ESSAYS IN NOSTALGIA

The true story of Milka, known as the »stewardess«

The article presents a fluid narrative of the filmmaker’s reminiscences about the circumstances under which the documentary The Return (1975) was conceived and shot.

Motivated by the recent broadcast of the film on HRT (Hrvatska radio televizija — Croatian Radio Television), renowned documentary and feature filmmaker and film critic Petar Krelja, recollects about the time when he discovered a barracks near the railway station housing the social center for runaway children, the red cross asylum, and the center for social workers.

Worried and fascinated by this concentration of human misery and by the unusual but indicative personal fates of the people found there, and intent on presenting some of it in documentary film form, he began to familiarize himself with the multifaceted situation at the barracks and by doing research on their inhabitants. Though the whole series of documentary films (and two feature films) were inspired through gained experiences, the first documentary in the series was The Return (Povratak) which focused on an 11 year old girl Milka, who was a regular runaway either from her father’s home or from the children’s home where she was occasionally placed.

She was known as »the stewardess« in the reception center, because once she succeeded in stowing away on a plane. Krelja’s article is filled with illustrative anecdotes connected with his research and with the shooting of the film The Return, which also reveal his ongoing filmmaking dilemmas and reflections.

Petar Krelja