Impressive and very personal documentary about the Fascist state of Croatia as it existed between 1941 and 1945. Film-maker Lordan Zafranovi+ + used a lot of ‘found footage’ material borrowed from cinema newsreels and propaganda films. The film has therefore rightly been described as an ‘epic of editing’. More recent material, such as shots form 1986 of the trial of war criminal Andrija Artukovi and impressions of the present civil war, have also been used by Zafranovi, as well as feature-film fragments from his own work. (A special place has been reserved for footage from his first film, shot on 8mm when he was 18.) Finally we see the film-maker himself, with an editor, in the cutting room wrestling with vast quantities of often-complex materia. Zafranovi tells us a story that discredits Croatia. A story that could never be told before, because it would have tarnished the reputation of Yugoslavia as a Partisan nation. And a story which can still not be told in independent Croatia, because present-day Croatian nationalism displays too much affinity with that during World War Two.Zafranovi worked from 1986 for seven years on this enormous project, in Zagreb, Vienna, Paris and Prague. His fear for a repeat of the war history of his country was confirmed drama¡tically while the film was still being made.
