A DOCUMENTARY ON MINORITIES

By Zoran CULAFIC

Hello and welcome, from the Studios of UN Radio in Kosovo…

During the last week of January, the Serb enclave of Gracanica played host to an annual TV documentary festival. Among the dozen or so short TV films shown, one 12-minute documentary called “Christmas Tree for the Forgotten” piqued the interest of festival goers.

Produced and directed by TV reporter and Kosovo-native Zarko Joksimovic, the film documents a Christmas celebration in a German KFOR camp near Prizren. What makes the scenario for the film unusual is that the celebration involves a group of 20 or so Serbs displaced after the riots in March of last year.

Dobrila Dolasevic is a 65-year-old woman from Prizren featured in the film. In this clip, she describes the sentiments of many Kosovo Serbs uncertain about their future after five years of isolation.

Dolasevic

“Imagine … celebrating a Church festivity in a German KFOR camp … Christmas … or Easter! It’s awful… there’s more tears than joy, more sadness than pleasure. But we must not forget our traditions, although people have forgotten us…everyone has forgotten us - totally.

ATMOS …

Dolasevic

“There is no more prevalent pain than remembering the lucky days in the past when you were unhappy.”

As “”Christmas Tree for the Forgotten” helps to illustrate, Kosovo Serbs displaced both in 1999 and again last March have become increasingly alienated from Christmas traditions that for centuries have been a part of Kosovo’s heritage.

Particularly revealing in “Christmas Tree for the Forgotten” is a scene where some of the Kosovo Serbs living in the German KFOR camp visit their community’s church near Prizren. Using Kosovo license plates and exhibiting some degree of fear, one woman Olga Gligorijevic describes what she witnessed soon after seeing the church for the first time after the March violence.

Gligorijevic

“We managed to sneak in by car and when I saw the St George Church. Whoever did it … being a church or a mosque, it doesn’t matter it’s a holy place … why did they do it … what harm did this holy place visit on them … to burn it? Not everyone is guilty of doing this, but one should not damage holy places … There is no church near here where we can go to light a candle now …”

ATMOS …

According to the testimony in “Christmas Tree for the Forgotten,” the chief message coming from many Prizren Serbs is that they feel unalterably separated from Prizren. In one scene, 65-year-old Dobrila Dolasevic explains.

Dolasevic

“Prizren is in my soul … that’s why I did not leave Prizren, that’s why I have stayed after 1999, my grandchildren stayed with me, because we do love Prizren with all our hearts and souls we love Prizren …it is ours … but now after all that has happened ... when I was left totally alone … to be frank … for me Prizren now is not what it used to be. Prizren has the neither the soul nor the heart of it’s past. It has lost everything.”

Zarko Joksimovic’s TV documentary, “Christmas Tree for the Forgotten” was presented in Gracanica Monastery Hall in late January. To get more information about this film, contact – link_produkcija@hotmail.com. And with this we end today’s program.