In the Name of the People: Yugoslav Cinema and the Fall of the Yugoslav Dream

This dissertation outlines the trajectory of Yugoslavias decline through an examination of select works of Yugoslav cinema from the late 1960s to the late 1980s which cogently commented on their sociopolitical context. It brings together various interpretive perspectives and utilizes film studies, cultural studies, political history, and postcolonial studies to discuss how the Yugoslav society and its political system are scrutinized through allegory, satire, and genre revisionism, for instance, and to elucidate what the films contribute to discourse on the origins of Yugoslavias violent breakup. Through a discussion of cinema, arguably the most politically subversive form of expression in the Yugoslav public sphere, this dissertation offers insight not only into why the country broke up but also, and perhaps more importantly, into what was lost when it broke up. Although it revolves around Yugoslavias failure, the dissertation validates the egalitarian, anti-imperialist Yugoslav idea and offers a take on the countrys demise that is free of Balkanist stereotypes and anti-communist paranoia common to most discussions of Yugoslavias end. It counters the view of Yugoslavia as a dictatorship which disintegrated when dormant ethnic antagonisms of its peoples were inexplicably reawakened, and ties the emergence of ethnic nationalism to Yugoslavias economic collapse of the 1970s and 1980s caused by the grasping reach of Western economic liberalism.