in memoriam Branko Lentic

Ten days ago, more precisely on February 14, Branko Lentic, a TV journalist engaged in investigative journalism at the time when it was just journalism, passed away in Zagreb. However, investigative journalism was dangerous then as it is nowadays, which is to be heard from narrator in the documentary Dinamitaši who talks about threats sent to TV crew which dared to capture statements from those who found courage to talk about the dirty business of illegal fishing with dynamite, a dangeorous affair in which many men lost hands, sight or sense of hearing. Illegal fishing with dynamite took off at the time of construction of the Adriatic Highway, Jadranska magistrala, which practically means that during the period of 20 years (1945-1965) dynamite was easy to get for the men who used it to feed their hungry families. Nonetheless, at the time when Lentic makes this TV documentary, and that is 1974, fish is illegaly caught with dynamite by the men who sell that fish to restaurants for the money three times less than the regulary price of legally caught fish on the market, and that money would then be invested into large renting houses, boats and cars.
Although this story is worth expanding, we would like to linger on the first Lentic's TV documentary, Zagreb, bijeli grad (Zagreb, the White City) from 1969. It was made within the documentary series that was very popular at the time, called Objektiv 350, managed by the journalist Zvonko Letica. Documentary commences in a muddy backyard of the regional seat of the national TV at the time in Dežman Passage, and captures life of Zagreb on a few locations. Among others, those locations are: Trešnjevka, main Zagreb's square – at the time the Square of Republic, then Mažuranić Sq and the Main Railway Station.
At Trešnjevka, the inhabitants of little hauses complain about their neighbours who throw garbage and waste at them from highrise buildings. It is a plastic re-enactment of the growing class differentiations in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. At the Square of Republic, the citizens complain about city fathers letting Zagreb suffocating in dirt, or about the Croatian National Theatre being under reconstruction for far too long. On the other side of the same square, we get to know a micro-international community of shoe-polishers. There is even a Russian among them, who came to Zagreb in 1924. On Mažuranić's Sq, the citizens wait for the transportation in cold weather without shelter, trying to get to the newly built parts of the city (Remetinec, Savski gaj, Trnsko) by the means of public transport: "It is difficult to reach New Zagreb...".

At the Main Railway Station – little Yugoslavia: apples coming from remote Macedonia, a family from Kosovo visiting a cousin who serves the army, women all the way from Virovitica come to the markets of Zagreb to sell eggs (the business went well because it is still the first half of the month, and "people still have money until the fifteenth”) and bring back home some warm blankets. Here are numerous families who come to Zagreb to visit hospitals or lawyers' offices.

While the citizens of Zagreb yammer that "all the money goes somewhere, and we do not know where”, insinuating that it goes to the federative centre Belgrade, they forget that they themselves were in a privileged position in comparison to the citizens of the rest of the Republic of Croatia, who did not have neither hospitals nor lawyers in their towns and villages. Inhabitants of New Zagreb were not in a worse position than the inhabitants of new highrise buildings in London or Rotterdam (which is the subject of the films such as  High Rise Dreams , or more recent Rotterdam 2040), who also, in exchange for the amenities such as hot water and heated apartments, suffered long hours of commuting. 
All those similarities are not meant to be excuses for poor city planning in Zagreb, nor Rotterdam or London (where the accidents caused by bad planning or inadequate performance have been tragic way too often, as it was fire in Grenfell Tower last year). From the (post)contemporay perspective of everydayness in the Republic of Croatia, one has to bear in mind that Branko Lentić adressed the political establishment of the time with a systematic critique and projected it on screens of national television, which today, besides the honorable exceptions such as it was "Stambeno pitanje" (Housing Issue) by Silvana Menđušić, is just a great - rarity.