SERBIAN HORROR FILM BETWEEN METAPHOR AND REALITY
Posted: Sep 30th 2008
Author: Dejan Ognjanović
Genre cinema was not welcome in former Yugoslavia, yet the rare attempts at horror film were found almost exclusively in Serbia. This paper looks into the literary and folklore tradition as possible sources of what should have been an even richer genre than it currently is. The reasons for scarce appearance of horror in Serbia, a nation rich in myths and legends, is seen in the following factors: 1) History and everyday reality as horror; 2) A culture of irony and suspicion towards fictional horror; 3) Politics as an omnipresent horror; and 4) A poor economy as a horror in itself. A chapter on Serbian Gothic deals with witches and vampires from the Id in the films of Đorđe Kadijević Leptirica (The She-Butterfly, 1973) and Sveto mesto (A Holy Place, 1990). The essay also analyzes the two films by Goran Marković with strong elements of horror: Variola Vera (1982) which uses a horrible disease as a metaphor, and Déjà vu (a.k.a. Reflections, 1987), a horror-thriller with a strong satire on schizophrenia of Tito\'s Yugoslavia. The paper concludes with analysis of Dejan Zečević\'s T.T. Syndrome (2001) as a representative of the younger generation of Serbian filmmakers and their genre-awareness. By stressing the pinnacles of Serbian horror film, the essay at the same time looks back upon the past (tradition) and future (rich potentials for young genre enthusiasts).
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