Inventory

Once a symbol of Yugoslavia’s progress, Sava Centar was left to deteriorate since the country broke apart. Piece by piece, the interior elements that resided in this cultural and congress centre since the 70’s are torn out. Like many of the younger workers on the reconstruction, Nenad is here for the first time.

From this simple title, there emerges both a form and a red herring. first of all, a form– that of a filmed relationship in a simple, elegant framing. Its rhythm accompanies the stripping bare of the Sava Centar, a monumental building in Belgrade erected in 1977 and which witnessed the birth of the non-aligned movement initiated by Yugoslavia and other nations. Everything that made up this whole is now taken apart. The workers are there unscrewing, moving, tossing away, sorting through chrome chairs, blinds, desks, planks. But the lighter the building gets, the more the shots become inhabited by something greater. And therein lies the red herring: sober and observant, the film is not content with just a cold, detached enumeration. Its form is invented elsewhere, and behind this inventory lies a complex narrative. Through the archive images that punctuate the film, the furnishings and fittings give the impression that everything has remained intact, that the building could have once again hosted events. Yet its time is up, but the film steers clear of nostalgia. The filmmaker instead makes a delicate shift towards what is to come: among the young men butchering and gutting the building’s flesh and memory, one youngster stands out. He returns home, present, he is only as concerned as the film decides to make him, he bears the weight of these images that he himself has unloaded. The society he has discarded is perhaps no longer his own, but it is impossible to erase from this individual, or anyone else, the fact that he is indeed the child of this society. It is at the same time a simple and very heavy task to disassemble a building.   
 
Clémence Arrivé Guezengar