Kamen
The Stones
Florence Lazar
2014 - 70 min - HD - Couleur - France

Reconstructing the past: never before has this expression had such literal meaning as in the Republika Srpska, where religious and locals authorities engage, stone by stone, in a disturbing trafficking of remembrance following the 1992-95 war. The film opens to the sounds of a worksite. "If stones could speak…" regrets Hussein, an imam who is manually rebuilding a demolished mosque. But the silence of stones allows not only deceitful archaeology but also the construction of a film set.
Whether with Amela, the sole archivist recording traces of the genocide for The Hague’s ICJ, or the astounding testimony of a couple of Bosnian teachers living in exile in the Netherlands and who return to Trebinje each summer, Kamen abstains from the parallel editing of dialogues and fabricating their debate in post-production. Each “block” stands alone but also represents a facet of the falsification of History and a small attempt to stem its tide. Kamengrad, the village recently built by Emir Kusturica, who will Þrst inaugurate it as a cultural and tourist centre and probably as a film set, initially appears as a ridiculous, spectacular and amusing analogue.
But as Lazar places the guided tour of the village after the archivist’s testimony, she has us view Kusturica’s megalomania with a very different eye. "Noah’s ark, I tell you!" concludes the guide of this future tourist site, pointing up an architectural syncretism that evacuates a whole swathe of Bosnian culture through the biblical myth. (Charlotte Garson)