Dec 13, 2011
By Rebecca Kendall/International Institute
When Angelina Jolie began making her film about
the Bosnian War that took the lives of 100,000 people and forced 2
million people from their homes, she wanted to meet with war victims,
military experts, war correspondents and representatives from the United
Nations to grasp what occurred between 1992 and 1995.
Angelina Jolie wrote, directed and produced a film that
exposes the brutality of the Bosnian War that pitted neighbor against
neighbor. See the movie trailer below.
She also wanted to meet the retired U.S. army general who was a key
participant in the U.S. delegation that worked toward peace in Bosnia
and helped bring an end to the divisive conflict that pitted neighbor
against neighbor, resulting in the horrific genocide of Bosnia’s Muslim
population.
Wesley Clark, now a senior fellow with the
UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, was that man.
Clark rose to the rank of a four-star general as
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe during his 34-year military
career. During the Bosnian War, he was sent to the conflict-ridden
nation to serve as the military adviser to a diplomatic negotiating team
headed by Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Extensive negotiations
ultimately resulted in the signing of the Dayton Agreement, which
finally brought peace in 1995.
As part of her effort to learn about the forces underlying the conflict, Jolie sent Clark a portion of the script for
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" and
asked for his reaction. Clark, who had previously met Jolie while
working at the Council for Foreign Relations, provided his comments,
warned her that the movie would be controversial and gave her the names
of others who could provide further perspectives and details.
On Dec. 8, the film that Jolie wrote, directed and
produced had its Los Angeles premiere in Hollywood, and among the
invitation-only audience were more than 50 faculty and staff, many from
the Burkle Center and the
Center for the Study of Women, two UCLA centers that co-sponsored the event along with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.It will be shown in select theaters beginning Dec. 23.
Wesley Clark, senior fellow at the Burkle Center, was part
of the U.S. delegation that worked toward peace in Bosnia. Jolie sought
his help to understand what happened there.
"The film is powerful," Clark said in an email. "It brought back
memories of terribly difficult times — of war, violence, lost friends,
political manipulation and deceit, senseless prejudices and all the
hatreds inherent in old, unsettled conflicts.
"The war was a key experience in learning the
post-Cold War lesson that wars within states are highly destructive,
regionally dangerous and potentially destabilizing," Clark said. "And,
above all, we saw the tragic human toll of such conflicts. Such
conflicts must be resolved and — better yet — prevented."
The film chronicles the story of Danijel, a Bosnian
Serb police officer, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim artist. The pair, who
are romantically linked prior to the war and separated following a
nightclub fire-bombing, is reunited by chance when Ajla is taken by
soldiers from the home she shares with her sister and brought to a war
camp that is under Danijel’s military command.
But Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees who has traveled to more than 40 countries to
support solutions for refugees and vulnerable children, didn’t just make
a love story during a tragic time of war.
"She didn’t simplify the topic, as you might expect
from a first-time writer," said Alexandra Lieben, deputy director of the
Burkle Center, said of the Academy Award-winning actress and three-time
Golden Globe winner.
"Instead, she brought life to the human element of war
and the complexity of such a devastating situation," Lieben said. "It’s
a tough film — but an incredibly valuable one — to watch."
The film also highlights the extreme brutality and
humiliation experienced by Bosnian-Muslim women at the hands of Serbian
forces. It is estimated that 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped while in
captivity during the war.
"This film is very much concerned with humanitarian
issues in Bosnia related to the plight of Bosnian-Muslim women, and the
systematic rape and sexual assault that were practiced upon many of
them," said Kathleen McHugh, a film scholar who directs the Center for
the Study of Women. "This film was made so that this human rights crisis
won’t be forgotten and to remind the world that the situation there is
still very fragile. Women are frequently the most vulnerable in civil
wars, and they are the recipients of some of the worst outcomes of
ethnic strife and violence."
Kal Raustiala, (from the left) director of the Burkle
Center; Kathleen McHugh, director of the Center for the Study of Women;
actor Rade Šerbedžija; and Angelina Jolie share a moment on the red
carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of her film, "In the Land of Blood
and Honey."
Circumstances changed so drastically and so quickly, McHugh said. "The
situation disintegrated so rapidly that people went from living lives
that were tense but okay, to experiencing unspeakable conditions. It
went on for a very long time before there was an intervention, and women
were the particular victims of that."
In gaining some perspectives on Bosnia, Jolie said she
welcomed Clark’s involvement in the project as a consultant on the
movie and was impressed that he didn’t pressure her to emphasize
America’s role in the peace process.
"There wasn’t a push on his side to say ‘Well, we
should be seen as heroes’ or … ‘You should be clear that we’ve gotten
all the bad guys,’" said Jolie. "There was none of that. It was, ‘This
is a very sensitive region’ and ‘Approach it carefully and thoughtfully
from all sides’ and ‘There are great people on all sides.’ … He has an
obviously deep connection to the area."
Jolie added: "It’s not a film about America and
American intervention. It’s one of the first films, the cast was saying,
from an outsider that’s not about outsiders. It’s about the people from
inside."
Jolie said she initially conceived of the script as a
"kind of private meditation" to help her vent the frustrations she’d
felt after more than a decade of traveling into post-conflict regions.
In fact, she never planned to show it to anyone initially.
How could so-called "normal" people turn so cruelly against their
neighbors and "lose their humanity and begin to behave in a way that
just seems impossible to understand?" she wanted to know.
Jolie said the moral support she received from the
UCLA community was critical. It was "very, very important" to her that
these experts in international relations and women’s studies came to see
the film and shared their comments.
She said she hopes the film will become a catalyst for
dialogue and action for many people. "Maybe they’ll want to see what’s
still going on there and see how they can help because there are so many
people still in need there."
