Program
Pejzaži otpora [Landscapes of Resistance]
Babylon
Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße 30, 10178 Berlin
Cinemal hall 2
Free Admission
Tickets are available online and at the box office.
Directed by Marta Popivoda (RS/FR/DE), 2021, 95′′, in Serbian with English subtitles
Sonja Vujanović was one of the first female partisans in Serbia and helped lead the resistance in Auschwitz. Landscapes of Resistance invites viewers on an exceptional journey through her memories of revolutionary books from her student days, her wedding to a communist, the resistance against the German occupiers, and her torture after capture as a communist and antifascist fighter, all the way through to her escape from a concentration camp. Popivoda has combined Vujanović’s stories with images of the places that witnessed these events, divinely shot by the cinematographer Ivan Marković and edited with “cubist” crossfades to merge the landscape with Vujanović’s voice: grass and trees, a crack in the wall, slates off an old farm shed, a pool of water, deer grazing in the distance, even the chimney that is still standing. Through handwritten letters and diary entries of her life in Berlin, Popivoda connects her subject’s time and struggles with her own today, confronting the current rise of fascism. Lyrical, lucid, and intimate, Landscapes of Resistance opens and concludes in song.
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Landscapes of Resistance, 2021, film still
Marta Popivoda, Photo: Maja Medic
Marta Popivoda is a filmmaker, video artist, and researcher whose work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary was Jugoslavija, kako je ideologija pokretala naše kolektivno telo [Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, 2013].
The film screening is followed by a discussion in English language with Ana Vujanović, Marta Popivoda, and Ana Janevski (curator in the Department of Media and Performance at MoMA, New York).