Synopsis
In our cultures (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia..) aunts have a special role and a privileged, somehow initiatic relationship with their nieces. There is a parent-like intimacy but without taboos. With your aunt you can talk about anything, like with an experienced older friend. Aunts are like fairies who lead us with care into adulthood.
My aunt Dragoslava is a retired teacher of technology living in a small border town on the Danube. She started developing historical awareness and interest in politics the day Tito died and when her picture of the world started to decompose. She started making her private archive from newspapers, recording TV programs and thinking about the way history is «written». She thinks of history as some kind of fiction written by those who are in power. Refusing to tell fairly tales to her grandchildren she makes hilarious ""real-life stories"" with actual historical personalities.
In this film we are visiting our family history as well as our common past, through her ""archive"" and without taboos. This will be an invitation for other conversations. Through a series of niece-aunt conversations throughout all former Yugoslavia (because it was one country and still many families are spread accross new borders) and wider (many have emigrated), a new semi-private semi-public history, from women point of view, will compose itself. It will be an intimate, emotional story accessible to the broad public.
For the first series of films we will choose 20 niece-aunt couples – some well known – whose families live between different countries. We can put at their disposal our team or give them a recording gear if they decide to film by themselves.
In parallel, we would start a campaign to involve a maximum of women who wish to talk about their lives and how they were influenced by our recent history. We will help them through tutorials and by organising local crews. Questions we are interested in developing: the condition of women now and in past few decades; how their family history is mixed with historical events; their archives (photos, objects, clothes, souvenirs etc.); their hopes and regrets, difficulties etc.
A interactive web site will host all documentation, sequences, films and texts, being the central point where the entire project converges. The maps are important to visually represent the ""cross-border"" dimension of many ex-Yougoslav famillies.
A book regroups all textual and photographical documentation in an attractive way and contains few introductory texts from some of our participants who are professional writers or sociologists, historians or gender study specialists.
A video installation with interactive touch screens will allow spectator to walk through this story in a gallery environment. It can be interesting to the youngest public, opening their awareness of preciousness of intimacy, confidence, family, dialogue, women conditions, regional geography -directly or through animated workshops.
My aunt Dragoslava is a retired teacher of technology living in a small border town on the Danube. She started developing historical awareness and interest in politics the day Tito died and when her picture of the world started to decompose. She started making her private archive from newspapers, recording TV programs and thinking about the way history is «written». She thinks of history as some kind of fiction written by those who are in power. Refusing to tell fairly tales to her grandchildren she makes hilarious ""real-life stories"" with actual historical personalities.
In this film we are visiting our family history as well as our common past, through her ""archive"" and without taboos. This will be an invitation for other conversations. Through a series of niece-aunt conversations throughout all former Yugoslavia (because it was one country and still many families are spread accross new borders) and wider (many have emigrated), a new semi-private semi-public history, from women point of view, will compose itself. It will be an intimate, emotional story accessible to the broad public.
For the first series of films we will choose 20 niece-aunt couples – some well known – whose families live between different countries. We can put at their disposal our team or give them a recording gear if they decide to film by themselves.
In parallel, we would start a campaign to involve a maximum of women who wish to talk about their lives and how they were influenced by our recent history. We will help them through tutorials and by organising local crews. Questions we are interested in developing: the condition of women now and in past few decades; how their family history is mixed with historical events; their archives (photos, objects, clothes, souvenirs etc.); their hopes and regrets, difficulties etc.
A interactive web site will host all documentation, sequences, films and texts, being the central point where the entire project converges. The maps are important to visually represent the ""cross-border"" dimension of many ex-Yougoslav famillies.
A book regroups all textual and photographical documentation in an attractive way and contains few introductory texts from some of our participants who are professional writers or sociologists, historians or gender study specialists.
A video installation with interactive touch screens will allow spectator to walk through this story in a gallery environment. It can be interesting to the youngest public, opening their awareness of preciousness of intimacy, confidence, family, dialogue, women conditions, regional geography -directly or through animated workshops.
Gallery
