Ethnische Idyllen

Installation based on documentary shots of encounters with inhabitants of several islands in the Northern Adriatic, in what is now independent Croatia, soon after the end of the war. It is a documentary revealing the schizophrenia of the Heimat in a brief silence, a hesitation, or in the ostentatious demonstration of a philosophy of life. The expressions of bodies and faces often says as much as the clichés with which many shield themselves from their former Serbian neighbours. Men who returned from war apparently unharmed, are faced with a fresh start that is as new as it is difficult. Economic survival is one of the first aims. Women who stayed home during the war complain about a war they could not fathom, but in which they had to find an unambiguous place.Those seeing this film watch it on two projection screens. One can follow a picture on the left or the right, while the sound is in the middle and provides something to hold on to. Often the same people are portrayed, with a time lapse between the two screens: the maker has visited the same location on different occasions, so that the influence of the war is visible and tangible in time.