Trauma, Memorialisation and Intermediality in Jasmila Žbanić’s For Those Who Can Tell No Tales

Abstract

This chapter discusses cinematic intermediality in Jasmila Žbanić's film, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (2013) as a modality of addressing the traumatic memory of atrocities and mass rapes committed during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. Traumatic memory is not primarily formed through symbols or narratives but rather resembles ?a wounded body’ (Broderick–Traverso), and therefore it may disrupt cultural strategies of memorialisation, narrativization and representation through which personal, collective or historical trauma is approached. In Žbanić's film, intermediality becomes a mode of addressing collective trauma by ‘acknowledging’ the unrepresentable within representation and by foregrounding the interstitial and corporeal aspect of traumatic memory. The intermedial cinematic discourse that incorporates photofilmic pictures, fragments of performance art and practices of non-cinematic image-making (such as amateur video diary) performs an irresolute and affective memorialisation of war trauma engaging the viewer in potentially transformative memory work.