One More Mile: A Dialogue on Nation-Building
(80 minutes, digital Betacam, 2002)

By Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin

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Description of Project

The documentary structure of ONE MORE MILE begins with an overview of the issues involving the international presence in Bosnia and with the introduction of our interview subjects. The film focuses on the interpersonal relationships between international workers and local Bosnians within the context of their areas of expertise—media, education, economy, law, the arts, and healing. Interspersed through these sections are historical accounts (written and spoken) and found footage that address the allegorical implications of the international presence.

The filmmaker's overall strategy in the final cut is to weave visual and sonic metaphors about the country with straight up, informative interviews: OSCE Spokesperson Tanya Domi describes the American attitude towards "fixing problems" over images of a life-size chess game in one of Sarajevo's town squares; disparate voices appear over images of traveling by tram through the city and car through the countryside, suggesting the continual dynamism of displacement and homelessness as experienced by both groups; the pluralistic nature of pop culture is developed through numerous musical styles on local radio (including internationally funded international stations), and the outright surreal nature of Bosnian TV with over 200 local networks vying for airtime. They also juxtapose interviews with striking pensioners next to government sponsored South Park-like animations aimed at battling corruption.

As the viewer becomes familiar with the largely self-conscious attitudes of the interview subjects--journalists, economists, writers, teachers, military officers--they begin to draw a picture of the enormity of the project in which all of the film’s subjects are involved. These contrasting statements set up a dialectical debate about the nature, necessity, and validity of certain kinds of international relief work. ONE MORE MILE ends on a hopeful note, with artists, educators, and healers who look to make sense of the recent past in ways that cannot be quantified, and in ways that, finally, will be the foundation for a truly multicultural Bosnia.

The subjects of ONE MORE MILE speak for themselves from all corners of the country--Sarajevo, Mostar, Banja Luka, Brcko, Gorazde--forming a complex dialogue of voices that give insight into the process of rebuilding a divided nation in a pluralistic and increasingly interdependent world. Musical choices reflect ethnic traditions and are juxtaposed self-consciously with images. Found footage includes the 1984 Winter Olympics, artist’s video footage from the siege of Sarajevo, animations, MTV-style election songs, a SFOR/Nazi propaganda video, and other story-telling moments from interviews.

ONE MORE MILE includes footage that develops a number of metaphors about the geographic and symbolic space of Bosnia—a child tuning an antique radio to different channels, café life and coffee drinking, a giant cross being erected overlooking the Muslim side of Mostar, and textbooks with inflammatory passages marked out. Voiceovers merge into shots of the people and places of Bosnia in a way that leaves a strong impression of the entire countryside, hauntingly beautiful in its rural devastation, rather than isolating the more familiar war-torn urban Sarajevo. The overall effect is of a guided tour through the wilderness of a newly born country--a tour where the viewer gets to listen to all of the inhabitants of the bus, instead of to the droning of the driver.

Format:

To arrive at the final cut, the filmmakers spent two years (2000-2002) traveling to Bosnia-Herzegovina four times (2-3 weeks at a time) and editing before and after each trip. On each trip, they worked as a small crew, renting a car and lighting equipment, hiring only a translator in various towns, and using small format digital video equipment to retain intimate working relationships with the subjects who are often under tight schedules. The final cut draws from over 80 hours of raw footage resulting in over 1000 pages of transcribed and translated interviews, 5 hours of collected stock footage, a dozen maps, numerous de-classified documents, and countless literary and scholarly works read. With each trip, we gathered additional follow-up material from our key interview subjects in the field and actual images that are necessary to the consistent flow of ideas and mood. In addition, this rough cut reflects the comments from the subjects, reviewers, and fellow scholars after they viewed the work in various forms during several private screenings.

Voice and Point-of-View:

The filmmakers hope to avoid some of the trappings of traditional documentary work by not providing an authoritative voiceover. Their perspective comes through the selections that are made when two or more voices are put in dialogue with one another. The anecdotes that are placed next to each other provide a complex vision of an equally complex place. For example, Regan McCarthy, one of the primary interview subjects, suggests that for now it is best not to deal with the war in textbooks. “Deal with it through other kinds of resources…newspapers…multiple sources…current events…and let the debate flow until you try to stamp history in its final form, which is what a textbook does.” A single voiceover can sometimes have the same effect. The Bosnian situation seems to call for multiple voices.

Multiple languages (English, Serbo-Croatian, German) are also included in ONE MORE MILE and the filmmakers plan to have the entire film subtitled in different languages for different audiences. A version entirely dubbed in Serbo-Croatian is nearly complete.

Specific Communities and Public Television Audience:

There is a large Bosnian refugee community in the United States (particularly in Chicago, Boston, Florida, and San Francisco) that may be interested in this topic and that is certainly under served by commercial television interests. Viewers interested in foreign policy and international aid would also be drawn to this topic. Public television viewers, in general, are more concerned with layered and complex arguments about historical moments. The filmmakers believe that ONE MORE MILE provides a perspective of the country that counters most Americans’ impression of the former Yugoslavia as a place devastated by war and sinking further into economic depression. That certainly is one truth, but this picture of Bosnia is more complex than most mainstream media representations of the moment. The filmmakers intend to stay involved with both the Bosnian refugee community in the States and the international community abroad by organizing discussions and screenings of work related to the topic.
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