Early cinema in the Balkans

In the Balkans, the intermingling, contamination and fusion of artistic traditions from both East and West have resulted in a unique regional visual culture, to which the arrival of moving images added another means of expression in late nineteenth century. The legacy of Byzantine and Ottoman art and culture can be seen in architecture, decorative and minor arts in the Balkans, which privileges haptic perception, in contrast to optic vision predominant in Western art theory since the Renaissance. In this talk, I will consider the specific geo-political position of the Balkan space at the beginning of twentieth century and the multi-cultural identity of the communities that influence and shape the development of cinema in the region, through the contemporary prism of archives, preservation and memory. The Balkan political, social and historical discourses and archival objects are marked by complex palimpsests, which are constructed through continuous rewriting and re-interpretation of the past, identity and origin (for instance the case of Manakia brothers). Furthermore, the postmodern condition of the world (fluidity, ambiguity, lack of boundaries) is closely intertwined with discussions on early cinema (fragmented, ambiguous, relative), but also the conceptualisation of the Balkan space now and then, whose fuzzy and flexible contours require a transnational approach.