Majka Katina među Markosovim partizanima ili film koji nije postojao
Majka Katina among Markos’s partisans or The Film that Never Existed

Summary/Abstract: The complexity and ambivalence of the Yugoslav attitude towards the Greece during the period of the Civil War was deeply influenced by the fact that Yugoslav Communists saw dramatic events in the southern neighborhood as a continuation of the revolutionary processes which they had started and finished by seizing the power. Their active policy toward the Greek crisis was at the same understood as “internationalist obligation” which required different ways of active, material and political support to the Greek communist movement. One of these activities was broad and diverse propaganda, which included division be- tween “Good Greeks” and “Bad Greeks” in the Yugoslav satirical magazines. But, the most ambitious propaganda project was realized 1948 – shooting the film with the title Mother Katina. The script was based on the one other broadly distributed product of pro-Greek Democratic Army and KKE Yugoslav propaganda/the book of the writer and publicist Oskar Davičo, “With the General Markos’ Partisans”, published in1947 in Serbo-Croat and other South Slav languages but also in English, Russian and French and distributed in foreign countries through Yugoslav diplomatic channels. The film about the “typical Greek mother” and her sons, dedicated to the struggle against “monarchofascists” and their “imperialist masters” offer a broad possibilities for analysis of the esthetic and ideological contents. Authors, producer Nikola Popovic and screenwriter O. Davico have extremely simplified the images of the ideologicaly and politically divided and hostile “worlds” transformed almost in the ideological symbols: “good Greeks” – members and supporters of the anti-government leftist movement and their enemies In the history of Yugoslav cinematography this film, perhaps represented pure social realism. Yowever, it was never presented to the public. After the split with Moscow, glorification of Greek communists in the film was a reason why this expensive and ambitious project was doomed to sink into oblivion and was forgotten for five decades.

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