Букурещ. 1989 – Сараево, 1992: локални сцени на глобални разкази
Bucharest, 1989 – Sarajevo, 1992: local scenes of global narratives

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses basically two non- Balkan feature films that provide a look outside to the dramatic events which followed the overthrow of Balkan totalitarian regimes in the recent past. These are the fairly neglected Two Deaths (1995), directed by Nicolas Roeg and the much more praised Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). Due to a great number of significant analogies with the earlier one I include in my discussion Roman Polan- ski’s Death and the Maiden (1994) as well. Each of them represents a personal story in- scribed in the great historical and political narratives, “written” with bloody and cruel hand here and now, on and through human bodies. The film narratives bring to light terrible secrets in the collective national and/or individual person’s prehistory of the displayed violence. It is analysed by the conceptual grids of history, place of action, body and visuality. Shifting scene of action, diverse ethnic and cultural outlooks of writers, playwrights and directors, private dramas of destructive passions and destruction of closest relatives and friends within the frames of large historical and social transformations – all of them provide for the varying reception and appraisal of the juxtaposed films. Regarded in global perspective, thus they represent the work of the imaginary beyond the confines of nation, where it transforms the locales of crises into local scenes of new global narratives.

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