SHORT FILM PROGRAMME: (POST)SOCIALISM REVISITED

Alternative Film/Video Belgrade, Europe’s oldest festival of avant-garde film and video art, maintains the tradition of non-commercial experimental art. The short-film programme “(Post)Socialism Revisited” surveys film and video work of the past five years dealing with the (post-)socialist space and living conditions. The compilation was curated by Greg de Cuir, selector and programmer for Alternative Film/Video Belgrade.

RUČAK / LUNCH
Croatia 2008, 17 min, DVD, colour, eng dubbed Version
Director: Ana Husman

An irreverent comedy of manners about how to behave in domestic settings, one meal at a time. Husman's instructional cinema decodes the rituals of everyday life in an effort to expose the mechanisms of our human relations.

A TIME SHARED UNLIMITED / A TIME SHARED UNLIMITED
Czech Republic 2010, 10 min, DVD, colour, eng OF
Director: Zachary Epcar

Prague of the future as seen through the eyes of an outsider. Life in post-postsocialist Europe will be as sweet as fresh-squeezed juice as long as you obey the rules. Epcar presages dystopia masking itself as utopia in this offbeat vision.

UTOPIA / UTOPIA
Germany 2009, 8 min, DVD, colour, spa OmeU
Director: Estela Estupinya Garcia

Remnants of the socialist experience by way of the Neue Heimat housing project. Utopia between working-class origins and new economic realities in Germany. Garcia uses archival footage to paste together the pieces of a would-be paradise.

TRANSFORMANCE / TRANSFORMANCE
Croatia, Germany 2010, 10 min, DigiBeta, colour, no dialogue
Director: Nina Kurtela

Work and art merge in this fast-motion photographic blur of contemporary urban renewal. Kurtela uses still photography to create a time-lapse that documents the construction of a performing arts space and the artist’s position within it.

RAZGLEDNICE / POSTCARDS
Slovenia 2010, 9 min, DVD, colour, no dialogue
Director: Nika Autor

A slow-motion vivisection of the absurdities migrants face in transitioning from third- to second- to first-world countries. The author subversively appropriates surveillance images in order to inspect the intricacies of foreign relations on the borders of the European Union.

OD DO / FROM TO
Croatia 2012, 10 min, Blu-ray, colour, no dialogue
Director: Miranda Herceg

City symphony as “non-place”. Living in Zagreb can be a maddening and increasingly mechanized cycle. Herceg takes us on a tour of crowded trains and empty waiting rooms while asking what the point of it all is.

SKLONIŠTE / SHELTER
Serbia 2009, 19 min, DVD, colour, no dialogue
Director: Igor Simic

In wintery Belgrade some dream of warm summer getaways in Western Europe while others plot to steal a new pair of sneakers. The political is personal in this raw exposé on Serbian youth. Simic employs the tactics of the Belgrade low-fi video movement in the service of a social treatise.

NOVEMBAR / NOVEMBER
Croatia 2008, 8 min, DVD, colour, no dialogue
Director: Boris Greiner

A virtuoso one-take journey through Zagreb, where artistic intervention is indistinguishable from the practice of everyday life. Greiner inserts a variety of artists into the cityscape for a series of performance cameos stitched into the fabric of flânerie.

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