The Weight of Chains is a 2010 Canadian documentary film directed by Boris Malagurski.[1] The film argues that the breakup of Yugoslavia was "orchestrated by Western powers in furtherance of imperial ambitions".[2] According to the filmmaker, it also presents stories of "good people in evil times".[3] It was released on December 17, 2010.
The sequel, The Weight of Chains 2, was released on November 20, 2014,[4] while the last part of the trilogy, The Weight of Chains 3, was released on September 28, 2019.[citation needed]
The film uses re-compiled archival footage extensively,[7] which was provided at no cost by Radio Television Serbia.[8]
Synopsis
The film provides a background history of Yugoslavia, from the medieval Battle of Kosovo to the 1912 incorporation of Kosovo into the Kingdom of Serbia and then to the formation of Josip Broz Tito's Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after World War II. It discusses the persecution of Kosovo Serbs after World War II, as well as alleged plans by Nationalists to create an ethnically pure Greater Albania.
The film claims that U.S. interests in Yugoslavia promoted "a market-oriented Yugoslav economic structure" through the National Endowment for Democracy, and the G17 Plus as part of a policy of "privatization through liquidation" that increased ethnic tensions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Western nations, both openly diplomatically and covertly militarily, supported separatist groups and encouraged conflict so that NATO could be installed as peacekeepers for their own interests. A cigarette factory that was bombed by NATO was later bought by Philip Morris, which the film presents as an example, that the purpose of the war was economic colonization of the country.
The film claims Yugoslavian leaders such as Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tuđman and Alija Izetbegović were focused only on power, and not on the well-being of their people and they, along with the local media, mobilized public opinion in favor of conflict. These tensions led to the 1990s Yugoslav Wars, which culminated in the Kosovo war.
The film presents the fall of Srebrenica "as a stage-managed ploy by the Bosnians and Americans to justify NATO military intervention against Serbia".[2] Interviewee Srđa Trifković asserts that there are "trustworthy witnesses" who claim that Bill Clinton had indicated that "5,000 dead Muslims would be the price of NATO intervention" and that these witnesses believe that "Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by Izetbegović in order to provide this burnt offering to the White House". The film also presents the Srebrenica "civilian death toll as no larger than the number of Serbs killed in the surrounding area".[2]
The film includes interviews with the widow of Josip Reihl-Kir (former police chief of Osijek, Croatia) and the widow of Milan Levar along with the story of Srđan Aleksić, who saved a Muslim man from an attack by soldiers of the VRS. There is footage of the village Vrhbarje in Bosnia where Serbs and Bosniaks lived together up to the end of the Bosnian war, but were then separated – as the Muslim Bosniaks, left for their own entity.
The film argues that, in the aftermath of the war, the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank further demonstrated that Eastern European states were not meant to be equals with the European Union and the West, but rather were only seen as markets for Western goods and sources of cheap labor. The film portrays an increase in the debt of the former Yugoslav countries by showing how much tax money each citizen of the former Yugoslavia would have to pay in order for their countries to be debt-free.
Malagurski's address at the Belgrade premiere of the film at the BELDOCS Film Festival at the Kinoteka theater in 2011
Rade Aleksić — Whose son Srđan Aleksić, lost his life while defending a Muslim friend - an ethnic Bosniak[11] - who was being attacked by a group of soldiers of the VRS.
Jože Mencinger — Slovenian lawyer, economist, and politician who served as Minister of Economy of the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian vice president of government for economic coordination from 1990 to 1991.
Michael Parenti — American political scientist, historian, and cultural critic.
Scott Taylor – Canadian journalist who specializes in military and war reporting.
Zvonimir Trajkovic — Described on the film's website as:- Serbian political advisor to Slobodan Milošević (1990 – '93) and Radovan Karadžić ('94 – '97).[10]
The film was also due to be shown in the 2011 programme of Serbian film director Emir Kusturica at the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival. However two days before the festival began, the film was removed from the schedule without explanation.[27]
The film was broadcast in early 2015 on Eurochannel[28] TV networks.
