Films by the Serbian director and producer who lives and works in New York, Paris and more recently in Belgrade, Svetlana Cemin, will be screened as part of this year’s Fifteenth Art Week in Vienna, which takes place in more than a hundred art spaces in Vienna on November 15th-22th, under the title “Making the Truth.”
On Sunday, November 17th, 16:30h, two films directed by Svetlana Cemin – Madelene Hatz, A Royal Vagabond (2017) and Metamorphoses (2017) will be shown in the cinema hall of the renowned Künstlerhaus Cultural Center. On Friday, November 22nd at 18h , Svetlana Cemin will participate in a panel discussion “Women in the World of Art”, as part of the curatorial program of Barbara Stefen.
The experimental documentary Madeleine Hatz, A Royal Vagabond, tells the story of a hired contemporary avant-garde artist and human rights activist. The film, as a mixture of prose and poetry, paints the artist in two different creative states: as a lone creator in the silence of her studio, but also as a socially engaged performance artist.
Metamorphoses, filmed from 2015 to 2018, follows the creative process of three colorful artists from different parts of the world. Scenes from Berlin, Brooklyn and Belgrade reflect the creative travels of Laura, Stef and Olympia, who find inspiration for their art in constant rethinking and transformative spirit that emphasizes the LGBT experience.
Born in Belgrade, Svetlana Cemin moved to Paris and then to New York to work as an actress on Broadway and in many notable indie films thanks to her successful international modeling career at a young age. In 2014, she founded the film and theater production company 610FILM. As a screenwriter and producer in recent years, she has been successfully realizing her ideas and visions within experimental and documentary artistic film production. Several separate documentaries are being directed and produced by Svetlana under the collective title Not From Here, and some of them are in the post-production phase.
The films portray well-known and non-established artists, their lives and works of art in the process of creation. These include Laura Kaplan, Love Is Most Important (Best Director Award at the Stockholm Balkan Film Festival 2017); Adam Fuss, A Landscape of Imagination (won the Hollywood New Directors 2018 Best Film Award in Los Angeles, as well as the Audience Award); Metamorphoses (recently screened as part of the Vision du Reel Film Festival, Switzerland), Stef, Passion; Madelene Hatz, A Royal Vagabond; Arseniy’s Father, supported by Film Center Serbia, and St. Clair Cemin, Psyche. The films she directs and produces deal with the self-reflection on the process of artistic creation. Through intimate artistic portraits, Svetlana , along with her film protagonists, finds meaning in the process of creative work, which answers the universal artistic question: “Who am I?”.
Vienna Art Week has been taking place since 2004 as one of the leading cultural platforms for artists worldwide. Every November at over 200 different events, the best exhibitions, films, performances and other artistic initiatives from Europe and other parts of the world are presented. More than 35,000 visitors visit the Art Week programs.
Photographs with permission from 610FILM.