Gordana Andelic-Galic

Title: Mantra
Directed and performed by Gordana Andjelic-Galic
Camera: Renato Foder
Sound: Igor Camo
Duration: 5:30
Format: DVD 4:3
Language: without words
Production date: 2006
Production country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Acknowledgements: Kultur Kontakt Austria

Mantra

The plot of the video Mantra takes place on a rarely used road on the outskirts of Sarajevo. I walk down this empty and lonely but freshly paved stretch of the road carrying a Bosnian state flag. During my journey, other flags, which historically represented Bosnia and Herzegovina, any of its constitutive nations or from decisive historical periods of ruling ideologies, are handed to me at regular intervals. There are 24 of these over the course of our history.

As the weight of this load gradually grows I find it increasingly more difficult to cope with it. Towards the end, when I am about to pick up the current flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed after the breakdown of former Yugoslavia, flags start falling out of my arms, I collect them, they fall again and so on.

This piece is intended to elaborate on the burden of our past imposed on us by every political option that reaches governmental power. The last bloody war in this region was caused by that past and this fate will, in any way, most likely follow us into the future. From that reason this story contains neither an emphasised beginning nor an expected ending. The beginning and the end of the piece is only marked by a zoom-in and a zoom-out.

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