RTS protest
In June 2012, a protest in front of the Radio Television Serbia building requested the airing The Weight of Chains on Serbia's public broadcaster.[29] In front of 200 protesters, Malagurski said that Aleksandar Tijanić, the director of RTS, had told him that despite positive reviews, The Weight of Chains couldn't be aired on RTS because it had already been aired on Happy TV, Malagurski claimed only clips had been shown, which he said was corroborated by documents from Happy TV.[30] Malagurski also said that "Serbia is the only country in the region and in almost all of Europe, where The Weight of Chains has not been shown by the national public broadcaster".[31]
Critical response
The film has received mixed responses,[according to whom?] these include (ordered by publication date):
Toni Ti, writing in Brightest Young Things, a Washington DC and New York-based web magazine, noted that the film "brings up a lot of issues the public may not be aware of". However, she describes the "often-gratingly blatant bias of the film maker". Malagurski, she says "employs a quippy sarcastic tone that sounds incredibly petulant and at times, too amateur for the gravitas subject matter". She goes on, "overall, spending 30 minutes on Kosovo and barely mentioning what really happened in Srebrenica leaves me questioning the director’s choice in taking this approach". Concluding, "what is he trying to show? It can be quite baffling at times".[32]
Vladislav Panov of Pečat, a weekly political magazine in Serbia, wrote that the film is "very convincing" and that "Malagurski covered the facts and scenes in the film just as Michael Moore does in his documentaries. And just like that film maker, obviously Boris' main role model, Malagurski located the source of evil in Washington and big American corporations which had come to buy us out after instructing and preparing 'irrational slaughters of primitive Balkan peoples' ", but added that "Boris bravely detected the main domestic culprits in G17 Plus in skimming the cream on behalf of foreigners".[33]
Konstantin Kilibarda, writing for the blog Politics, Respun, described the film as a "misguided attempt to give an alternative account of the wars in the former Yugoslavia", and that the film maker "attempts to minimize, deflect and distort the well established role of Serbian leaders in the former Yugoslavia in pursuing a militant nationalist program since the late 1980s, that sought to reclaim Kosovo through the imposition of martial law, as well as create 'ethnically compact' territories that would link Serbs in Serbia with Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia".[34]
Historian Predrag Marković, in a discussion at Singidunum University, said that the film talks with a language understandable to young Westerners, and that "the author, with a fine irony, distances himself in regards to the local figures and presents a very complex problem, evading self-justification that many domestic directors are prone to."[35]
Tristan Miller, writing in the U.K.'s Socialist Standard, wrote "the film’s flimsier claims and arguments can be explained as the work of a naïve but well-meaning patriot, but others cannot be so innocently excused" ... "for all the effort he spends decrying the dishonest propagandising which fuelled the Yugoslavian implosion, he certainly has no qualms employing many of the same tricks when it suits his own agenda". Concluding, "he has a very low estimation of the intelligence of his audience".[2]
Both Miller and Kilibarda were sympathetic to the film's claim that Western economic policies contributed to social instability in the buildup to the Yugoslav Wars.[2] Kilibarda also stated that "Western media often engaged in collective blame of the Serbs" in the mid-1990s.[34]
Lukáš Perný, writing in the SlovakZem a Vek magazine, noted that the film presents information that helps the viewer to understand the interests behind the "colonization" of Yugoslavia.[36]
Serbian film critic Vladan Petković described the film as "pro-Serbian conspiracy theorist propaganda". According to Petković, "the film is promoted as having been made in Michael Moore's style, but it totally lacks Moore’s characteristic qualities. Instead Malagurski interviews journalists, politicians, ex-ambassadors and historians, who all promote the same one-sided story of Serbia as a victim of Western capitalist imperialism".[37]
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian separatist militia known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.
The State Union of Serbia and Montenegro or simply Serbia and Montenegro, known until 2003 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FR Yugoslavia (FRY) or simply Yugoslavia, was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The state was founded on 27 April 1992 as a federation comprising the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro. In February 2003, it was transformed from a federal republic to a political union until Montenegro seceded from the union in June 2006, leading to the full independence of both Serbia and Montenegro.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombings continued until an agreement was reached that led to the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army from Kosovo, and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force whereas the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil ; in Yugoslavia the operation was incorrectly called Merciful Angel, possibly as a result of a misunderstanding or mistranslation.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fueled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
Srđa Trifković is a Serbian-American publicist, politician and historian. He is currently a foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles, and a politics professor at the University of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Greece and Serbia enjoy close diplomatic relations, which have traditionally been friendly due to cultural, religious and historical ties between the two nations.
