ESSAYS

Non-declarative patriotism

On the occasion of the premiere of Domoljubni vremeplov by Petar Krelja

A review of the latest film by the eminent Croatian documentarian Petar Krelja, Patriotic Timeline, which was premiered at the end of 2011. In the essay the film is put into the context of similar realizations in the region that recap, from a very personal perspective, the more recent political history (Cinema Komunisto, Mila Turajlić 2010; One Women – One Century, Želimir Žilnik, 2011). Krelja’s film is challenging from a conceptual perspective because it is a compilation of his earlier documentaries (Recital, 1972; After the Strike, 1988; At the Railway Siding, 1992; The Second Dubrovnik, 2007) with the addition of archival documentary popular-cultural material (informal footage of Tito, patriotic reveilles from the early 1990s) which contextualizes and reinvents this kind of omnibus, turning it into a personal, disappointed, bitter-ironic disillusioned perspective at a few decades of national history.

Janko Heidl