New Memory of the Old Trauma? The Diary of Diana B. and Dara of Jasenovac
New Memory of the Old Trauma? The Diary of Diana B. and Dara of Jasenovac

Summary/Abstract: Recently, there has been a significant rise in the production of films on the Jasenovac camp and related Ustasha crimes, taking their share in the mnemonic politics. The paper focuses on the two most recent films, The Diary of Diana B., a docufiction filmed in Croatia, and Dara of Jasenovac, a feature film which was Serbia’s candidate for an Oscar. The memory of traumatic events is remediated in each film differently and used for representing diverse group identities through temporal relation with the difficult past. Comparison between the two films focuses on subject positions and regimes of historicity as categories that make the production of meaning mechanism visible. The main questions that guide the analysis are: how are victims and perpetrators portrayed, who is witnessing traumatic events, and to whom is the trauma attributed? Do they bring something new to the cultural memory of the Holocaust and genocide in the Independent State of Croatia?

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