Platform for experimental and anthropological film,
sound, and landscape cinema.
sound, and landscape cinema.
In Focus:
Ivana
Mladenović
Ivana Mladenovic is a Serbian-Romanian filmmaker whose body of work spans fiction, documentary and video installation. Field Recordings 6 is a rare opportunity to see Mladenović’s early experimental shorts, observing life on the margins of Romanian society, alongside celebrated Soldiers. Story from Ferentari, a feature length hybrid film depicting a gay love story, set in an impoverished neighbourhood which is home to much of Bucharest’s Roma community
Mladenović’s films resist stereotypical representational tropes and instead offer intimate and complex portraits. The early unruly shorts were made with a DIY ethos, with Mladenović relying on her ability to gain the trust of her protagonists in order to access spaces which rarely appear on screen. In Biology Class, she accompanies children and teenagers in the school for students with visual impairments. The film observes them during school activities, and while learning everyday tasks, focusing on their interactions with teachers and parents, and revealing gestures of care, attention and trust. In the Village is set during the summer holiday in Mladenović’s hometown Kladovo, on the Serbian side of the Danube river. Via conversations with her relatives and observing the summer rhythms of the place, we witness a transitory moment in her life, after leaving home for studies in Romania and before becoming a film director.
Male bodies and interactions are at the centre of Leaves of Grass, an uncanny video poem which draws a parallel between the story of twin boxing brothers in the outskirts of Bucharest and Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself. The coexistence of vulnerability and harshness is also central to Soldiers. Story from Ferentari, a film which deepens Mladenović quest into contemporary Roma life in Romania, depicting a gay love story in Ferentari, Bucharest’s Roma neighbourhood. The film is based on an autobiographical book by Adrian Schiop, who plays the main role and is co-author of the script. Other cast members are also non-professionals who come from the eponymous neighbourhood, rooting the film in documentary approaches despite its fictional storyline.
The screening(s) will be followed by a Q&A with Ivana Mladenović