The Origins of an Unexpected Documentary: Navigating Complex Regional History
Having started the production process for our documentary series on the work of the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s office in Belgrade in late 2022, we are now finally presenting the finished product.
To answer the question on why we chose to handle this process as an in-house production, let us recall how the idea of doing a documentary on hbs Belgrade came into being. In 2022, as Simon Ilse, our office director at the time was leaving, our colleague Paola Petrić had the idea of doing a short documentary about our office’s work over the past 20+ years, that would also serve to commemorate our office’s anniversary. There was a convenient occasion coming in the form of Simon’s farewell reception, when most of our partners would be in the same room together, so our initial idea was to interview them, throw together a montage with party B-roll, and put it out quickly.
However, we came to realize that we didn’t want to produce another snappy corporate hagiography of ourselves, but use the documentary as an opportunity for examining the broader context, introspection, celebrating our successes and critically reflecting on missed opportunities. We also realized that the documentary isn't really entirely about us, the hbs Belgrade office, but about the entire ecosystem of progressive green organizations and activists whom we have partnered with over the past 20+ years for a more just, sustainable and European region.
Then there is the anniversary issue. Though the documentary was planned to commemorate the 20th anniversary of our office in Belgrade, determining a precise date for the beginning of our work quickly proved elusive. In fact, the Foundation’s engagement in the region took several forms over the decades. As we learned, the Heinrich Boell Foundation started its first activities in what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. After the end of the war in Bosnia, a permanent office was opened in Sarajevo, and soon thereafter, the Belgrade office was set up as its branch. Our office didn’t officially “gain independence” until 2006, when it was registered under domestic law, covering what would soon become Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. Reflecting on this complexity, and not wishing to be unnecessarily pedantic, we decided to conceptualize our documentary as a celebration of 25 years of meddling in Belgrade, under various institutional and legal frameworks.
Four Thematic Episodes
The panoply of topics we worked on, even from very early on, required us to pivot on our initial concept for the form of the documentary, away from a single half-hour short film, and towards several episodes on specific programmatic areas, which we were able to abstract from these 25 years. We settled on four: transition and facing the past (1), environment and energy (2), women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights (3), and urban planning, housing, independent culture, and the commons (4).
In the first episode, we start by looking back at the earliest days of our work in a war-torn and rapidly collapsing Yugoslavia, when the Foundation supported peace activists and movements across the former country from Berlin, before setting up offices in Sarajevo and Belgrade as soon as it became feasible to do so. We also trace the arc of transition with the help of prominent figures from the peace movement and civil society, from great expectations in the early 2000s to disappointment with the victors of October 5th and the pace of EU integration, culminating in the return to power of the same politicians who were supposed to have been relegated to the dustbin of history merely a decade ago.
In contrast to our work on democratization, our environmental portfolio was slow to start. In the early years, there was little explicit work on the environment (let alone climate change), because all other topics were overshadowed by the need to set up democratic institutional arrangements and come to terms with the recent wartime past. However, our environmental work took off from 2013, when we introduced an Environment and Energy component to support the impulse from civil society to start tackling these issues and pressure the government to undertake necessary reforms in line with EU environmental regulations, while ensuring that those most vulnerable were not left behind. The second episode includes interviews with our partners in this component and current and former colleagues, covering a range of sub-topics such as energy law, energy poverty, citizen energy, and environmental reforms as part of the EU integration process.
Gender democracy has always been one of the core concepts the Foundation insists on, so our work on the topic started early on but has evolved significantly over time. In the early days, this meant supporting feminist anti-war movements, which gave rise to other initiatives following October 5th. The most important of these was the establishment of women’s studies, first as an extra-institutional curriculum, and then as an official part of the curriculum at the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade, as well as continued support for the rights and well-being of LGBTIQ+ people, including a landmark guide to LGBTIQ+ psychotherapy in the 2010s. Subsequently, our work with women’s initiatives focused on supporting rural women’s entrepreneurship and collaboration, mostly in Vojvodina, as well as in the North of Kosovo. Recently, we have worked with LGBTIQ+ organizations in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo on reporting and monitoring hate speech and hate crimes against LGBTIQ+ people based on their sexuality or gender identity. These aspects of our work are covered in our third episode.
Episode 4 is the longest and was the most complex to assemble because it covers what has become our office’s flagship topic - urban planning, housing, and the commons. Thinking about urban commons began as a series of talks in the early 2010s, and a publication on what kind of city we should strive for. This gave rise to an ecosystem of partner organizations dealing with these topics in various ways, and a sprawling back catalog of progressive and imaginative work on independent culture, collaborative models of governance over common goods, beyond the hegemonic paradigm of nationalism and private ownership. Work on independent culture in particular has proven adept at breaking through that paradigm, enabling a cross-pollination of ideas between artists from Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, as well as other neighboring countries. More recently, this work has been directed at reaching out directly to citizens impacted by unwanted urban projects, providing them with urban planning expertise necessary to resist and make their voices heard through official channels.
