Post-Yugoslavs: Exile is (not) just another line in one's biography

The Museum of Contemporary Art - Skopje from December 18 to 31 presents its latest film programme Post-Yugoslavs: Exile is (not) Just Another Line in One's Biography, curated by Kumjana Novakova, and screening online.

This closely curated program cycle builds on Yugoslav Experiment(s), a 2019 special film program of the MoCA film and video department, also curated by Novakova, and focusing on the Yugoslav film avant-garde from the 60s to the 80s, or the cine-experiments as amateur cineastes were referred to.

“Although we cannot talk about chronology or continuity in film and audio-visual arts in the space of what was once Yugoslavia, the authors presented in Post-Yugoslavs: Exile is (not) Just Another Line in One's Biography share sensibilities that are determined by the poetics of the space and the common, as well as the uninterrupted presence of Yugoslavia as a historical, political and cultural reference. Conceptually, the post-Yugoslavs programme does not aspire to a programmatic meta-narrative, on the contrary - it builds on the idea (of Walter Benjamin) that authors in transition create images of temporal clashes with the intention to expose the instruments and goals of the ideology of transition. In our context, these film images are also spaces of different experiences of history, echoes of deleted or cancelled histories, memories, experiences - of the political, of the collective. Finally, these are also spaces through which we create or at least have the opportunity to create affirmative collectivities that have the potential to grow from the progressive common heritage,” underlines the curator of the programme, Kumjana Novakova.

The films included in the program: Journal 63 - The Train of Shadows by Nika Autor, a work that represented Slovenia at the Venice Biennial in 2017, and the last film of Salatić that premiered at the Venice Settimana della Critica You Have the Night - are available worldwide, as is the highly acclaimed work of Srđan Keča Letter to Dad. The recent feminist essay Homelands of Jelena Maksimović, the last socially engaged work of Josip Lukić - White Christmas, the masterfully crafted On the Water of Goran Dević and the heterodox Oroslan by Matjaž Ivanšin will also be available until 31 December 2020, but only for the residents of the countries of former Yugoslavia.

"Post-Yugoslavs: Exile is (not) just another line in one's biography" is part of the film and video program of MoCA-Skopje, which is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Northern Macedonia.