After the successful screening of her previous film at the 63rd Berlinale and a number of other festivals around the world, Marta Popivoda will premiere her new film at the prestigious festival in Rotterdam.
Marta Popivoda’s feature-length documentary, Landscapes of Resistance, has been selected for the main competition program atthe 50th Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), to be held in hybrid form (live and online) from February 1st to 7th, 2021. The competition program, called “Tiger Competition”, reveals and supports innovative authors on the rise, whose works push the boundaries of film. The selection includes 16 films from around the world.
The film Landscapes of Resistance records a journey through the memories of the anti-fascist fighter Sonja (97), one of the first partisans in Serbia, who was also among the leaders of the resistance movement in Auschwitz. As Sonja talks, we travel through the landscapes of her revolutionary youth – the forests and mountains of Serbia and the muddy terrain of Auschwitz, recorded as they look today – as well as through her small apartment in downtown Belgrade, where she lives with her husband and cat. As a great narrator, Sonja is able to talk about events from the past without “remembering”, which directly transports us to the specific atmosphere and way of thinking that gave rise to the anti-fascist resistance in Yugoslavia. We let her story travel through time, towards the bodies of new generations, suggesting that it is always possible to think and resist.
The protagonists are Sofia Sonja Vujanović (Stanišić), Ivo Vujanović and Ivanka Maksović. The script was also written by Marta Popivoda,with helo from Ana Vujanović, the director of photography is Ivan Marković, the editor is Jelena Maksimović, the sound designer is Jakov Munižaba, while the sound mix was done by Simon Apostolou.
Marta Popivoda (Belgrade / Berlin) is a film director, video artist and cultural worker. Her work explores the tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a special focus on the anti-fascist and feminist potentials of the Yugoslav socialist project. In her artistic creation and research, she nurtures collective practices, and for many years was a member of the TkH collective (Walking Theory). Popivoda’s first feature-length documentary, Yugoslavia, as Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale, and was then screened at numerous international and domestic film festivals. Popivoda’s work has also been presented in galleries and museums, such as Tate Modern in London, MoMA in New York, M HKA in Antwerp, the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, etc. Popivoda is the winner of the prestigious Berlin Art Prize, awarded by the Berlin Academy of Arts, as well as the Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist.