VUKOVAR CAFE [Main Title]

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  • Title: VUKOVAR CAFE [Main Title]
  • Film Number: UNT 748
  • Other titles: UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION (UNTV) ZAGREB COLLECTION, YUGOSLAVIA [Allocated Series Title]
  • Summary: What does Vukovar look like four years after the fierce fighting ended which left it devastated? What do the current residents of Vukovar think about what happened four years ago? Is coexistence possible?
  • Description: Shots of ruined houses in the deserted city. Archive footage from 1991 in sepia shows soldiers in Vukovar. On those same streets, children now play. Interview with Borka Suvajdžić from Negoslavci. She says that she works for a farming company near Vukovar. Her job is to check the quality of the milk on a daily basis. A man says that he has been given a Croatian’s house and he is working to repair it for winter. A tennis pupil, Branka Popović, says that she is preparing to play in tournaments abroad. Martina Balzova interviews these three residents in a Vukovar cafe. Borka says that it is “nice” in Vukovar now in comparison to 1991 because there is no more war or fear. She says the “the Ustashas”, a term that describes Croatian Fascists during the Second World War , destroyed this town. She says that Serb forces only acted in self-defence. Archive footage in sepia from November 1991 showing a long line of Croatian refugees leaving the town. The narrator explains that 32,000 refugees left the town in late November of that year and 5,000 were sent to detention camps in Serbia. 1,200 people who were detained on the 18th of November 1991 are still unaccounted for by any authority. Borka says that the Croats left because they felt guilty. She insists that they did not have to leave. “They were not forced either by Serbs or by the Yugoslav Army”. Archive footage in sepia. One of the woman leaving Vukovar in November 1991 says “they have killed all our friends and we are not guilty...we didn’t want a war...we still don’t hate”. Shots of men dumping weapons and being body-searched by soldiers. In the Vukovar cafe, the man says that “when a dog barks and you don’t have a stick in your hand, it will bite you”. He argues that Croats armed themselves whilst Serbs were still unarmed. Archive footage in sepia from Easter 1991 shows Vukovar as a war-zone. The narrator says that both sides claim that the other side began arming first. Fade to scene in Vukovar now. Children playing on the same streets. The words of the song are subtitled and it includes the lines “The first one who got hit is saved/ All the others are eternal hostages of nightmares”. Shots of the three residents, the first in the dairy, the second working on roof repairs and the third playing tennis. In the cafe, the young tennis pupil, Branka, says that the Croats are the enemy because they started the war. When the interviewer asks how she knows this, she says because “everybody says the Croats started the war”. She says that she did not talk about political disagreements with Croat friends at school before the war. Series of shots merging the same streets in 1991 and now. Clip from the town under shellfire in 1991. The barrater says nothing like this had been seen in Europe since the Second World War. In the cafe, Borka says that she would not like to see Croats return to the town because “they stained their hands with the blood of Serbs”. The man wishes all of the guns in the world could be silenced. The girl says that she would try to forget what has happened so that life could be as it used to be. Closing shots of the town’s streets in ruins.
  • Alternative Title: UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION (UNTV) ZAGREB COLLECTION, YUGOSLAVIA [Allocated Series Title]
  • Colour: English (Tape Code A)
  • Digitised:
  • Object_Number: UNT 748
  • Sound: Bosnian (Tape Code B)
  • Access Conditions:
  • Featured Period: 1990-2000
  • Production Date: 1995-08
  • Production Country: UN
  • Production Details: Johnstone, Andy (Production individual) Pavlinić, Sven (Production individual) Balazova, Martina (Production individual)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations:
  • Keywords: Croatia & Vukovar (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: 11 mins 29 secs
  • HD Media:
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    UNT 748

  • Related IWM Collections Objects:

    UNT 748 X (VUKOVAR CAFE (UNEDITED RUSHES) [Allocated Title]) UNT 864F-698F (UNITED NATIONS TELEVISION: "BEHIND THE FRONTLINES" SERIES (FINAL CUTS, TAPE 1) [Allocated Title])
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