At
least in one respect, life in Sarajevo has changed for the better since the 100th
anniversary of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in 2014. After three
years in mothballs, the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina has
re-opened, in part thanks to a donation from the U.S. Embassy. The Archduke
came to Sarajevo to preside over an opening ceremony at the museum, but as you
might have heard, he never made it. Jasmila Žbanić samples the wide spectrum of
Bosnian opinion on Franz Ferdinand and the trigger-man Gavrilo Princip, while
documenting the commemorative festivities through crowd-sourced footage in the
docu-essay One Day in Sarajevo, which
screens during the eagerly anticipated 2016 Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival
in New York.
To
some Sarajevans, Princip was a righteous anti-Imperialist resistance fighter,
while others are understandably put off by his Greater Serbian ideology. The
latter often recognize the Archduke’s sadly unrealized policies for decentralizing
and liberalizing the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Frankly, it is hard to understand
the affection for Princip, given how his attack directly led to WWI, which in
turn sowed the seeds of WWII, which subsequently led into the Cold War, and
eventually the Balkan War, but maybe you have to give him some credit for
punching above his weight class.
Naturally,
there are a number of festivities underway that Žbanić frames to maximize the
irony. However, she also captures the “you can’t go home again” emotions of a
Canadian émigré’s return visit with his preteen daughters. Perhaps the most
poignant moments are the nearly empty museum, where unpaid staffers still show
up for work daily to keep up basic maintenance and prevent theft. Although Žbanić’s
cameras document it as its loneliest and shabbiest, the museum is still a
lovely building with great potential (so it is nice to know it is now serving
its proper function).
