engleski

Miners of Homoeroticism on Documentary Film in Socialist Yugoslavia: The case of 1948 and 1964

Miners played a huge role within the process of Yugoslav political and economic constructing after World War II. At first, after the war, a Federation that was one of the most faithful Soviet allies, after 1948 and Cominform Resolution (Tito-Stalin split) became an outcast country from the socialist bloc. It is in that period that several documentaries on miners are filmed (e.g. 100 dana u Brezi and Događaj u Raši), including scenes of their strong and naked torsos that seem to be completely in the function of aesthetics, although it is quite clear that we are dealing with highly political movies. This, in Yugoslavia new, socialist masculinity filmed in the depths of the earth is filmed in the key of “voyeurism”, the miners are always “pretending” not to see the camera and the result is very similar to what Marsha Bryant defines a homoerotic gaze in her analysis of British documentaries from the ‘30s. Although at that politically heated moment during late ‘40s these scenes will not present a problem of any kind, it is during 1964 when Vojko Duletič will direct a film Tovariši in a Slovenian mining town of Velenje that similar scenes will present themselves as “highly problematic”. Taking the aesthetic character of miner’s maleness to be the main principle of his documentary, the result was unhidden fascination with young male miner’s strength and physicality. This caused, in Duletič’s words, “unclear feelings” towards the film and him as an author. It is a “significant coincidence” that in 1963 during Duletič’s filming of documentary, Tito and Hruščov met in Velenje. But at that time of peace with the Soviet Union, or at least in Duletič’s movie, miner’s masculinity no longer had a significant political role.

Miners, Homoeroticism, Documentaries

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