HU OSA 350-1-1:755/1

Journeyman Pictures: Kosovo's Clock

Item

Moving Image

14 minutes

English (Original)

Not Restricted

documentary film

This feature examines the growing support for a violent Albanian struggle, in the light of the recent massacre at Drenica. -There the Serbs massacred 41 ethnic Albanians, claiming they were searching for members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The village was tear-gassed, the houses shelled to pieces. The survivors deny that there were any gunmen in the compound. And the village is only 500m from a Serb police base, an unlikely place to set up a guerilla camp. Now 60 refugees spend each night in the schoolhouse, as Serb choppers circle overhead. It was meant as a warning to the Albanians against armed resistance to Serb rule. In fact it's had the opposite effect, galvanising the Albanians behind a direct challenge to Serb domination. -The scene is now set for a dangerous escalation of violence, with the Albanian Kosovo Liberation army receiving fresh arms and recruits following the massacres, and the Serbs digging in to defend their control of Kosovo a any cost. Adern Demaci, the 'Nelson Mandela of Kosovo', who spent 28 years in prison campaigning for Albanian independence, says Albanian violence is in self defence. -Albanian students learn in their own language inside an 'Albanian' university, a rough, unfinished building. They've been running a parallel education system for years. Under international pressure Serbia has finally conceded that Albanian students can return to Pristina University and be taught in their own language. But in shifts only. That's still apartheid claims the students' leader. -A diplomatic solution seems impossible with even the moderate Albanian leadership insisting on independence in Kosovo, an outcome that the Serbs and the international community show no sign of accepting.