Lovely Days

LOVELY DAYS

The idea and the ambition around starting Video days in Bol was to open a dialogue with a broad audience, familiarize the public with contemporary art and to entice curiosity. This is precisely why I believe that Bol and summertime present the ideal setting for commencing the cycle; due to my personal connections with the village of Bol, the landscape and the people, but also due to the fact that Bol is not merely a well-known tourist destination but also a cultural one, ever since the times of Italian artist Tintoretto whose painting “Madonna and Child” has been a part of the collection of Dominican Monastery in Bol since 1563.

Renata Poljak,
director and founder of
Lovely Days/Lijepi dani

For 2015 Renata invited curators from Croatia, Canada, the USA, UK and Serbia bringing together a stimulating and wide ranging programme. Each evening had a different focus beginning with shorts from Dalmatia, considering the workplace and what it means, gestures, landscape and identity shaped by recent events and Low-Fi video from Belgrade.

16.08.2015 OPENING @
OPEN AIR CINEMA BOL @ 10PM
SELECTION BY ALEN MUNITIĆ
DIRECTOR OF MEDITERRANEAN FILM FESTIVAL
17.08.2015 @ TEATRIN 2 FERALA  @ 10PM
SELECTION BY AILY NASH & ANDREW NORMAN WILSON (NY, USA)
18.08.2015 @ TEATRIN 2 FERALA  @ 10PM
DIFFERENCE SCREEN –
BRUCE ALLAN & BEN EASTOP (GB)
19.08.2015 @ OPEN AIR CINEMA BOL @ 10PM
ANNE-MARIE ST-JEAN AUBRE & MAUD JACQUIN (CAD-USA)
20.08.2015 @ TEATRIN 2 FERALA  @ 10PM
MAUD JACQUIN & ANNE-MARIE ST-JEAN AUBRE (USA-CAD)
21.08.2015 CLOSING NIGHT @
TEATRIN 2 FERALA  @ 10PM
ALEKSANDRA SEKULIĆ (BG-SRB)

Bol boasts two open air cinemas, our screenings took place in both. It’s the fourth year Renata has organised Lovely Days on the Croatian island of Brac. Busy and bustling at the peak of the holiday season, Lovely Days was taken up walking and swimming with many asides for coffee and conversation, discussion and delicious seafood while anticipating the evening screenings.

Alina Ozerova, Renata Poljak, Nenad Vujic, Aleksandra Sekulic, Novvy Allan, Bruce Allan, Ben Eastop

Renata, Maud, Norman

Benoit and Anne-Marie

Kino Mediteran, Bol

16/08 FUNNY FMFS SHORTS Curated by Alen Munitić
Unscheduled thunderstorms brought the opening event indoors. The programme started with films selected by Alen Munitić, director and main selector at the Mediterranean Film Festival Split (FMFS). Alen Munitić is also the organiser of Kino Mediteran, a project aimed at revitalising cinemas throughout Dalmatia. Munitić’s programme featured films shot in the Dalmatia region and the formidable Ana the Square by Jelena Novaković a documentary peppered with dark humour on the life and times of a street seller in Zagreb.

Music with STIMS OUT OF TUNE concluded the evening

For full details of Lovely Days programmes and poster see www.lovelydaysbol.com Here are some moments I remember.

17/08 IMAGE EMPLOYMENT Curated by Aily Nash & Andrew Norman Wilson
‘The title of the program, borrowed from The Otolith Group, invokes the cyclical and growing confluence between labor, consumption, and that which propels them.’ Among the films screened Workers Leaving the Googleplex considered the colour coded division of labour in the Google workplace recorded by Andrew Norman Wilson, observations that led to his own dismissal. https://vimeo.com/15852288

18/08 DIFFERENCE SCREEN
Curated by Bruce Allan & Ben Eastop

Friends He Lost At Sea Henrik Lund Jørgensen

Renata helped choose the Difference Screen programme including Friends He Lost At Sea and introduced us to Sharhar Marcus’ compelling performance Seeds https://vimeo.com/49010255

We had seen Alina Ozerova’s double F for Final Fantasy at Quartair in July and had the pleasure of welcoming Alina to Bol to open Difference Screen with her film. double F for Final Fantasy ‘A documentary essay re-interpreting a touristic voyage of relatives and friends who got the permission to reach the outer folds of Iron Curtain’ http://www.differencescreen.net/alina-ozerova/

19/08 GESTURES ARE BELONG TO US (PART 1)
Curated by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre & Maud Jacquin

Dough Mika Rottenberg 2006

“In Dough women are squished alone into tiny compartments like boxed jewels or battery farm hens. With their cells linked by a system of tubes, shoots and holes, they all perform bizarre functions in a production line. This culminates with a teardrop drawn by sniffing flowers, which runs down a huge woman’s dimpled legs and then drips off her toe through a hole in the floor to impregnate a lump of dough beneath, which is then vacuum-packed. It shows a neat division of labour in the creation of pointless products, with implications that reach way beyond the beauty industry, to capitalism’s mindless cycle of production and consumption.” Skye Sherwin http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/24/artist-week-mika-rottenberg
http://www.nytimes.com/video/t-magazine/100000001149614/dough-20052006.html

20/08 ALL YOUR GESTURES ARE BELONG TO US (PART 2) 
Curated by Maud Jacquin & Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre

‘Responding to the worrying development of technologies able to track and analyze human behaviors, read facial expressions and even decode emotions, this program explores the role of technology in the dispossession and corporate exploitation not only of our private electronic data but also of our gestures, attitudes and language. Drawing on the vocabulary of science fiction and advertising or using choreography as a medium, the films presented here reveal the body and the voice as sites of technological infiltration while undermining the idea that they can transparently translate our thoughts and emotions.’

Watch My Face To Read My Thoughts Roland Baladi, 1975, video, 3’43”, Courtesy the artist thoughts and emotions https://vimeo.com/9978462

21/08 LOW-FI VIDEO REVISITED Curated by Aleksandra Sekulić

Aleksandra Seculic presenting the programme

‘The term Low-Fi Video (1997-2003) refers to the organised and coordinated production, distribution and presentation of film and video, whose models of production and representation, in continuity with Yugoslav cine-amateurism and in collaboration with the international movement Microcinema enabled involvement of vernacular production together with artistic production in the process of production of a new language of alternative culture in Serbia, in public communication with the audience. In this proclaimed mission of subverting the elitism in cinematography, Low-Fi Video openly recalls Yugoslav cine-amateurism of 1960s and 1970s. In this proclaimed mission of subverting the elitism in cinematography, Low-Fi Video openly recalls Yugoslav cine-amateurism of 1960s and 1970s.’

Andriska Damir Smit & Damir Rijowitch 1999

Thank you Renata for a unique event. We hope to be in the audience next year!

Bruce Allan 31.10.2015