Marta Popivoda
Serbia / France / Germany, 62′ 2013

According to the director of the film, Marta Popivoda, her essay film is a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into a few democratic nation-states. “Experience of the dissolution of the state, and today’s “wild” capitalist reestablishment of the class system in Serbia are my reasons for going back through the media images and tracing the way one social system changed by performing itself in public space.” Assembling and exploring a vast and rich archive of mediated images of a variety of collective formations in public space in former Yugoslavia, the film deals with the question of how ideology performs itself in public space through mass performances. Marta Popivoda collected and analyzed film and video footage from the period of Yugoslavia (1945 – 2000), focusing on state performances (youth work actions, May Day parades, celebrations of the Youth Day among others) as well as counter-demonstrations (’68, student and civic demonstrations in the ‘90s, 5th October revolution among others). Going back through the images, the film traces how communist ideology was gradually exhausted through the changing relations between the people, ideology, and the state.