DIFFERENCE SCREEN AT KINO UMJETNIKA

DIFFERENCE SCREEN AT KINO UMJETNIKA ,
Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb

Artists’ Cinema or Kino umjetnika is an ongoing project and a screening program series that takes place at the Gorgona Hall, a cinema, a theatre, a multi purpose auditorium located at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, established in 2012.

Kino umjetnika / Artists Cinema has been developed to introduce contemporary artists and their cinematic and video works, created at the meeting point of contemporary art and cinema, film and visual arts, presenting recent production of film/video outside the context of social production of entertainment and spectacle. Visiting artists and curators are invited to introduce and discuss the program. In this way the task of Kino umjetnika is to intervene within the program scheme of the museum through the presentation of film/video works, as well as to try to replace the lack of international programming and make cross-cultural exchange more intense and dynamic, intensifying the dialogue and exchange on the cultural scene of the city, connecting artists, curators, and critics with the public. By so doing Kino umjetnika contributes to a more active internationalization of the local art scene engaged in the media of moving pictures.

Difference Screen, an international selection of different films and voices was welcomed with great interest. The program has brought to Zagreb different geographies, languages, cultural contexts and new artistic positions we didn’t know of. The importance of Difference Screen was to bring to the audience new knowledge of different countries, landscapes and neighborhoods, global and local narratives – from Northern to Eastern Europe, from Finland, Poland, Croatia, to Georgia, Pakistan, Egypt or Syria, to New York’s Chinatown. With works by Anna Molska, Inger Lise Hansen, Shelly Silver, Riaz Mehmood, Sophie Nys, Renata Poljak, the emergency film collective Abounaddara and others… selected films and videos included in the screening program explored the known and unknown, visible and invisible, poetical and political, unfolding recent or historical events, and bringing to light the creative potential of diversity.

Branka Bencic
independent curator
Founder and curator at Kino umjetnika/Artists Cinema

Gorgona Hall 24.2.2015

Thanks very much to Branka for inviting Difference Screen to show at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. We enjoyed a good turnout despite a rainy Tuesday night in February with other openings in the city.

Igor Grubic joined Difference Screen to present his film Capitalism follows Socialism a reflection of Croatian reality in the 1990’s when privatization led citizens to the edge of poverty.

My thanks to curator Tihomir Milovac for showing me around the museum collection and recommending the work of Hungarian artist Csaba Nemes to Difference Screen.

Staying in the museum for four nights was special, as was visiting Kino Europa and meeting Renata Poljak to discuss her Lovely Days screenings at Bol. Renata’s works Jump and Staging Actors, Staging Beliefs are very much embedded in the Difference Screen project.

Hvala MSU http://www.msu.hr/#/en/
BA