Realisations: Serbian Language & Identity
Stare blankly at the poster which speaks in blocks, letters falling backward in my mind. Reaching for the books and loosing myself in the safety of the abstract. Reality seems so far from grasp, grasping for it to be more, grasping to create but I am stifling it. I shove the English words down the throats of Serbs, forcing language to identify with me, jealous that my tongue fails me with those I care to uncover. Pride and frustration wear me thin, and I’m exhausted. The man with his head in the book walks backwards; he does not see where he is going.
After a few days of interviewing and trying to find our feet within the process of this documentary, the issue of language has come to dominate my concerns. Today, it became clear that even though the idea of the project has been to create a portrait of Serbia through the worlds and words of Serbs today, I let my pride overshadow the people. The desire to feel connected to Serbia, and to be able to see myself as someone who was ‘fluent’, overshadowed the reality. I had subconsciously created my own umbrella - protecting myself from letting the language shower down on me, in fear that it would drench me.
We spent the day interviewing two amazing individuals, Relja from Nova Iskra and Iris from the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade University. Although both allowed us to enter their worlds, and discuss Serbia, Serbs and identity today, it was not until they answered the final question in Serbian that it was clear I had been making a mistake. As soon as Iris was asked to describe Serbia in three words, she became alive for me and took her full form: undeniably, her presence in the room was greater and there was something uniquely beautiful when hearing her express her thoughts and her Serbia in her mother tongue. The pull of vowels, the motion of hands and the rhythm of speech warmed my heart – it was the voice of my mother wandering into my ears. The language of childhood, and of feeling. And yet, I did not want to allow this language to take power, to stop my connection to the project and interviewees. Or rather, not my connection but possession.
After the interview, we three stood in the corridor speaking Serbian. My exhaustion meant that words tripped on my tongue and fell short of confidence so that Maja took the lead. They stopped by a poster pasted onto the student notice board. The Cyrillic alphabet stood boldly and unapologetically, in black, in front of me. The two discussed, were excited about the event, the debate. I stood, eyes hazy, and the letters dropped off the page and out of comprehension. I wandered off down into the library, walking into the back room amongst the columns of books. Titles popped out often in English. I picked up several books here and there. Transcultural contacts, identities, psychiatry. Art and Anarchy. I sat on the bench and knew I would have to acknowledge and accept the need for each person to express their portrait in their mother tongue. What I had not expected was that my mother tongue (as in my mother’s actual Serbian tongue) would come out of me as a fractured language, grasping at the familiar amongst the unknown. Generalising sentences and observing words as islands.
I looked up, and stuck to the fleshy wooden door was a cartoon. The man with his head in the book walks backwards; he does not see where he is going. I had been trying to use research and theory as a means to see where the project was going and in what form. But it was this, especially during the production stage, and my insistence on English that prevented me from seeing that I would be taking the documentary in the wrong direction. I do not want to create a documentary called ‘Portrait Srbija’ which expects of all Serbs to speak English, so as to essentially stroke my ego. From now on, the interviewees will be asked to speak in their mother tongues. From now on, I put down the book to see where we are going.
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