ABSTRACT

This article deals with the representation of national history through cinema as exemplified in early Serbian film. It examines how major events from the history of Serbia, such as the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 and Serbia’s struggles in WWI, have been represented by two early Serb feature films Karadjordje (Čiča Ilija Stanojević, 1911) and Sa verom u Boga/With Faith in God (Mihajlo Popović, 1932). By drawing mainly on the German film theorist Helmut Korte and his Systematic Film Analysis, the article discusses the production, the plot and the aesthetics of the two films in relation to their contemporary historical and cultural context. Particular emphasis is given to the films’ reworking of pre-existing representations of history by earlier media and to the incorporation in the film narratives of contemporary public discourses in order to become evident that both films dealt with topics that were important at the time of their production as well as that they had contributed to the process of the Serbian national-identity formation.

Keywords: history, Karadjordje, national representation, Systematic Film Analysis, With Faith in God, Serbian Cinema