Structured across 51 thematic categories – from water and food to snipers, schools, transport, and culture – this documentary collection shows how the citizens of Sarajevo countered the strategy of terror with their ingenuity and resilience. Launched as an educational model, the video guide reinterprets the mechanism of survival as a civic response to the mechanism of terror. By opposing creativity to destruction, it highlights how innovation, adaptability, resilience, and defiance enabled the city to endure and redefine life under siege.
In seeking the most appropriate format for each part of the project, we positioned the philosophy of survival in contrast to the mechanism of terror. We studied the everyday lives of Sarajevo’s citizens across all categories of life typically found in any city worldwide. The difference was that Sarajevo lived for four years under abnormal conditions as if they were normal, and in doing so, it established the elements of an entirely new civilisation based on basic survival.
This led to the conclusion that recycling is the law of survival. Today, that may be a popular mantra, but at that time, Sarajevo survived thanks to recycling. By examining the practice of everyday life, this unique guide, through the reconstruction of an abnormal daily reality, shapes two systems: the survival mechanism and the terror mechanism. We can say that the citizens of Sarajevo emerged as victors from those four long years of an until-then unknown reality.
Note:
All of these projects have since demonstrated that this method is key to documenting events if we want our efforts to serve as a meaningful contribution to the interpretation and understanding of the 1991–1999 period in the former Yugoslavia, for both local and global education. This project has already proven and continues to prove its value as a contribution to the process of truth and reconciliation, as well as to the democratisation of post-war society.
| Theme | The Siege of Sarajevo 1992-1996 |
|---|---|
| Research period | 1992-1996 |
| Original Format | A video documentary series featuring 51 thematic episodes, each between 5 and 8 minutes in length, initially distributed in DVD format. |
| Language | Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian and English |
| Project content | The documentary is structured into 51 thematic categories, each capturing a specific aspect of survival under siege - water, food, snipers, schools, parties, faith, and more. The series offers a powerful insight into life under siege and how the mechanism of survival resisted the mechanism of terror. |
| Production | Belgrade (2005) |
| Note | Produced by FAMA, in co-production with Flash (Sarajevo). The project was supported by Youth Initiative for Human Rights / Inicijativa mladih za ljudska prava in Belgrade (Serbia). |
