Anthology Film Archives

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INTERCEPTIONS: YUGOSLAVIA IN THE IMAGE WORLD

July 18 – July 21

July 18-21, 2025

This six-part series interrogates cinema in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its successor states through the analytic prism of what Susan Sontag in 1977 diagnosed as “the image world”: a globalized, hyper-networked society in which “we consume images at an ever faster rate” while “images overlay reality…like a footprint or a death mask.” Encompassing (but not staying limited to) found-footage appropriation, “Interceptions” links and juxtaposes a smorgasbord of formally adventurous short- and feature-length works – 27 in total – through which cineastes in the Yugosphere borrowed, metabolized, and rerouted images from international audio-(tele-)visual culture. These six eclectic programs span the gamut from mischievous subversion, revolutionary détournement, and enamored homage to a variety of fascinating – often ambivalent – attempts at reckoning with Americanized, Western-dictated consumerist imperialism. Three historical short film screenings (1957-88) are complemented by two extraordinary avant-garde features (both from the late ’70s) and one presentation of contemporary works by post-Yugoslav imagemakers that extend the radical legacy of confronting, head-first and critically, the sights and sounds that surround us and of which we are active viewers, analysts, and (re)producers.

“Interceptions” is a remix of and sequel to “The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957-1988”, a program of 50 films (in 11 screenings) that took place in November and December 2024 at the Harvard Film Archive. Special thanks to the HFA for providing 16mm and 35mm prints.

Curated by Nace Zavrl, who also wrote the introduction and all program descriptions. Thanks to the Slovenian Cinematheque and the Academic Film Center, Belgrade.

Most of the films are in Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian (BCMS); some are in Slovene or Macedonian. All will be shown with English subtitles.

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