Dragana Jurišić: I Feel There are Wounds from The Past That Should be Looked at Rather Than Ignored

Inspired by her father’s long-ago friendship with an unusual character, director Dragana Jurišić travelled from Ireland to Bosnia and Herzegovina in search of his past—and his present. Obsessed with cowboys from an early age, photographer Aljuš Musli passionately made his own short Westerns. He wrote simple scripts and filmed them with volunteer actors. Hoping to improve his chances in the film world, he changed his name to Harry Jackson, the pseudonym by which he became known in Bijeljina and beyond. Trying to find out what happened to him during and after the war, Dragana spoke with many people who remembered him. These conversations reveal just as much about the breakup of Yugoslavia as they do about Harry himself, touching on the outbreak of the war, propaganda, national identity, nationalism, coexistence, heroism, morality and courage. It turns out the Wild West from Harry’s imagination may not have been in the West after all.

 

 

You are right, people coming together to make the film was much more important. However, we still strived to make a short Western in Harry’s style, the best way we could. I tried to carry over from Shane’s script into our film the elements that speak the most to Harry’s fate and have resonance with issues we all faced and still face in the former Yugoslavia, the territorialism, brother turning against brother, the idea that there is no going back after the atrocities, to the way it was. 

 

 

My research on Harry began in 2014, when I travelled from archive to archive across the former Yugoslavia looking for Harry’s films, but was unable to find any. Unfortunately, his personal archives were destroyed during the war. At Radio and Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I found a short documentary about Harry made in the 1970s by Emir Kusturica. Our local producer, Zoran Galić, contacted Srđan Karanović, who also made a documentary about Harry, which led Karanović to include Harry in his drama film Fragrance of Wild Flowers (Miris poljskog cvijeća), which we have incorporated into the film.

 

The production team from Restart, Oliver Sertić and Zrinka Košar, found brilliant footage of Harry at the Croatian Kinoteka, something not seen before.  Our researcher, Manca Bajec, was great at finding Harry's former actors and collaborators. Many of them kept images from Harrys films as memorabilia of a special time in Bijeljina and Semberija. Making a film like this requires a lot of trawling through distressing footage of war; much of this was done by our Irish producer, Anna Rodgers. Producer Zlata Filipović tracked down a personal piece of my past, locating an Italian television documentary filmed with me as a teenager during the war. That was a very emotional find. I do feel we managed to get quite a lot from what seemed like a big challenge at the start. 

 

 

My goal was not to create a little Yugoslavia on the set; that country has been gone for nearly four decades. I am more interested in life now. I feel there are wounds from the past that should be looked at rather than ignored, so a new period can begin. The people we met in Bijeljina were all kind and generous, giving so much of themselves to make this film - perhaps some of them would not have met or spent time together if it were not for the process of making it. My hope is that it has created friendships and collaborations that will last across the divides created through decades of nationalist propaganda. Division and mistrust are not the way forward; there’s nothing good or productive about societies based on those values.

 

 

Westerns are a deeply problematic genre where violence is often romanticised. Many tend to ignore that American history celebrated through Westerns is the history of a country built on the genocide and displacement of Native peoples. Westerns, together with partisan films (which are coded in a similar way), are what Harry and that entire generation of men who ended up becoming involved in the wars of the 1990s grew up watching. 

 

This is an interesting connection. When Harry was interviewed by Jusuf Trbić for Slobodna Bosna, in 1991, Trbić asked: “What if Harry the Avenger rode into our region from somewhere, whom would he challenge to a duel, to protect justice and truth?”. Harry replied: “I don't know. There are many of them. And they don't want a duel, they shoot in the back [...] For them, honour does not exist. Today it is almost impossible to determine who is positive and who is negative. And that was known even in the Wild West. What is fair in our country? Who can say that? No, the Western is outdated, all movies are outdated, life today is more exciting and bloodier than any movie”.

 

Harry realised at the beginning of the war that the villains, hungry for power, had taken over the narrative. A new era of antihero has dawned. However, the true heroes worked in the background, guided by goodness and empathy. These are the people who risked their lives to save others, regardless of nationality, race, or any kind of division. I heard many of these stories when making The Balkan Cowboy; some made it into the film, some did not, but they will stay in my heart forever.  

 

 

This film was conceived from the beginning as a cautionary tale of what happens when you let hatred and fear rule, and as a quest for justice for Harry. In the world where authoritarianism, nationalism and racism are on the rise, it’s important to say - look, this is what happens when things like that go unchecked. There is a line in Shane - "There is no going back from killing", and it’s true, this is a blood stain which people in post-war communities carry for decades; their children and grandchildren will carry it too. Hatred is never the way forward. The way forward is to look at the similarities we share, be guided by empathy and help others on our way through the very short time we have on this planet. For all its contradictions, there is a sense of naivety, hope, and a belief in justice within the Western genre, and that is something I was also trying to convey in this film.

 

So, what changed is that from an initial bleakness when I started making The Balkan Cowboy, I found hope in the people I met in Semberija.