Defending Democratic Principles Through "Meddling"
It is from these efforts that the grassroots political movement Ne davimo Beograd came about, initially as a form of resistance to the controversial Belgrade Waterfront project that was imposed by the ruling party as a national priority. In spite of continued attacks against all independent and progressive actors in the country, the movement has managed to complete its transition into the parliamentary political party Zeleno-levi front (Green-Left Front), so that now, these progressive policies are being voiced in the Serbian Parliament.
The success of our political partners has also reflected back on us, in the form of ever more frequent denunciations by high-ranking state officials, including the president himself. We have been accused of financing various protests and actions in opposition to the government, described as a conduit for German meddling in Serbia’s internal affairs.
Over the course of our work on the topical episodes, it became clear that we wanted to reclaim “meddling” by putting it in the title of our documentary, in line with the famous quote from our namesake Heinrich Böll: “Meddling is the only way to stay relevant”. To that end, we have added a fifth episode beyond the initial plan, as a political thesis statement distilled from the others. With it, we aim to answer the questions of why we do our work, what we mean by meddling, who stands to benefit from it, and to clear up some intentionally perpetuated misinformation about the role German political foundations play in the public spheres of the countries they operate in.
We hope that this fifth episode will serve as a starting point for a public debate on the challenges currently faced by civil society in Serbia and throughout the region. Recently, we have witnessed intense efforts to intimidate civil society actors and activists and obstruct their work through various administrative, as well as extrajudicial means. There has been an increasing number of cases of human rights activists being harassed at the border while returning to their own country, and foreigners being denied entry into Serbia based on their political background. The adoption of a “Russian law” has also been floated in Serbia and the Republic of Srpska that would require civil society organizations receiving funds from abroad to register as “foreign agents”. One such law has already been adopted in Georgia.
For us, meddling means standing up for fundamental democratic principles and freedoms; a fair and sustainable economic model; clean air, water, and soil; gender equality and the right to live and love as you choose; justice, peace, and reconciliation between all the peoples of the region. That is why, in spite of the challenges, we will never stop meddling.
Acknowledgements:
We would like to thank everyone who agreed to sit for an interview:
- Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space
- Vladimir Arsenijević, KROKODIL
- Visar Azemi, Former Executive Director, Balkan Green Foundation
- Staša Baštrica, Executive Director, Queer Montenegro
- Sonja Biserko, Founder, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
- Bekim Blakaj, Executive Director, Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo
- Zoran Bukvić, Founder, Ulice za bicikliste
- Azra Džajić-Weber, Former Director, hbs Regional Office in Sarajevo
- Ana Džokić, Co-Founder, Elektropionir, Ko gradi grad
- Vuk Iković, Former Project Coordinator, KOD
- Simon Ilse, Former Director, hbs Belgrade
- Dušan Janjić, Founder, Forum for Ethnic Relations
- Luka Knežević Strika, Kooperativa, NKSS
- Radomir Lazović, Co-Founder, MikroArt, Street Gallery; Co-President and MP, Green-Left Front
- Nino Lejava, Director, hbs Belgrade
- Aleksandar Macura, Co-Founder, RES Foundation
- Olga Manojlović Pintar, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Recent History of Serbia
- Tibor Moldvai, Program Coordinator, hbs Belgrade
- Predrag Momčilović, Former Director, Zajedničko
- Arbër Nuhiu, Executive Director, Center for Social Group Development
- Ognjan Pantić, Program Manager, Belgrade Open School
- Đorđe Pavićević, Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade; MP, Green-Left Front
- Ana Pertrović, Former Advocacy Coordinator, Da se zna!
- Paola Petrić, Former Program Coordiantor, hbs Belgrade
- Gazela Pudar Draško, Director, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory
- Jovan Rajić, Founder, Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute (RERI)
- Damjan Rehm Bogunović, Former Program Coordinator, hbs Belgrade
- Vullnet Sanaja, Founder and Executive Director, Anibar
- Ares Shporta, Founding Director, Lumbardhi Foundation
- Ljubica Slavković, Director and Co-Founder, Nova planska praksa
- Jovana Timotijević, Ministry of Space
- Daliborka Uljarević, Executive Director, Centre for Civic Education
- Dobrica Veselinović, MP, Green-Left Front
- Jelena Višnjić, Director and Co-Founder, BeFem
- Ana Vuković, Coordinator, NKSS
- Jasminka Young, Co-Founder, RES Foundation
- Adriana Zaharijević, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory