CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA PRESENTS:
LANDSCAPES OF THE FUTURE MEMORY:
Contemporary program of short experimental films from Serbian Films from 2020-2023
With Milan Milosavljevic presenting in person.

MONDAY MAY 6TH @ MONO NO AWARE : CINEMA ARTS NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
33 FLATBUSH AVENUE, BROOKLYN NEW YORK - LIMITED ATTENDANCE TO 30 - MASKS AVAILABLE
DOORS 7PM – STARTS PROMPTLY AT 7:30PM – FREE OR $5 SUGGESTED DONATION

TRT, 60 minutes. Additional time for discussion / Q & A with Milan Milosavljevic IN PERSON

PROGRAM INCLUDES:

LANDSCAPES OF THE FUTURE MEMORY
Contemporary program of short experimental films from Serbia
This program consists of 9 short films which were mainly produced and co-produced at Academic Film Center of Students’ City Cultural Center in Belgrade, Serbia and also screened at Alternative Film/Video festival.
Academic Film Center Belgrade was founded in 1958, in what was then socialist Yugoslavia, under the name of Academic Cine Club. Through its long history, thanks to the artists who created their films and videos there, it became one of the most significant and most awarded film clubs in Yugoslavia. Some of the most famous authos of Yugoslavian cinematography were members of AFC (like Tomislav Gotovac, Živojin Pavlović, Kokan Rakonjac, Dragoslav Lazić, Sava Trifković...) but also exceptional amateur and alternative filmmakers, and in the 21st century visual artists and activist (Ivko Šešić, Nikola Đurić, Bojan Jovanović, Miodrag Milošević, Igor Toholj, Doplgenger Artist Duo, Julijana Terek, Zorica Kijevčanin, Biljana Belić, Ivana Todorović...) In 1976 AFC became part of the Student’s City Cultural Center, public institution for student culture, funded by the government.
In 1982 AFC founded the Alternative Film Archive to take care of its film and video heritage that now counts over 800 films and videos produced by AFC. Also, in the same year, AFC started Alternative Film/Video Festival (1982-1990, renewed in 2003), one of the oldest festival in the region dedicated exclusively to experimental and alternative filmmaking since beginning. AFC is still an open space for experimentation in filmmaking process of all types, especially for students and young authors.
Landscapes in all works are dealing with some sort of memory through images, of the places, feelings or personal/public footage which soon will be replaced as a future cinema memory. Two shorts (Tomorrow and Underwater Diaries) were recently made as a part of the rapid workshop on alternative filmmaking at AFC, with a simple device and application to create unseen visuals by using multiple exposure from already pre-recorded private videos of the mobile/cellular phones. Dust takes us back to the author childhood memories which are slowly and irretrievably decomposing. Miljana Nikovic shows us in Minutiae how media are creating and controlling our collective memory. Dreamland by Allan Brown (Montreal, Canada) creates uncanny atmosphere with an outstanding editing and sound design while take us to a journey of the author’s inspiration during a residency program of Alternative Film/Video festival. In Surfacing Images, Tara Najd Ahmadi (Vienna, Austria), reminds us that images will not disappear and they will find their way to be seen. In a new minimalistic video, Nadine Poulain (Berlin, Germany/Budapest, Hungary), evoke forgotten memories of the nature closeness to humanity. Heterotopia, which was created during the student film workshop Kino-Eko, patiently presents ghosts of the future. The last film in the program by artist duo Doplgenger, deals with a reminiscence, which should be in a different order, to become the future, not just to disappear in the past.

Program:
Tomorrow, 2023 / 3’
Directed by: Marko Dabović
Anxiety, which a person feels in conflict with growing up and fear for tomorrow, creates a circle on which it goes, contained in flashes of the past and imagination.

Dust, 2022 / 9’19’’
Directed by: Filip Markovinović
Video work confronts the possibility of memory. Archival footage, personal and found, create a series of oneiric images about a world that has fallen apart.

