‘Waiting for… Not Godot, but Bombs’: Amateur Footage of Everyday Life During the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

This article proposes to lay the foundation of the documentary representation of everyday life during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia through two case studies: On krstari, ja krstarim/It’s Cruising, I’m Cruising (Marko Čvorović, Aleksandar Janković, 1999) and Rampart (Marko Grba Singh, 2021). Eschewing explicit contextualization, these films, partly or entirely composed of amateur footage, bypass the official rhetoric of the belligerents by presenting microhistories entangled in a major historical event. The article demonstrates the potential of homemade images to render the experience of the bombing, while also contributing to the discussions on the daily life menaced by air raids.