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| Jack Barich: Searching for a Storm |
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5/8/2009
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Producent:Jack Barich
Film: Search for a storm
Montreal screening of the filem:
Friday, May 8 at 8:00PM
St Nicholas Tavelic Croatian Church
4990 place de la Savane, Montreal
Ticket info: Ante Duvnjak 514-347-4798
THE FILM:
Searching for a Storm is a documentary film that asks if the UN is guilty of using its international war crimes court to justify UN failures during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Critics charge that the UN's International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is attempting to create a narrative which justifies the UN wartime position that the conflict in the Balkans was a civil war and not a war of aggression by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.
This charge is especially relevant to the current war crimes case of Croatian general Ante Gotovina, who has been indicted as a war criminal by the UN court. Gotovina is a hero in Croatia for leading Operation Storm, a military operation that liberated the country after four years of Serb occupation. However, many crimes were committed in the operation's aftermath and Gotovina is being tried as a war criminal for his command responsibility.
Juxtaposing current interviews with archival footage, Searching for a Storm examines UN wartime policies to learn if they may have contributed to the war's tragedies and the film asks if Gotovina is guilty or a political scapegoat for UN failures during the war.
In the documentary's search for the truth about what happened before, during, and after Operation Storm, the filmmakers interviewed people with a wide variety of opinions about the war and Gotovina's case, which is currently under way and will conclude in the summer of 2009. These interviews took the crew on a whirlwind tour of Europe to Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Paris, London and The Hague and included diplomats, human rights activists, journalists, clergy, soldiers, prosecution and defense staff, and lay Croats, Serbs and Bosnians, including Croatian actor Goran Visnjic.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:
As the son of Croatian immigrants I spent many of my childhood summers on the Adriatic islands where my parents were born and so it broke my heart when war came to this beautiful country. My heartbreak turned to anger when the international community floundered in stopping this conflict in the heart of Europe. It is my belief that had the United Nations acted properly the war may have not happened and certainly it wouldn't have lasted for four long years with over 100,000 people killed and millions more displaced.
It is a commonly held belief among my fellow Croatians that the international court for the former Yugoslavia is being manipulated to justify UN failures during the war and that Croatian General Ante Gotovina is being made a political scapegoat in his current war crimes case. It is argued that the UN court is trying to create a narrative that supports the theory that they employed in formulating their wartime policies, which is that this was a civil war and not a war of aggression by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic against his neighboring states.
As I set out to make this film, I had a strong passion for setting the record straight about the war, how the UN conducted its policies, and whether their court had political motivations for charging Gotovina. It was very important to me that we interview a broad range of people with various viewpoints about the war and Gotovina's case. This search for the truth took me and my crew on a whirlwind tour of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Paris, London, and The Hague to interview prosecution and defense, clergy, human rights activists, soldiers, diplomats, and journalists. I am proud of the outcome, which you will see in my film.
Aside from a passion for telling the truth about the war and the case, it was always paramount in my thoughts that we show audiences the beauty and hope that do exist in Croatia. Along those lines, you will see stunning cinematography of the country by Jared Cotton and we included an epilogue that shows peace is possible. The simple story of how a Serb saved his elderly Croatian neighbor is our small reminder that humanity exists even in the most inhumane of times.
Source: searchingforastorm.com
Read: HISTORY
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ALP
4/28/2009 12:40:25 AM
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