Presentation of films
Video večer / Video Evening #07
Anja Medved
Memory Clinic (Ordinacija spomina / Corsia dei ricordi)
Slovenia/Italia, 2010
A film by / camera / edited by: Anja Medved
Sound processing: Rosario Guerrini
Photo processing: Ferrucio Goia
Produciton: Kinoatelje, 2010
Format: video, miniDV, color and sound, 16:9
Duration: 00:13:00
Original language: Slovene and Italian
On 10 December 2009, the Memory Clinic, a public event aimed at collecting family photographs, was organized at a former border crossing between Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italy). The inhabitants of both cities were invited to go through their drawers and lofts, to select some photographs that were shot in this border area and share their memories in a former customs post. The collected memories and photographs will be stored in the digital album of memories as a gift of the local population to the future generations.
“Our attitude to the past changes in correlation to the development of audio-visual technologies. But we can also see that the more recordings we have, the less time we have to view them. Recordings no one will ever see just accumulate, like a flood of extreme still lifes of sorts, since every recording only comes alive in the presence of a viewer. When I watch other people’s recordings, I also see fragments of my own memories. A film becomes a place where hidden, forgotten and nobody’s landscapes open up behind our preconceived notions of the past. The question arises: which do I believe more – my own memory or recordings of the past?”
Anja Medved
Looking Through The Iron Curtain (Pogledi skozi železno zaveso / Sguardi attraverso la cortina di ferroi)
Slovenia/Italia, 2010
A film by / camera / edited by: Anja Medved
Music: Antonio Della Marina & Alessandro Fogar, Michele Spanghero & Luigi Mastrandrea
Sound: Rosario Guerrini
Family films: Viljem De Brea, Marko Mladovan, Famiglia Balaben, Cine Club Gorizia, Osnovna Šola Solkan
Arhive films: Slovenski filmski arhiv
Production: Kinoatelje and European Home Movies Network
Format: video miniDV, color and sound
Duration: 00:22:00
Original language: Slovene and Italian
A customs office building on the border between two towns, two countries, two social systems, two worlds, the Romanic and the Slavic, 65 years after the end of the war. On 20th of December with the entry of Slovenia into the Schengen area, Nova Gorica for the first time in its short history finds itself without border fences. The same night, this traumatic space transforms into a meeting place. Inside are placed a camera, a microphone, a computer and a curtain and people from both sides of the border start streaming in, bringing their stories and images, donating their contributions to the common holdings of memory. Donated memories and fragments of family and archive films tell how can two different realities find themselves simultaneously in the same place.
“Our need to preserve memory increases in correlation to the speed with which the world changes. In the beginning of 20th century film was invented to unburden memory, but memory speaks of more than merely the past: it also speaks of the present, of why we remember certain events and have no recollection of others. Memory is thus in correlation with our plans for, visions of and fears about the future. The future always starts here and now – stemming from very specific memories and very specific instances of forgetting.”
Anja Medved
