Texts , , , , , , , , , ,

Landscapes of Resistance: Time and Temporality of Feminist Storytelling

Ana Vujanović, “Landscapes of Resistance: Time and Temporality of Feminist Storytelling”, Senses of Cinema, Issue 103 (October 2022)

This article explores feminist storytelling through the dramaturgical work behind the documentary film Landscapes of Resistance (dir. by Marta Popivoda, 2022). My motivation for discussing this film stems from a desire to highlight feminist storytelling in cinema and to share insights into dramaturgical work—a specific form of artistic practice that is often overlooked in filmmaking discourse.

Landscapes of Resistance centers on my 97-year-old great-aunt Sonja, a communist, antifascist, and one of Yugoslavia’s first registered female partisan fighters. Captured in 1942, she spent four years in Nazi prisons and concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she continued resisting as part of the resistance movement. Through Sonja’s stories, the film guides viewers across the landscapes of her life—from the Serbian mountains of her revolutionary youth to the muddy terrain of Birkenau. Her memories intertwine with those of Marta and myself, through our reflections on the resurgence of fascism in Europe during this decade-long film project, captured in my project journal.

The process of shaping this film presented two key challenges. First, we aimed to create a temporal and visual composition capable of connecting the anti-fascist past to the present, offering it as a legacy for the future. Second, we sought to craft a communist and partisan film without relying on the masculinist aesthetic canon of leftist activist cinema, such as the Eisensteinian montage of attraction. In our discussions, Marta and I critiqued such aesthetics and pursued a feminist approach to narrating antifascism. Marta’s direction drew inspiration from leftist artistic forms outside socialist realism, such as cubist landscape paintings and constructivist collages, which informed the film’s visual composition.

As dramaturge, my role was to craft an affective, contemplative, and non-spectacular composition, resisting the pull of conventional dramatic narratives and masculinist “hero’s journey” tropes. Our focus centered on temporality and the interplay between story and silence, which became key to articulating a feminist vision of antifascism.

Read full article here

Books , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NEW BOOK :: Toward a Transindividual Self: A study in social dramaturgy

Ana Vujanovic and Bojana Cvejic, Toward a Transindividual Self: A study in social dramaturgy, Oslo – Brussels – Zagreb: Oslo National Academy of the Arts – SARMA – Multimedijalni institut, 2022

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Toward a Transindividual Self examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies, and dramaturgy intersect.

Starting from our concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Bojana and I critically untangle individualist modes of performing the self, such as possessive, aesthetic, and autopoietic individualisms. However, our critique does not make for an argument for collectivism as a socially more viable alternative to individualism. Instead, it confronts us with the more fundamental problem of ontogenesis: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? This question marks a turning point in our study, where it steps back into the process of individuation, prior to, and in excess of, the individual.

The process of individuation, however, encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which we investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual dimension. This epistemic intervention into ontogenesis allows us to expand the horizon of transindividuation in an array of tangible social, aesthetic, and political acts and practices. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it.

ISBN 978-953-7372-83-5

For more information look inside!

Introduction chapter is available online for free here.