Category: Balkans

Friday 7 Feb 2014. A sunny, spring-like morning with no hint of the eruption of anger that was about to hit the streets of Sarajevo later that evening. Groups were gathering in the square outside a grand city government building – joined by two sparse lines of riot police. Kriterion Kino, where we are presenting Difference Screen, is just round the corner from the square. Staff were preparing for a big party with an American DJ – crates of beer were stacked on the floor – sound systems and search lights being tested in the auditorium, which doubles as a cinema. At dusk, as we walked back towards our hotel …

Sarajevo Diary Read more »

On Monday 17th February Difference Screen presented a selection of films at CZKD The Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade. They included two works from the Balkans, Renata Poljak’s Staging Actors / Staging Beliefs and Breda Beban’s Walk of the Three Chairs. In Staging Actors / Staging Beliefs (2011) Renata Poljak revisits Boshko Buha an iconic film from her childhood, a tale of young Partisans fighting the Nazis in WW2. Boshko Buha is a tragic hero who dies young “he was only fifteen when he joined the communist movement, and was posthumously awarded with the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia title. Through the film’s continuous screenings both in theaters and on the …

CZKD The Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade Read more »

A review by Greg de Cuir, Jr 18 February 2014 Difference Screen I encountered the artist Heba Amin twice in a little more than two days. The first was at the Berlinale as part of the Forum Expanded exhibit What Do We Know When We Know Where Something Is? The second was at the Center for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade as part of the Difference Screen program. Indeed, what do we know when we know where something is? We know Amin is at home in both the white and black cube but we may not know where, or what, her home is. As depicted in her video My Love For You, …

de Cinema – de Cuir: Difference Screen, Belgrade Read more »