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Underhill fest: In Focus 2023
IN FOCUS
WOMEN’S RIGHTS CENTER AND UNDERHILL FEST PROGRAM
In this year’s Women’s Rights Center and the Underhill Festival selection, the audience will have the opportunity to watch three films and participate in accompanying discussions.
The film “Loving Highsmith” (director: Eva Vitija) is the story of the love affairs of the famous writer Patricia Highsmith, who was made famous by the screen adaptations of her works. The film is based on the author’s diary entries, clips from interviews, and television appearances. However, the director’s selective attitude towards the material reveals a fascination with the artistic character that obscures the real experience of the person behind the work of art – as was the case with many famous authors in history and in contemporary life, whose brutalities or inaccuracies from real life were forgiven for the sake of artistic achievements or popularity. Thus, this film, focused more on private life than on art, excludes the open anti-Semitism of the writer from the narrative, as well as some details from the private life that are not in line with the romantic representation of the director. On the other hand, the film talks about social disapproval of same-sex relationships, leading us to wonder if the rooted social prejudices restrict our civil liberties and make our society unequal.
Discussion:
Marija Jovanović
Milica Prelević
members of the feminist program of the Association „Spektra“ / queer community rights activists
The film “Bigger than Trauma” is based on the devastating life stories and recovery process of three women from Vukovar who were raped during the war in the 1990s. For three years, Director Vedrana Pribačić and Producer Mirta Puhlovski followed the work of the psychological empowerment program “I am much more than my trauma”. This program aimed to restore the dignity and trust lost during the war to the war victims of rape, helping them to overcome identification with the trauma they survived and to focus on the present and the future, without pain, conflict, and tension. The film talks about how the survived horrors are woven into the feelings, thoughts, and bodies of raped women even after thirty years, but also about the enormous importance of therapy with the help of which, even many years later, it is possible to overcome the trauma and move on with their lives.
Discussion:
Vedrana Pribačić, director
Ana Jaredić, psychotherapist / WRC Support Program for Victims of GBV Coordinator
By combining family footage shot by her father wishing to record the most beautiful moments of family life and her own new video material, in the film “Life like any other” the director Faustine Cros paints a non-idealized family portrait. Focusing on the point of view of her mother, who, giving up her professional life to take care of her family, over the years slowly sinks into depression, the author builds a strong political stance on the intimacy of her own family. The unequal division of “domestic” work and the fact that women today have to “choose” between private and business life is a huge obstacle to the fulfillment of women’s creative potential.
For taking a bold look at her family, while yearning to understand her mother – any mother; For learning to see her mother the way her mother sees herself – any woman; For learning a new narrative about a family and herself. In seeking to understand a family’s pain, this film gives voice to the primal scream of women, wives and mothers everywhere“. (The statement of the jury of the Silver Dove Award)
Discussion TBC
