Burning Village

07-03-2012

This is a clip from the film that I shot for producer Richard Bramford during the Croatian military offensive Operation Storm in August 1995.

We were sent to cover the unfolding humanitarian story in Knin, which had, since 1991, been the headquarters for the Serbs that took over the Krajina area of Croatia. Driving round the outlying areas of the town we saw plumes of smoke coming from the hillside and went to investigate. What we found were scores of burning houses in one village where the remaining Serb population had been terrorised and some of the old men had been executed. It was grim stuff.

I remember shooting the story as carefully as I could, trying to pick up details as a witness in what was clearly the scene of a war crime, all the time worried about the Croatian forces returning to find us filming. I also had my stills camera with me and when I had finished shooting all the film sequences and interviews, I raced back into the houses with Richard (himself ex-military and probably a much better at gauging the situation than I was) shouting in my ears to 'bloody well hurry up!" I wanted to shoot some stills, again as evidence or something. Anyway, in all the excitement and panic, I made a hash of it and the pictures never came out properly. I learned a lesson as a photojournalist that day.

As soon as we had finished we raced back to Zagreb where the story was cut in a flash and fed or handed to the international networks. Suddenly UNTV was making news and the next day Roy Head our Series Editor was keen for us to go back out to the field to find more evidence and gather more stories about the aftermath of the Croatian offensive.

The film made the network news and it was used in has been used in the BBC documentary Death of Yugoslavia by Brooke Lapping. The film was also presented as evidence in the Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The film is pretty grim, so be warned. I will try to post the film in its entirety at a later date.

 

UNTV Burning Village 1995 from Andy Johnstone on Vimeo.

03-05-2012
Lucy May Maxwell
The UNTV feature that includes the footage in the above clip is called 'Human Rights Abuses: Grubor' and its IWM number is UNT 729 (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/100017155).

Also, Andy, nine out of ten films of unedited rushes of this footage have viewing copies so you could view these if you were interested?
03-05-2012
Andy Johnstone
Thanks Lucy. I have ordered a copy of the film from the archive, along with other material. It would be nice to see a longer version of the film as well though. Not sure I need to see the rushes, though we shot loads of material for that film!

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