CONVERSATIONS ON MULTIETHNICITY [Main Title]

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  • Title: CONVERSATIONS ON MULTIETHNICITY [Main Title]
  • Film Number: UNT 713
  • Other titles: MULTIETHNICITY [Alternative Title] UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION (UNTV) ZAGREB COLLECTION, YUGOSLAVIA [Allocated Series Title]
  • Summary: The people and political leaders in Tuzla share their thoughts and experiences on living in an ethnically mixed community and their prospects for preserving it.
  • Description: Footage of “Terusi” Band rehearsing. One member of the group explains that the band was founded thirty years ago and was composed of a ‘Croat, a Serb, a Muslim and a Montenegrin’. They explain that today the group is still ethnically mixed. One member says that Tuzla has always be mixed and that people never paid attention to whether someone was a Muslim, a Serb, a Croat or a Jew. Footage of the saxophone player improvising, accompanied by the keyboard player. One member of the band has a Serbian wife. He says that it was very difficult at the start of the war, especially in those ‘basement shelters’ when people were cursing the other side. He said that he felt bad for his nine year old son who had to hear all of the insults. Footage of drum solo. The keyboard player says that nationalism is expected during war but in the city the change was minimal. ‘People overcame those lower instincts and continued a normal common life’. The main singer says that his mother and sister are in Belgrade and it is impossible to communicate with them directly. He is waiting for this 'madness' to end so that he can see them again. They say that multiethnicity is a part of Bosnia. One says how ludicrous it would be to try and divide up Americans into Italians, Mexicans, English and French. He says it is ‘inconceivable...they are all Americans and those who live in this country are all Bosnians regardless of the God they pray to’. Shot of people looking at the boards in the town square that record the names of the seventy-one victims of the shelling in May. The death notices show that the victims were a mixture of Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Footage of the graveyard with coffins drapped in sheets awaiting burial in freshly dug graves. Forty nine of the dead are being buried in a non-denominational graveyard. Their parents believe that as they were together in life, so should they be in death. Eighteen families buried their children in separate cemeteries. Footage of a funeral procession and the pall bearers lowering a coffin into the ground. Since then some families have decided to exhume them from the separate cemetery and re-bury the dead in the common cemetery. Shots of mourners laying wreaths. Street shots of Tuzla showing graffiti and stickers opposing national parties. Interview with Mayor Selim Bešlagić who says that multi-national parties won the elections at the start of the war in comparison to other towns where nationalist parties took power. This distinguishes residents of Tuzla from other towns in Bosnia. Interview with Vehid Šehić, President of Tuzla Citizens’ Forum, who explains that the nationalist elements of parties want to create national or even religious states. They call them the ‘clerical’ elements. Shots of Orthodox church and the mosque in the main square. The muezzin calls worshippers to prayer. Shot of Orthodox worshippers. Interview with Mišo Božić, President of the Serbian Council of Tuzla-Podrinje Canton, who says that the nationalist impulse, though usually encouraged by religion, has been weaker in Tuzla than elsewhere. Shots of Orthodox worshippers singing. Shot of Muslim men at prayer. Vehid Šehić, President of Tuzla Citizens’ Forum says that anyone who wants Bosnia’s borders to remain the same must ‘fight for a Bosnia-Herzegovina where civil laws reign, where the rights of the individual are respected'. Mayor Selim Bešlagić says that in Tuzla they are trying to protect all the people and any group who is endangered.
  • Alternative Title: MULTIETHNICITY [Alternative Title] UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION (UNTV) ZAGREB COLLECTION, YUGOSLAVIA [Allocated Series Title]
  • Colour: English (Tape Code A)
  • Digitised:
  • Object_Number: UNT 713
  • Sound: Bosnian (Tape Code B)
  • Access Conditions:
  • Featured Period: 1990-2000
  • Production Date: 1995-07 1995-07-28
  • Production Country: UN
  • Production Details: Currie, Mary (Production individual) Bramford, Richard (Production individual)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations:
  • Keywords: Bosnia-Herzegovina & Tuzla (geography)
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: English (Tape Code A) Sound format: Bosnian (Tape Code B) Soundtrack language: Croatian (Tape Code C) Title language: Serbian (Tape D)
  • Technical Details: Format: Beta-SP Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Running time: 9 mins 2 secs
  • HD Media:
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    UNT 713

  • Related IWM Collections Objects:

    UNT 758 (UNTV PROGRAMME NO 105 [Main Title]) UNT 713 X (CONVERSATIONS ON MULTIETHNICITY (UNEDITED RUSHES) [Allocated Title])
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