Screening of film/video oeuvre 1998–2025
Talk and screening
Friday, 8 May 2026, 8 pm
Vodnikova domačija (Vodnik Homestead), Vodnikova cesta 65, Ljubljana
Accompanying programme at Vodnikova domačija (5 – 10 May 2026)
The film Burnt in Memories (2017) was created as part of the European project of the same name, “Europe for Citizens,” led by the ZRS Koper to document villages burned during the Nazi occupation in the area of the former Adriatic coast, which today encompasses parts of Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy. German occupation forces burned approximately 250 villages in this area as a retaliatory measure against the civilian population, which was allegedly sympathetic to the National Liberation Struggle (NOB). This was followed by massacres and mass deportations.
Images of Oblivion: Personal Histories of Ljubljana (2016) was created in collaboration with the Moje ulice (My Streets) project of the Divja misel institute, which documented the memories of Ljubljana residents, and Anja Medved. It is the only memory-preservation initiative to have taken place in Ljubljana, covering both wartime and postwar periods. Images of Oblivion is formally quite different from Burnt in Memories, although their narratives span the same period of transition from Italian to German occupation. These are narratives of diverse voices drawn from photographs in family archives; unlike most documentaries from the Gorizia region, however, we can recognize here certain figures from the capital’s public and cultural life.
Burnt in Memories was filmed on location, where the accounts of various people piece together a fragmented picture of the day the Germans burned down a particular village: in the film, the narrators’ voices are sometimes accompanied by poignant archival footage, which is brought to life by Mauro Bono’s eerie soundscape, punctuated by occasional, barely discernible shouts or voices of people. When we look at the faces of some of the speakers in the film, it seems as though the burnings are still vividly before them. The Images of Oblivion—in contrast to the exteriors and homes in Burnt in Memories—are shot in a studio and thus convey a sense of greater control over historical memory. However, they nevertheless express a certain specificity of the author’s oeuvre: for in the foreground is the face and its expressiveness, as if a landscape of memory were vividly etched onto it through the speaker’s narrative. The focus on voice and face is one of the filmmakers’ central creative strategies, through which the past manifests itself quite tangibly in the present.
Robert Kuret
The screening will be preceded by a discussion with Anja Medved, Nadja Velušček, and Tina Popovič.
Director, screenwriter: Anja Medved, Nadja Velušček, production: KINOkašča / CINEMattic, Slovenia, 2017, video, colour, 67′
The Nazi occupation of the cross-border region of what was then the Adriatic Littoral followed an already difficult period of fascism. To take revenge on the civilian population, which they suspected of supporting the resistance, the occupying forces carried out systematic terror that resulted in more than 250 villages being burned to the ground. Massacres, looting, and deportations followed. Those who remember this violence were children at the time. Their memories serve as a warning.
Director: Anja Medved, screenwriter: Anja Medved, Tina Popovič, production: Zavod Kinoatelje (SLO), Slovenia, 2016, HD video, colour, 56′
A collection of memories recalled by residents of Ljubljana and the surrounding area as they look at family photographs taken during and immediately after World War II. These short stories from the everyday lives of children at that time offer a child ’s-eye view of that fateful period and a glimpse behind the scenes of history.
Zone of Transition VI: Violence / Compassion
5 – 10 May
Accompanying programme at Vodnikova domačija
The sixth event in the series showcasing the film and video work of Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček is taking place at the Vodnikova domačija. This program features personal memories connected to Ljubljana. Two projects took place in Ljubljana in the frame of of the My Streets project in collaboration with Anja Medved. The documentary film from the exhibition Images of Oblivion: Personal Histories of the City of Ljubljana at the Vodnikova domačija is being shown as part of the regular programme, while Memory Clinic Ljubljana, which was exhibited at the Vžigalica Gallery, will be on view as part of the accompanying programme.
Director: Anja Medved, screenwriter: Anja Medved and Tina Popovič, produkction: Kinoatelje, Zavod Divja misel and MGML, 2012, 27′
In December 2012, as part of the project My Streets, the Ljubljana Memory Clinic was set up at the Vžigalica Gallery, a recording booth where city residents were invited to select a few photographs taken in Ljubljana from their photo albums and share with us the memories these images evoke. The result was a collection of photographs and conversations, now held by the City Museum of Ljubljana. A documentary web project was also planned based on this collection.
Memory Clinic Ljubljana is part of a series of memory-gathering initiatives under the collective title Cross-Border Memory-Gathering Initiatives in the Gorica and Nova Gorica regions, with the aim of creating an open archive that evolves over time and becomes a kind of gift that the residents of both cities bestow upon future generations. Much like a family album, whose meaning lies in its incompleteness, the archive of memory is also in a constant process of creation and rearticulation. For years, Nova Gorica and Gorica were separated not only by the border between two countries and social systems, but also by the border between two understandings of the past. The border crossings that once separated us can now become meeting places that reflect the relationship between personal and collective memory. (Anja Medved)
Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček: Zone Of Transition
Screening of film/video oeuvre 1998–2025
Screening and lecture
17 December / 21 January / 18 February / 24 March / 21 April / 8 May / 10 June
Production: SCCA-Ljubljana and Slovenian Cinematheque
Curators: Vesna Bukovec, Robert Kuret
Anja Medved (1969) and Nadja Velušček (1948) are mother and daughter who have been working together as authors since the late 1990s. Their joint work focuses on exploring the Slovenian-Italian border region. In doing so, the authors subtly delineate the personal and the public: they draw on intimate narratives and vivid testimonies from individuals’ personal archives, connecting them to the history of grand narratives, thus carefully revealing the polyphony of historical Truth. Since most of the films are medium-length documentaries, we have paired them to provide an overview of their creative oeuvre. Moreover, because the films are so open and thematically polyphonic due to their fragmentary, essayistic nature, practically every combination activates certain connections. Therefore, we wanted to design the program so that the juxtaposed films would articulate the border and the borderline anew each time. Seven program sections with the titles Gorica / Nova Gorica, Memory / Document, Environment / Territory, Water Level / Watercourse, Peace / War, Violence / Compassion, Departures / Arrivals will be screened from December to June at the Slovenian Cinematheque and in May at the Vodnikova domačija. Part of the program will also be available on the Slovenian Film Database during the retrospective.
Coproduction: SCCA-Ljubljana/DIVA Station and Slovenian Cinematheque
Partner: Slovenian Film Database (BSF), Zavod Kinoatelje (SLO), Kinoatelje (ITA), Zavod KINOkašča / CINEMattic, Zavod Divja misel (Vodnikova domačija), GO! 2025 Nova Gorica Gorizia
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture
Thanks: RTV Slovenija, Slovenski program RAI, Andrej Šprah, Vlado Škafar, Tina Popovič
