava Academy. It is the only Serbian Parochial School in Chicago. Since 2008, the school has seen a decline in student enrollment, and subsequently, the funding for the school has declined.

Later this fall, the school board has a tough decision to make. Because the number of students is declining, the board may be forced to cut the seventh and eight grade classes and consolidate the fifth and sixth grade classes. The board is also looking at different fund raising options.

Bojovic said two-thirds of the school’s $400,000 yearly budget comes from tuition, the rest from fund raising. He also said the reason for the decline in students is because most of the students come from working class families. Another reason why the school loses students is because the school cannot accommodate the upper classes in terms of a gym or sports.

“We usually lose them in the upper grades,” said Bojovic. “There are no sports programs. We don’t have a gym.”

If the fundraising and consolidating doesn’t help, the school may be forced to shut down.

As I mentioned, I am going to focus on this problem for my thesis. I’m hoping to talk to families that have students enrolled in the school and families that did but chose to take them out.