Miranda Jakiša (Humboldt University Berlin)
“You see this city? THAT is Valter!” This cult dialogue from the Yugoslav partisan film Valter brani Sarajevo (Hajrudin Krvavac, 1978) reveals the core of partisan films’ plot: the alleged congruency of people and partisans within the NOB – the National Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia. When in Krvavac’s film the complete city of Sarajevo is declared to be the anti‐fascist secret agent named “Valter” this only accounts for the consistency with which the vrhovni štab postulation of spreading the partisan myth within the people – already stated in 1943 – was followed by art production. The lecture will trace the extraordinary career of the over decades popular partisan genre and derive it from the space (re‐)fashioning potential of partisan narrative. The space‐fashioning force itself can be deduced from the “telluric character” (Carl Schmitt) of guerilla warfare. In partisan film, as excerpts will show, the new entity of “Yugo‐Slavia” is paced and thus appropriated in an imagery of close earth contact.