Dragan Batančev Abstract

The Shots That Shook the World: Cinematic Visions of the 1914 Sarajevo Assassination

Building upon extensive archival research, I investigate Bosna Film’s development of unmade projects about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife between 1953 and 1968 which involved Yugoslav, Austrian, West German, American, Italian, and Liechtenstein companies, as well as filmmakers such as Robert Siodmak, Luigi and Dino de Laurentiis, Orson Welles, Tullio Pinelli, Dario Fo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Lattuada, Antonio Pietrangeli, Aldo Vergano, Giuseppe Fatigati, Johannes Mario Simmel, Leopold Lindtberg, Robert Thoeren, Jean Ferry, Jean-Paul Sartre, Vladimir Dedijer, Meša Selimović, and the queen consort of Iran, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary. Shifting focus to a Yugoslav-Czechoslovak-West German co-production The Day That Shook the World (Veljko Bulajić, 1975), I highlight Bulajić’s conflict over the production rights with Brad Dexter, Frank Sinatra’s bodyguard-turned-filmmaker of Herzegovinian descent, which required Josip Broz Tito’s arbitration.

My dissection of production and narrative dynamics illuminates the painstaking effort of Yugoslav filmmakers to condemn the Young Bosnia’s “terrorism” while celebrating the movement’s supranational ideology, appropriate class background, and resistance to Austro-Hungarian imperialism. Simultaneously, the Yugoslavs confronted their partners’ perceived exploitation of Yugoslav production resources and inclination towards generic modifications of history, even if promising to attract international audiences and prestigious awards. Ultimately, the aforementioned examples demonstrate the uneasy balance between the construction of war memory, socialist nation-building, international cultural promotion, and sustainable business development.

 

 

 

 

Short Biography

 

I am a PhD Candidate in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. My FRQSC-funded research is focused on transnational Yugoslav cinema. I received a BA in Dramaturgy and Film & Theatre Studies from the University of Arts in Belgrade and MA in Central European History from the Central European University in Budapest. In addition to authoring a number of theatrical and moving image works, such as the TV show Zaboravljeni umovi Srbije (Forgotten Serbian Intellectuals), produced by Radio Television of Serbia, I have also presented at numerous international academic conferences and published on cinema, media, and history.

 

 

Dragan Batančev