Minutiae: One Film, Two Cuts, 2022 / 6’6’’ Directed by: Miljana Niković
Progression of 122 words through their sound and meaning, pared with 60 found footage clips from 1950s TV-commercials. Each of the inserts appears twice as a pattern of déjà-vu cognitive associations, evoking a multitude of emotions from banal dailiness, flashbacks, or behaviors, slowly leading us from one particular feeling to its opposite.

Dreamland, 2018 / 13' Directed by: Allan Brown
Images from a remote city in Serbia are intercut with shots filmed in the Canadian Shield in Northern Quebec. Reminiscent of a Kerouac-style trip, the film also pays homage to a bygone art of cinema. Produced during a residency at the Academic Film Center in Belgrade, this tale is shaped by dreams, hypnosis and alien frequencies.

Surfacing Images, 2023 / 5’ Directed by: Tara Najd Ahmadi
Surfacing Images is an experimental documentary about film preservation and the destiny of images that are left on their own. Through a phone conversation between two friends, as they discuss the works of filmmakers, Dušan Makavejev and Bojana Marijan to the films of the 1979 Revolution in Iran, this film portrays the irresistible urge of images to resurface and be seen.

Underwater Diaries, 2023, 3’26’’ Directed by: Ivan Velisavljevic
"Underwater Diaries" submerges viewers into a transcendent cinematic experience, weaving the tapestry of the filmmaker's personal journey and the mesmerizing depths of Australian underwater life. As the juxtaposition of disparate realities unfolds, the film invites contemplation on the interconnectedness of existence, blurring the boundaries between the mundane and the extraordinary. Through a radical lens inspired by Jonas Mekas, it challenges conventional perceptions, prompting reflection on the hidden parallels within the chaos of life's currents. Dive into the profound, where the underwater realm becomes a metaphor for the unseen narratives beneath the surface of our own lives, urging audiences to question the nature of reality and the intrinsic connections that bind us all.

One, 2023 / 15’54’’ Directed by: Nadine Poulain
The film features an annual growth ring of a tree that, being singled out and possessing a radiant glow, evokes a sense of the planetary. In front of a pitch black backdrop, the ring appears, disappears and reappears, at times suddenly, at other times gradually. What changes is its scale and the angle it is seen in. Testing out the frontiers of perception, the flatness of the circular shape gives way to a three-dimensional object. The minimal, yet grand imagery unfolds to a musical soundtrack of intensely high notes and an extreme bass. Otherworldly and intangible, One takes the viewer on a journey that amalgamates earthly and cosmic spheres, the real and the imaginary.

Heterotopia, 2024 / 7’ Directed by: Nikola Nikolić
The coexistence of two mutually exclusive fictional entities.

A Record of Landscape Without Prehistory, 2020 / 14’ 22′′ Directed by: Doplgenger
A visual story of loss and the sadness of memories slipping, in a desolated children’s health resort in the coastal town of Krvavica, Croatia. The title is borrowed from a poem by the Yugoslav surrealist and revolutionary poet Oskar Davičo, which is an attempt to record the inner images left without music and sonority. The poet invokes words and terms that he forgets because he suffers from aphasia.

Total length of the program: 76 minutes

Biography:
Milan Milosavljevic, Born in 1980 in Ruma, Serbia. Co-founder of the Independent Film Center Vorky Team, together with Dragan Cakic, in memory of film artist Slavko Vorkapich. Since 2009, he has been working as a curator and organiser of programme at the Academic Film Center of the Students' City Cultural Center in Belgrade. In charge of the European Festival of Animated Film Balkanima and the Alternative Film / Video Festival (dedicated to experimental film, established in 1982). Works as an author, producer, and editor of AFC and Vorky Team films, which were screened at more than 150 film festivals, among them Berlinale and IFF Rotterdam. In 2018/2019 worked as a producer together with author Maja Novakovic on the very successful short documentary film “Then Comes the Evening”. In 2020, he started a new production company, Kinematika, focused on the production of short animation, documentary, and experimental films.

MONO NO AWARE SCREENING SERIES:
The CONNECTIVITY THROUGH CINEMA series will present the work of artists, film-makers and curators who are traveling or presenting special interactive programs in-person. Our hope is to engage the community by showing work with a focus on post-screening discussion. This series is made possible by support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).