Film program in Art Kino 2 / part of Escape
MMSU / 29.11.2018
Film program in Art Kino 2 /
part of Escape
29.11.2018
MMSU / Krešimirova 26c, 51000 Rijeka
Selector of the film program: Diana Nenadić
Program schedule:
SOSKE, producer: Rada Šešić; Croatia, 2001., 32′ – documentary
ARME LEUTE, producer: Vlado Kristl; Germany, 1963., 8′ – experimental film
BJEŽI, producer: Mladen Stilinović; Croatia, 1973., 7′ – eksperimental movie
TERRA ROZA, producer: Aldo Tardozzi; Croatia, 1999., 20’– documentary
IN WHITEST SOLITUDE, producer: Rada Šešić; Croatia, 2003., 10′ – experimental film
Whether we understand it as an extreme form of migration or as a purely psychological phenomenon, in order to have an escape – individual or collective, there is always a need for some kind of threat or coercion – physical, existential or psychic. Sometimes this is a set of circumstances that a person in exile is hounted by even when he finds himself ‘safe’.
About such escape types are short films of Croatian authors in this program. Half of them emerged in the second half of the twentieth century when ideological pressures as the cause of the fugitive (some or something) fought for primacy with the existential pressures or supplemented with them. Vlado Kristl, the only true Croatian film dissident, escaped from the first ones, but as an individual who had moved somewhere else, the fear of the (poor) collective continued to haunt him, which is also shown by his performer participation in the German Poverty People (1963). The conceptual artist and filmmaker Mladen Stilinovic defended himself the entire life at home from various (ideological and other) signs that contaminate everyday life and this is happening in the short film “Escape from 1973”.
Other films in the program are series of reactions to the fate of displaced persons caused by war and other conflicts from the late 20th century, as well as two films by film critic and director Rade Šešić, a woman from Bjelovar with a Dutch address. In Whitest Solitude (2001) her poetic and melancholic escape to the past is expressed by the choreography of dancers inside the room walls filled with patriotic family and film memorabilia, while the documentary triptych of Soska from the same year, composed of three different shots / screens, gives the word to exile people from various parts of the world (Burundi, Chechnya and Sri Lanka), to their “yesterday, today and tomorrow”. Finally, actors of the documentary film Terra Rosa Alda Tardozzija from 1999, leaning from the Balkan cannons in the pink décor of their Istrian refuge, show that it is possible to escape “in place” but not forever – to escape.
Diana Nenadić, program selector
The program is result of the co-operation between Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, FACTUM, Goethe-Institut Kroatien, Croatian Film Association and Art Kino Croatia.