A man proudly displays to us the contents of his personal rubbish container. Look, it's got four wheels, a clip and even a brake! He climbs inside to examine the day's yield. Together they are symbolic of Serbia in 1999: the thing looks nice on the outside, but just poke around in it with a stick and you'll discover misery. In this video Radovanovic combines found footage from the Serbian media with material of his own in a highly intelligent way. He leaps to and fro between the small and the large, individual and state, appearance and reality; his purpose being to demonstrate both their mutual correspondence and the absurd discrepancies between them. The media announce the heroic nation's rapid recovery and the payment of pensions. Meanwhile the people are eating out of garbage cans and the pensions are not enough to live on. The situation of Vera the pensioner typifies the state of the nation. In her elegant fur coat and hood she looks very well-kept – but she is forced to go to the soup kitchen every day. She keeps up external appearances and protects herself against the complete decline that would set in were she to admit that she is penniless. It is a psychological mechanism that is fully exploited by the Serbian propaganda machine. If you just shout loud enough that the economic tide has turned, that Milosevic is a heroic man of peace and that the people who demonstrate against him are sexually frustrated mental defectives from the margins of society, there are always enough people who will swallow the indoctrination. But there is a glimmer of hope in 'My Country'. The man from the rubbish container keeps himself alive by eating pigeons. His knows exactly which pigeons are not for eating and these he throws away. "Actually, I eat like a prince!" he says beaming, and inside his container he sings an Islamic-sounding song.
– Lies Holtrop |
Camera: Radoslav Vladic
Editing: Milena Arsenijevic, Dejan Petrovic
Sound: Marton Jankov
Music: Aleksandar Sasa Habic
Production: Principal Film/Goran Radovanovic, John Penn, Mladen Petrovic
Goran Radovanovic, 1957, Belgrade (Yugoslavia)
Lives and works in Belgrade (Yugoslavia)
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