THE NOTES ON SCREENINGS text: Ivan Paić AMSTERDAM SURVEILLANCE CAMERA (2011), experimental short, Željko Kipke A kind of tractate on the voyeurism of state institutions contrary to the individual, or more precisely - artistic expression, is cinematically depicted by the Zagreb painter, filmmaker, film critic and multimedia artist Željko Kipke. Within the cinematic narrative, Kipke presents several solid theses on the controllability of contemporary society by relevant state institutions. Whenever he considers it important, the author films the building under construction in the immediate vicinity of his apartment. The edifice, which is the centre of the intelligence community, stands dominant disturbing and occupying the surrounding area in the centre of the Croatian capital, expanding its physical and functional scope with the purpose of effectively monitoring social phenomena by means of the repressive security apparatus. The film gives a strong foreboding and suggestion of malignant and enigmatic activities within the building. The “malignant” activity of this architectural-security complex metastasizes at the tips of the so-called security cameras mounted on the buildings in the midst of the city noise and daily bustle. The author deals with this model by dissolving the arguments of politicians about the “strengthening and protection of human rights and freedoms”. He juxtaposes to it the voyeurism of artistic activity as the artist’s creative but cautionary reflex in an age of assassinations, growing terrorism, increasingly frequent and geographically ever closer war conflicts and of spreading perilous viruses, as preconceived and deliberately caused phenomena by secret associations. Unpretentiously yet prophetically, Kipke includes processes that characterize our contemporaneity, especially referring to Turkey but also to the whole of Europe. Advocating for repression over oppression, the author makes space for artistic freedom, its fragile position and difficult development of identity. Someone once said films were a mirror of reality, a concept Kipke impressively reasserts in his work. And this reality is characterized by universal control over individuals in the newly developing digital-feudal era.
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RIKARD BENČIĆ, FOR EXAMPLE (2008), documentary, Dir. Nadija Mustapić, Marin Lukanović Nadija Mustapić and Marin Lukanović deal with the postindustrial heritage of the city of Rijeka, which should, in the form of a Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, be given a different and creatively more intriguing content. Space is a variable category; a former pride and joy of industrial production of parts for the automotive and shipping industries located in the aforementioned port city was rampaged in the early nineties by particular transitional-capitalist interests and as such left to deteriorate. The way in which the transition was conducted was legislatively extremely problematic. Using the so-called “positive” nationalistic enthusiasm, the factory workers’ “unsuitable” blood cells were counted – and if they belonged to the minority population – the workers were removed, their existence thus jeopardized. The end result, however, was felt by the so-called national majority employees as well, who met the same fate of forced separation from the space where they used to build but also dream about their socially useful lives. One of the workers interviewed in the film says, “there is nothing else for me left but to live in my memories”, describing thus the socialist era as one still carrying some meaning in the social development cycle. Unlike in today’s wild capitalism, there were, in fact, obvious benefits in the area of health insurance, education and protection of workers’ rights at the time. Individual stories of the workers in the Rikard Benčić Factory of Engines and Tractors, a bastion of socialist production, are the emotional superstructure for the scenes of the architecturally declining but still fascinating building. The authors have, paradoxically, recorded with their camera the attractive aesthetics of the building’s deterioration. The sliding movement of the camera shows with how much sensitivity, dignity and respect they have treated the people of this bygone era as well as their roles and factory space, offering us a dimension of closeness with those cast into the margins during the period of transition. Can the politicians of the city administration and the architects of the emerging museum truly declare themselves the authors/builders of a space that will most likely be another great work of art, i.e. a newly composed tourist attraction, or are they yet the so-called “conceptual exponents”, different “unnamed” workers, who are mostly no longer present because they have been scaterred by the fate of a newly designed space? This documentary film by Nadija Mustapić and Marin Lukanović raises questions about the consequences of social stupidity, neo-liberal pillage, materialism, but also about the authorship of a newly-conceived, commercially-aesthetic and “more civilized” project which will attract a new future political elite.