Textbook propaganda film by serbian nationalists
The title says it all...
share[deleted]
MovieChat Forums > The Weight of Chains (2011) Discussion > Textbook propaganda film by serbian nati...
The author of the film is an independent Canadian student of Yugoslavian origin, who even isn't an ethnic Serb, but an ethnic Bunyevac (South-Slavic ethnic group akin to Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins).
That may add something to your title as well. I mean, while today you have many actual Serbs and Serbian state institutions fighting and opposing that what used to be called 'Serbian propaganda' (Milosevic's regime was overthrown by his harshest opposition more than 10 years ago), it would be rather interesting to come to idea why would a 22-year-old libertarian and anti-globalist from Canada, and who even isn't a Serb, be motivated to create and promote a 'textbook Serbian propaganda'.
Regardless of the filmmaker's motivations, I just finished watching this and the standard of journalism was just embarrassing. It made 9/11's 'Loose Change' look like good journalism.
shareYou are wrong. The author is a Serb, and a quite a nationalist, too. He was banned from both the English and Serbian Wikipedia for writing biased, nationalist articles, plagiarizing and falsifying data. Really annoying and pretentious character.
shareThis movie misleads you in thinking its offering an unbiased view on the matter but is obviously playing for the serbian side. For example, the author makes an outrageous claim that the serbs were lured into a trap of commiting genocide at Srebrenica. That alone is enough to make you stop watching the movie.
That Bosnian Serbs walked into a trap in Srebrenica (politically speaking of course) was said by gen Philippe Morillon, UNPROFOR commander in Srrebrenica.Wartime chief of Muslim police and defense in Srebrenica Hakija Meholjic also said Srebrenica was a staged act.Invented by Bosnian Muslims to justify the already planned US intervention against Serbs.
Civilians and wounded Muslim fighters as well as Dutch UN troops in gheir testimonies during those days never said anything about large scale killings of any kind,that Muslims still like to call a genocide.Unless there are Serb propagandists even among their enemies, I bet you are the bias and untruthful one,refusing the factual truth,since it damages your own picture of those events paintet by one,highly dishonest side,nearly 20 years ago.
Actually, even non-partisans of the Serbs like David Gibbs and Susan Woodward have both verified that Izetbegovic deliberately sacrificed Muslim areas to advancing Serb militias to hasten US intervention. This does not make the militias innocent nor does it say they were lured to do it. They were probably planning on slaughtering Muslims in Srebrenica anyway. But chances are they wouldn't have been able to kill as many people had Izetbegovic held ground in those spots.
shareAnyone downplaying events that took place in Srebrenica (like this filmmaker) cannot be taken seriously.
shareThere was no "downplaying" of Srebrenica. To ignore and throw out this entire documentary because of your own personal feelings towards one event of this war is complete nonsense. The importance of this documentary is to answer the questions of WHY and HOW it happened. All parties involved in this committed horrible acts of violence, some more then others, but the point was to show why it happened to begin with. Instead of focusing only on one aspect you feel did not get enough attention try seeing the entire picture, that is if you can remove your own prejudices and biases while watching.
shareWhile an subcurrent of "srebrenica not really bad" exists, to be fair, he does not ignore that a major tragedy took place there. He does state quite clearly that "thousands of Muslims were ethnically cleansed and killed." Essentially this documentary provides a good source of alternative perspectives of the Balkans while ultimately carrying a subtle (or not so subtle) Serb bias of its own.