Miroslav Lazanski was а Serbian journalist, military analyst, politician, and a diplomat who served as ambassador of Serbia to the Russian Federation. Previous to his appointment, Lazanski was a Member of parliament. He wrote on political and military matters and was a correspondent and commentator for the Belgrade daily Politika. He was a member of the National Assembly of Serbia from 2016 to 2019 as member of the governing coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party.
Slobodan Samardžić is a Serbian academic and politician who served as the Minister for Kosovo and Metohija from 2007 to 2008.
Dragoljub Ojdanić was a Serbian General of the army who served as the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia and Minister of Defence of Yugoslavia. Ojdanić commanded the Uzice corps during the Bosnian War and was tried and convicted of the deportation and forcible transfer of Kosovo Albanians during the Kosovo War by the ICTY.
James Byron Bissett is a Canadian former diplomat. He was High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago and later Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria.
During the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001), propaganda was widely used in the media of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of Croatia and of Bosnia.
The Scorpions were a Serb paramilitary unit active during the Yugoslav Wars. The unit was involved in war crimes during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. After the wars, four members of the unit were found guilty of killing six prisoners during the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 and five were found guilty of killing fourteen civilians, mostly women and children, during the Podujevo massacre in March 1999.
The diplomatic relations between Israel and Serbia were established on January 31, 1992, when Serbia was part of FR Yugoslavia. Israel has an embassy in Belgrade and Serbia had one in Tel Aviv. Yugoslavia was the second country in Europe to recognize Israel in 1948. The two countries have economic and cultural ties, helped by a sizable community of Jews from the former Yugoslavia in Israel. Serbia agreed to move its embassy to Jerusalem on 4 September 2020 but decided not to after Israeli recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign state, something Serbia disputes.
Kosovo: Can You Imagine? is a 2009 documentary film directed by Serbian Canadian Boris Malagurski about the plight of Serb communities living in Kosovo at the time the documentary was filmed. Former Canadian general Lewis MacKenzie, former Canadian diplomat James Byron Bissett, former UNMIK officer John Hawthorne and economist Michel Chossudovsky appear in the film.
Boris Malagurski is a Serbian-Canadian film director, producer, writer, political commentator, television host, and activist. His films include the documentary series The Weight of Chains.
Slobodan Milošević was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the President of Serbia between 1989–1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 until his оverthrow in 2000. Milošević played a major role in the Yugoslav Wars and became the first sitting head of state charged with war crimes.
Serbia, as a constituent subject of the SFR Yugoslavia and later the FR Yugoslavia, was involved in the Yugoslav Wars, which took place between 1991 and 1999—the war in Slovenia, the war in Croatia, the war in Bosnia, and Kosovo. From 1991 to 1997, Slobodan Milošević was the President of Serbia. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has established that Milošević was in control of Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia during the wars which were fought there from 1991 to 1995.
The Weight of Chains 2 is a 2014 Canadian-Serbian documentary film about the political and economic situation in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Directed and produced by Boris Malagurski, the film was released on November 20, 2014, at the Serbian Film Festival at Montecasino in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The public image of Slobodan Milošević, concerns the image of Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia and FR Yugoslavia among the residents of former Yugoslavia and worldwide. Before the Yugoslav Wars the public image of Slobodan Milošević oscillated from faceless bureaucrat to defender of Serbs. During the Yugoslav Wars his image again oscillated from Balkan Butcher to Guarantor of Peace and back.
The Weight of Chains 3 is a 2019 Canadian documentary film directed by Boris Malagurski, dealing with the issue of how the military-industrial complex, big business and political interest groups endanger peoples’ health and existence, focusing on Serbia. As the third installment of The Weight of Chains trilogy, the film deals with NATO's use of depleted uranium munitions during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the environmental disaster that this allegedly caused and systemic issues that prevent people from taking democratic control over their countries. The film also discusses related topics in Cuba, Chile, Italy and Bolivia. The film premiered as a part of the DOK International Feature Documentary Film Festival in Belgrade.
↑ "Entangled in Neocolonialism". Interview with Gregory Elich (interviewee in the film). Monthly Review. Archived from the original on September 16, 2014. Retrieved September 11, 2014.
↑ Gašić, Dimitrije (February 27, 2012). "Težina lanaca Screening at FMK". mediacentar fmk singidunum ac rs. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved November 20, 2014.
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