Newsreel 55 is a compilation of quotations, archival footage and footage of current events relating to the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with a special focus on Maribor, the former country’s third-largest industrial center. It explores questions that relate to the social and political shifts of the 20th century that have shaped the city’s economic, political and social dynamics; a city of occupation, a city of industrialisation and deindustrialisation, and a city marked by the disintegration of the state. These periods are presented through the eyes of the generation that grew up during the transition between two systems. How can images be used today, and what political impact and power do they have. What issues do they raise with regard to the class struggle of today?

Newsreel 55, a collective work by Nika Autor, Marko Bratina, Ciril Oberstar and Jurij Meden

( Newsreel 55: Which side are you on?_ AndrejŠprah_PDF )

Eksperimentalni filmski podvig Jurija Medena s pomenljivim naslovom Karl Marx med nami in povsem nedvoumnim podnaslovom (»agitprop video«) izrecno izpostavlja svojo usmeritev. Z njo nadaljuje izročilo tistih dragocenih zavzemanj s filmskimi sredstvi, ki so cineaste preko vse zgodovine gibljivih podob gnala na krizna žarišča, kjer so svoje vizije združevali z opozicijskimi prizadevanji na raznih odporniških ravneh. Hkrati se uvršča med aktualne pobude za oživljanje in reaktualizacijo »pozabljenih« ali »zastarelih« nefikcijskih zvrsti (filmski pamflet, filmski letak, filmska agitka, filmski obzornik itn.), značilnih za avantgardo aktualne politične filmske ustvarjalnost, ki se odvija na vseh meridianih sveta (vključno z domačim kolektivnim projektom Obzorniška fronta). Tako se pridružuje težnjam ozaveščanja, ki so se z jasno izpostavljeno provenienco in opredeljeno vizijo vztrajno upirala indoktrinaciji, osnovnemu orodju politično-kulturnega imperializma.

Andrej Šprah

( Karl Marx among us_ AndrejŠprah_pdf )

Newsreel 57, repeats/re-enacts Stevo Žigon’s speech delivered in 1968 in Belgrade in front of the Faculty of Arts which was occupied by students at the time. Žilnik used this speech in his notable June Turmoil (1969). 45 years later, the reason for revisiting this speech (the predomination of capital in all fields of social and individual life) and placing it in the here and now (“Let’s ask ourselves…”), the different coordinates notwithstanding, no longer sounds so distant and different.

The film is a reshot of the 1973 movie Solidarity by Joyce Wieland. It documents workers’ protests in Ljubljana. It raises questions such as: what is solidarity today, who is showing solidarity, with whom and when? The reshot of the movie was motivated by a current situation of mass unemployment, horrifyingly exploitative work conditions, ever more exploitative restructurations of the labour market when the question of solidarity is undermined by structures of domination.

"I always say, I make normal films."

Peter Kubelka

In 2010 and 2011, the huge Slovenian construction sector, which employed more than 70,000 foreign workers, collapsed, leaving behind it debts, halted construction activities and exploited and unpaid workers. Most employed workers came from the territory of former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the government silently watched the exploited, underpaid, unpaid and humiliated workers, the accumulation of wealth on one side led to the accumulation of indignation and resistance on the side of the exploited and those struggling against exploitation. Because the competent state bodies, the mass media and the broader public had failed, the self-organisation of workers was inevitable. They demanded better living conditions, the payment of unpaid salaries and social security contributions, equal opportunities, etc. Armin, Aigul and Esad take us through particular stories and specific areas of work (activism and the construction industry), making them general and universal

(The future of cinema in the land of bears_ JurijMeden_PDF)

The film is trying to expose the life and the struggles of asylum seekers in Slovenia. People who seek for asylum are increasingly being made the object of systematic physical and psychological violence.

The Asylum Center has become an instrument for averting asylum seekers’ and dismantling the right to asylum rather than being an instrument of their protection. The film exposes the structure of the legal asylum regulation, its transformation, the dissapearance of the right to asylum, the criminalization of asylum seekers, the systematic physical and psychological violence done to asylum seekers, the emergence of a European apartheid system, and the system of production of the “sans papieres”. At the same time, the film stresses the self-organization of the asylum seekers themselves, and highlightens the meaning of social centres and open autonomous spaces that self-organized asylum seekers and their supporters are using in their everyday organizing.

The footage was taken from the National Archive of Radio and Television of Slovenia. It represents a collection of the archive’s documentation of media reports on migrants from 2001-2008. I was interested in analysing the representation of asylum seekers/migrant as they are constructed by a dominant State institution of image and meaning production.

Postcards tries to show how images in themselves, through the way they are produced (montaged), effect the criminalization and victimization of of those represented.

FIlm by Jurij Meden is a super 8mm record of summer journey through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzogovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

1 Balkans 2 eyes, road 5 spontaneity of the filmic diary 6 celebration of the first, charmed look 7 the images are accumulating by mere assignment 8 the entirely erased differences between important and unimportant 9 simple composition based on the experience of unstoppable time 12 bunched, from the inside seen picture of Balkans, the exotic European province 13 where the one and only completely sure thing is that nothing is sure 14 the real, the sensual and the symbolic converging in the film of pure experience
The documentation of a summer trip through Balkans, recorded on Super8, beautifully aimless, wildly gathering images more than experiences - an experimental journey, filled with hectic need to clutch everything and at a blow.