Why I don't speak Serbian

A public conversation with Phil Collins about his video zasto ne govorim srpski (na srpskom) [Why I don't speak Serbian (in Serbian)] , marking the opening of the Gallery of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin on Friday, 6 March 2009. The text follows the conversation closely, but is not a literal transcript of it. Phil Collins and Ger Duijzings edited and polished the wording and took the liberty to elaborate, fine-tune, and brush up where necessary, mainly for clarity's sake. GD: Thank you, Phil, for inviting me to this conversation, which is a great honour. I have prepared some questions, but feel free to fire back questions whenever you wish. Let me kick off by saying that I have watched the film a number of times and that I am really touched by it. For me - having had the experience of working in the region - it is a forceful and moving statement about language, identity, and violence. It is also a film about language as violence and what unspeakable violence can do to people's sense of being at ease with, or at home in, a language that is not their own, affecting their ability to express themselves through that language. So what I would like to talk about are these four themes - language, identity, violence, and trauma - which seem to be the ones that you explore in the film. The second part of the film is about the virtual impossibility of talking about traumatic events in your native tongue. What I would like to ask you first is whether could you tell us a bit more about how this film came about? Adapted from the source document.