Monday 8 May 2000
Tito enjoys comeback By Zoran Radosavljevic
ZAGREB: Twenty years after his death, Yugoslavia's communist ruler Marshal Josip Broz Tito is enjoying a public comeback. Tito, a flamboyant and often controversial figure, who ruled the multi- ethnic federation from the end of World War II until 1980, is the subject of a new film by young director Vinko Bresan called The Marshal.
Bresan's surreal film poses the question: What would happen if Tito came back from the dead to his native Croatia, where a few of his die-hard followers, ageing communists and anti-fascists, now live?
The film is making many in Croatia, now an independent state, look again at the historic role of the wartime partisan leader turned world statesman. This year Croatia marked the death of Tito for the first time since gaining independence in 1991.
Several thousand people gathered on May 4 in Kumrovec, his birthplace in northern Croatia, where sirens wailed at 3:05 p.m., the exact time of his death. The mourners, mostly elderly, laid flowers and sang patriotic songs. Many filed through the wooden cottage where Tito was born.
A pub called ``The Old Man'' recently opened in Kumrovec and local leaders have restored the entire village in the hope of reviving once-thriving tourism.
Tito's Yugoslav federation outlived him by ten years before it crumbled amid rising nationalism in its six constituent republics and the end of communism.
On April 15, The Marshal had its opening night in Belgrade, capital of the rump Yugoslavia, and Bresan received a long ovation from the audience. The movie is now being shown throughout Yugoslavia and is being promoted with the slogan: ``The movie we have waited for 20 years.''
``One cannot avoid Tito. He is the only common ground we (the people of former Yugoslavia) have left now,'' Bresan said, explaining why the film was being received with enthusiasm in Serbia.
Earlier this year, a Serbian film called Tito and I, a parody of the Tito years as seen through the eyes of a young boy, showed in Zagreb and for days drew roars of laughter from the packed house of a small art house cinema. ``This is a natural reaction of people who have realised after 10 years that they lived better before,'' said sociologist Slaven Letica, commenting on the blooming ``Tito trade.''
Tito remains a controversial figure. (DPA)
For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service
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