ABSTRACT
This chapter compares how the Jasenovac camp is shown on film in different periods and regimes. What is analyzed are four films that approach the topic of Jasenovac from completely different, often conflicting, positions: Jasenovac, by Gustav Gavrin and Kosta Hlavaty (1945), Jasenovac by Bogdan Žižić (1966), Blood and Ashes of Jasenovac, by Lordan Zafranović (1983), and Jasenovac – the Truth, by Jakov Sedlar (2016). Much of the analysis is devoted to the latter film because of the controversy it provoked. Still, it is interpreted in relation to earlier films that set the context for its understanding. Attention is drawn to explicit manipulations and distortions of the facts used in films. The films are also seen as works of memory, which have an active role in the performance of collective identities that break through the Jasenovac camp as a symbolic topos. By raising the awareness of the mechanisms of identity construction, the author indicates the danger of interpreting a documentary film as necessarily true. Instead, the author suggests the necessity of interpreting film as a document of a particular time and ideologies and as the scene of struggles over meaning and different visions of social space.
