Abstract
In their chapter on cinematic—fictional—representations of fatherhood in postwar Bosnia and Sri Lanka the authors analyze cinematic representation of the protagonist Fathers’ sense of loss, and their search for the truth about their soldier-Sons’ deaths. They argue that Prasanna Vithanage’s Death on a Full Moon Day (1997) and Pjer Zalica’s Fuse (2003) engage in a rare but beautifully executed construction of alternative masculinities. This is done by stressing three characteristics of the Father figures: their physical and mental impairments and capacities; their position vis-à-vis their communities; and their relation to the state. The non-heroic, anti-ideological aspects of the Sons’ soldiering further help the Fathers to resist appropriation of their war-suffering and loss, and to stubbornly insist on their specific understanding of the truth about the war and its devastating effects.
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While violent conflicts in Sri Lanka have had different aspects and phases, what is usually referred to as Sri Lankan ‘civil war’ or ‘ethnic war’ was fought in the 1983–2009 period, between Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighting for a separate Tamil state. The ethnic characterization of the war has been challenged from both inside and outside Sri Lanka (Jayasundara 2014). War in Bosnia lasted from spring 1992 to the end of 1995. It was sometimes a two-way war between Bosnian-Serb and Bosniak (Bosnian-Muslim) forces, and Bosniak and Bosnian-Croat forces, and sometimes a three way fight between Bosnian-Serb, Bosnian-Croat and Bosniak forces (all with various outside help). Thus the war in Bosnia is sometimes referred to in plural, the wars.
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The exact death rate since the start of the war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s remains a matter of controversy ranging a few hundred thousand, but Human Rights Watch (2010) reports 80–100,000 deaths (both civilians and soldiers). The war’s end came after a huge state military offensive, and produced also still disputed number of deaths and other casualties, massive displacement and allegations of grave violations of human rights (ICR2P, n.d.; BBC 2012).
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The end of the war came about in 1995, when a new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was established following the Dayton Peace Accords. The state was divided into two so-called entities: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (designed as a region populated by Bosniaks and Croats as the majority population) and Republika Srpska (designed as a region populated by Serbs), divided into 10 cantons, plus a self-governing Brcko district (a town in the north-east of Bosnia). This ethnic foundation of political organization and division of the state and its ‘entities’, its governing rules and its Constitution have all been bitterly debated and contested both within and outside the country (see European Court of Human Rights 2009). The numbers of casualties of those wars vary too, and go from 100,000 to almost 300,000 (Tabeau and Bijak 2003), with more than 2 million displaced. The Bosnian war was infamous for the strategic use of sexual violence and rape of women as well as men (Bassiouni 1996).
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ICTY was established by the UN in 1993 (see http://www.icty.org/). Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia have each established national courts for war crimes. For information on public opinion in these three countries regarding legitimacy and trustworthiness of the courts, see Vladimir Petrovic (2014: 93) and Glasius and Colona (2014).
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See, for example, US Department of State Report to Congress on Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka (2009), the UN Secretary General’s experts report (2011), or the more recent Human Rights Watch 2018 report. In addition, despite the efforts of The Office on Missing Persons, the government is yet to react, at the time of writing, to its Interim Report (2018).
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In Sri Lankan Sinhala cinema Jackson Anthony’s Aba (2008) and Admiral Sarath Weerasekera’s Gamani (2011) are typical, respectively, of the mythic history and heroic soldier genres.
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Examples of such films from Serbia are Lepa Sela Lepo Gore (Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, Dragojevic, 1996) and Underground (Kusturica, 1995). For critique of Balkanist (self)representations in regional cinema, see Iordanova (1996, 2001), Slugan (2011, n.d.), Pavicic (2010, 2011), and Marinkova (2010).
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As examples of this genre from Serbia Kronja (2008: 76–80) cites Sradan Karanovic’s Loving Glances (2003) and Goran Pascaljevic’s The Powder Keg (1998). From the Sinhala cinema these films would be Prasanna Vithanage’s Death on a Full Moon Day (1998), Ira Madiyama (2003) and With You, Without You (2012); Asoka Handagama’s This Is My Moon (2002) and Iniavan (Him, Hereafter 2012); Vimukthi Jayasundera’s Forsaken Land (2005); and Sanjeeva Pushpakumara’s Flying Fish (2011).
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Examples of such management are the blocking by the Sri Lanka police of a protest march by the Families of the Disappeared, witness harassment and disruption of meetings at which parents shared testimonies about disappeared children. See also Human Rights Council’s resolution on reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka, 27 March 2014. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14447.
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See Bojana Karanovic (2012) on absence of cooperation between Federation and Republika Srpska filmmakers.
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The examples of such films in Sri Lanka are Asoka Handagama’s Iniavan (2012) on the return of a ‘rehabilitated’ LTTE ex-combatant to Jaffna, and Prasanna Vithanage’s With You, Without You (2012), based on the Dostoevsky short story The Meek One but adapted toward a portrayal of a Sinhala soldier’s quest for atonement.
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See for example No Man’s Land (Tanovic, 2001) and Grbavica (Zbanic, 2006).
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Internationally: Silver Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival and Golden Star, Marrakech International Film Festival in 2003. Nationally, Best First Feature, Sarajevo Film Festival, also in 2003.
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South Asian Center for Legal Studies (2016). Operationalising the Office of Missing Persons: Manual of Best Practices. http://sacls.org/resources/publications/reports/operationalizing-the-office-on-missing-persons-manual-of-best-practices. Accessed 20 September 2018.
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Given the main focus of this chapter—Fathers and Sons—we will restrain from going into discussion on Balkanist elements in the Fuse.
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Filmography
Death on a Full Moon Day (Purahanda Kaluwara). (1997). Director and screenwriter: Prasanna Vithanage; Cinematography: M. D. Mahindapala; 74 minutes; Production: NHK; Country: Sri Lanka.
Fuse (Gori Vatra). (2003). Director and screenwriter: Pjer Zalica; Montage: Almir Kenovic; Cinematography: Mirsad Herovic; 105 minutes; Production: Novotny & Novotny Filmproduktion, Cine-Sud Promotion et al; Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Zarkov, D., De Mel, N., Drezgic, R. (2019). Fathers and Sons: Loss and Truth in War Films from Bosnia and Sri Lanka. In: Lippens, R., Murray, E. (eds) Representing the Experience of War and Atrocity. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13925-4_5
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