Aug 9, 2022 at 2:00 pm
Artistic Differences: Under A Roof
This conversation is a part of Artistic Differences, a UnionDocs Break ꩜ut co-presented with DokuFest
UnionDocs is delighted to join hands with Dokufest Kosovo to kick off ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES, a UnionDocs Break ꩜ut, co-curated with programmer Cíntia Gil, that hopes to make room for bravely sharing and responding to challenging documentary art, invites a diverse audience into a monthly series of film programs and study groups, and brings those voices to the stage of a public dialogue.
We’re thrilled to present our public dialogue in Prizren, Kosovo at the festival with writer and cultural critic Boris Buden and filmmaker Manuela Serra to think through concepts of home, place, ritual and community.
Be sure to tune into the FILM PROGRAM around which this dialogue is structured. If you’d like to dig even deeper, register for the STUDY GROUP, and stay tuned for when we release a version of the conversation at the festival online following! Big thanks to our incredible partners at Dokufest and co-programmer, Cíntia Gil.
117 by Besim Sahatçiu
16 min, 1976
Shot in the Kosovar village of Nevokaze, 117 depicts the traditional lifestyle of an Albanian family numbering 117 members, all living under one roof and in great harmony. One of the finest examples of ethnographic films to come from this region, it has been called a ‘spiritual portrait of the nation’.
O Movimento das Coisas (The Movement of Things) by Manuela Serra
86 min, 1985
One of the most remarkable cinematic rediscoveries of recent years, this long-unseen documentary—stunningly restored from the original 16 mm materials—is the only film to date by Portuguese director Manuela Serra. With an extraordinary feeling for gesture, the passage of time, and the profundity of silence, Serra captures the everyday routines of three families living in Lanheses, a small village in the north of Portugal. Their rituals of work, leisure, and worship offer a glimpse of a fast-disappearing past, while the presence of one young woman, Isabel, seems to point the way toward the future.
Manuela Serra is an actress and director, known for O Movimento das Coisas (1985), Vien di notte (2018) and Necrofilia (1985). She studied cinema at the Institut des Arts et Diffusion (IAD), in Brussels, Belgium, from 1971 to 1974. She worked as assistant editor (archive material, events from 1974-75) for the film Deus, Pátria, Autoridade. She was a founding member of the Cinema Cooperative Virver, until she left in 1981. By that time, she’d worked as a producer and assistant director for several medium-length films and for Rui Simões’s film, Bom Povo Português. Between 1979 and 1985, she produced, directed, and wrote the screenplay for her first work, O Movimento das Coisas.
Boris Buden is a writer, cultural critic, and translator. He studied philosophy in Zagreb and received his PhD in Cultural Theory from Humboldt University, Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor of the magazine and publishing house Arkzin in Zagreb. He is a board member of European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp), Vienna. His essays and articles cover topics related to philosophy, politics, translation, linguistics, the post-communist condition, and cultural and art criticism. Among his translations into Croatian are some of the most important works by Sigmund Freud. Buden’s writings appear in numerous books, including the BAK publication Concerning War: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (2006/2010) and Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique (2009). He is currently Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus University, Weimar. Buden lives and works in Berlin.
