Zagreb (7-21 May 2011) will be a host of the International 4th Subversive Film Festival. Subversive Film Festival is no ordinary, competition film festival. It is first-of-a-kind hybrid of film/video and critical theory, aiming to explore and understand recent cultural history.Film program in cinemas Europa and Tuškanac will be accompanied by film-theory school which will deal with post-colonial »aesthetics of resistance«. A lot of famous scientists will present their work: Antonio Negri,Terry Eagleton, Zygmunt Bauman, Istvan Meszaros, David Harvey, Gayatri Spivak, Slavoj Žižek, Samir Amin and many others.
“World forum of Alternatives: Decolonisation – New emancipatory struggles” – Why is the meeting taking place exactly in Croatia?
Croatia seems to be a perfect place to meet: all contradictions from the capitalist core (financial shocks, reckless consumerism, media, elite-driven politics, democratic deficit, commercialisation of public services) are visible together with all political, social and economic problems of the post-socialist, post-partition and post-conflict semi-periphery. What the new wave of protests brings is a clear rejection of the system, both political and economic, amounting to the loudest critique of capitalist economy in Eastern Europe since 1989. This critique stems from ordinary politically undefined citizens, the new radical left and some right-wing elements trying to co-opt the social rhetoric into their populist defence of the “nation” and its “traditional values”. In spite of nationalist conservativism, it is precisely in Croatia where, since the 2009 student protests, a movement dedicated to direct democracy developed. In many occasions direct democracy was successfully exercised not only among students, but workers, peasants and urban activists alike. Croatia as the country at the doorstep of the EU is therefore an excellent place to engage in a productive debate on possible alternatives or further degenerations of global capitalism and the way it influences the semi-peripheral and peripheral regions(…)
Can we see a possibility of a trans-european and also trans-regional cooperation? Can the experience from other world regions, such as Latin America, be useful for the current situation in Eastern or Southeastern Europe? As we can see from all this questions, the debate is not restricted only to Croatia or Eastern Europe, but is of importance for the entire Left. (Srećko Horvat & Igor Štiks, coordinators of the WFA meeting in Zagreb)
MV
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