You are obviously so intelligent and eloquent, you couldn't even elaborate on your statement. I am of Slovenian origin and I never took part in any war. Malagurski is not a Serb and Serbian TV networks refuse to broadcast The Weight of Chains. This film was recommended to me by my Facebook friends from Croatia and Bosnia - imagine that. It's not meant for narrow minded people like yourself as it shows that we were all unaware pawns in a game of chess played to submit those who did not rush to US arms like people from Communist countries oppressed by Soviet Union, and that all of us who live in one of six former republics of Yugoslavia are in the same position now: enjoying our independence where our resources and industries are owned by local tycoons and global corporations, where middle class is being wiped out and where balancing on the brink of debt slavery and bankruptcy is a form of political Russian roulette with an IMF gun pointed to our heads. That was the message of this film that also tried to stress that, if it wasn't for people like you, we could have kept on living together in harmony in a truly independent, democratic and multiethnic federation. Enjoy your ignorance.
share[deleted]
Umm those elections largely took place during a major economic crisis brought on in part by American and international financial policies which sought to bankrupt the country into following its free market line. Had the IMF offered a huge loan to Yugoslavia to bail it out (conditioned by democratizing the federation, granting Kosovo republic status, etc) the crisis wouldn't have been as severe and the outcome could have been very different.
shareWhy would they pay for what they took anyway?
shareI wish I could learn more about former Yugoslavia, and Europe history from first hand. Of course this documentary has the vision of the filmmaker. But I feel he try to show both sides of the story.
One of my mother's best friend is fron croatian ascend. She was born in the erly 40's in Italy, and has to move with her family again. Her parents where from Yugoslavia. Her father was croatian. She's an amazing, interesting and talented woman, buts she doesn't talk to much about her real past. She has write novels inspired on real life.
I was born and raised on a Southamerican third world country, under a terrible right-wing military dictatorship, supported by then USA president Nixon and CIA. I know how it feels to fear or to hate the people of your own country. They tortured my own family.
But this is way different from what happened in former Yugoslavia. Here, we always thought serbian soldiers were murderers and rapist. And everyone else where innocent. But the tension exist from before, and foreign countries exploited those serbian.
The world is on differents shades of gray, not black/white.
Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language.
The worst thing in all that/this was that the ''preexisting'' tensions weren't that big actually, and were confined to relatively small groups of extremists in all those sides (Bosnians,Croats,Serbs even Slovenes all waged war with each other during that period - though the Serb/Muslim and Serb/Croat were the most prominent and largest of all).
The media of the day, the domestic politics with an agenda, and as the movie showed foreign (US/UK/GERMAN) politics with an agenda, just inflated those relatively confined tensions, giving voice and power to the hating minority, manipulating and silencing (as in the case of those anti war men shown in the movie) the peaceful majority(btw, HUGE anti war protests in Serbia,Croatia,Bosnia were NEVER shown on TV in either of those countries, nor in the West).
So, Serbs were decided to be made villains only because they were ''dangerously'' friendly to Russia, not neccesarily because US cared more about the cause of Croats or...brace yourself...Al Qaeda funded extremist Muslims in Bosnia?!?! I mean how could you explain away US supporting the very same guys who they are to this day fighting in the Middle East.
The worst part is that we, the ex Yugoslav people were so stupid that we actually allowed ourselves to buy the story of pre existing hatred. Only the new generations are prepared to say - No, I don't hate Serb/Croat/Bosnian Muslim...why would I? Evil was always done by minority. There aren't evil nations, just evil men.
Actually, I'd argue that what you saw is what was basically installed in the Balkans.
Neo-nazis, Jihadists, corporate slavers and turning a country into a handful of banana states making living akin to living in a concentration camp.
It is black and white.
But the white was grayed out before and gradually destroyed.
It was the national liberation movement to expel foreign empires from the Balkans after centuries of occupation and colonial powers exploiting the native peoples.
Serbs played a big role in this.
So the colonial powers, not being able to make a comeback using their military, did what they could to divide them by using religion.
All countries have their internal differences.
In Yugoslavia - the cultural and religious influence of Germany and Turkey was the thing.
They created anti-Serb culture of hatred and artificial hysteria that effectively created the cannon fodder that would bring down the country out of the very people that would, using any sense, defend it.
Now everybody are slaves.
Same as with any colonization.
[deleted]