A history of what has not yet happened (Milcho Manchevski's 'Before the Rain')

The practice of history is under siege today from two armies: one made up o f theorists, whose writings have called into question the truth claims of t raditional historical discourse; another made up of filmmakers, who have st olen the audience for historical stories. Yet it is precisely the attacks f rom the former army that open the way for us to accept the latter as a new kind of historian-that is, of people who attempt to make meaning out of the traces of the past. This new 'history' on the screen has different rules o f engagement with the past than does our traditional written history. It al so raises new questions about why we study the past or what we really want to learn from that study. Before the Rain is a historical film that hints a s a new kind of history, one set not in the past but in the very near futur e, a history that has as its burden not to explain what has happened but a history that uses trace elements of the past to serve as both witness of an d warning against a potentially destructive future.