Macedonian culture and its audiences: An analysis of Before the Rain

This chapter discusses Before the Rain, a feature film in which images that were displayed and understood as Macedonian were placed on view before a worldwide audience. It seeks to explore the ways in which studying such a site can contribute to understanding the relationship between representation and realism in the context of national culture. The particular focus of the chapter is to try to theorize the different modes of interaction that were set up between different audiences and the cinematic images, at a time when the republic with which the film was associated had yet to establish itself as a stable political entity.