Kultura (Skopje) (Sep 2015)
From the Generation Memory to the Group Identity: The Film "A Throat Full of Strawberries"
Abstract
In the work entitled “From the generation memory to the group identity: the film "A Throat Full of Strawberries", the influence of personal and collective memory on generation identity is analyzed. The work is based on Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann’s theory of memory, with a special review of the books “Cultural Memory” (Jan Assmann), and “Work on the National Memory” and “The Long Shadow of the Past” (Aleida Assmann). Firstly, the analysis includes the mapping, then the explanation of the memory figures which appear in the movie. Also, the thesis which I covered in the work refers to the difference between Halbwachs’s term “the images of memory”, and “the figure of memory” introduced by Assmann: the figures of memory are complementary to the first term “because they include not only pictorial, but narrative forms as well.” (Assmann). In this paper, the relation between personal and collective memory is examined, as well as how individual memory influences the establishment of one’s group memory, and how memory and remembrance affect what we call generation identity. The Film “A Throat Full of Strawberries” (by Srdjan Karanovic, 1985) was chosen as my case study. This movie is a sequel to the series “The Unpicked Strawberries” (Srdjan Karanovic, 1976). It tells about a reunion of the group of people of the particular generation, who evoke the memories about the events during the 60’s (the time of their youth), so the topic this film is focused on represents the starting point for the study of the generation memory and its function. The aim of this paper is to prove that generation memory has the crucial role when it comes to the creation of one’s group identity
