Screening of film/video oeuvre 1998–2025
Screening and talk
Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 8 pm
Slovenian Cinematheque, Miklošičeva cesta 28, Ljubljana
Online screening of the accompanying programme at the Slovenian Film Database
(10 – 17 June 2026)
The final section of the program focuses on the border in Venetian Slovenia. Over the centuries, under various political rulers (the Franks, the Patriarch of Aquileia, the Venetian Republic, etc.), the local inhabitants enjoyed certain tax breaks and freedoms in exchange for providing military service and maintaining control over the border territory. They lost these privileges with the transition to Habsburg rule (1797), as the Habsburgs, with their centralised army, no longer needed the locals’ cooperation in governing the region, and tax burdens worsened their already meagre living conditions. The situation did not change even under the Kingdom of Italy, and it worsened under the fascist regime that followed one of the bloodiest fronts of World War I. After World War II, living conditions in Venetian Slovenia were among the most unfavourable in all of Italy. Consequently, there was mass emigration and a struggle for survival.
The song “Oj, Božime” became a symbol of this emigration; it opens the documentary Binding Memories, which depicts the isolation of the inhabitants of Venetian Slovenia and the abandoned and empty villages. In contrast to most of the rest of Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček’s body of work, the film does not use archival material but rather excerpts from a theatrical performance by the Kontrabant theatre group from Kambreško, directed by Jožica Strgar, which highlights creative activity in that region. It seems that, in addition to portraying the space, the documentary project also serves as an intervention within it and a search for ways to revitalise it.
We can view Tradition and Treason as a radicalisation of this tendency. This is demonstrated by the Postaja Topolovo festival community, where, through the musical backdrop provided by the festival guests, we witness how conventional relationships are turned upside down: the audience finds itself on stage, the artists in the field, and the villagers in the orchestra. It seems that the entire village of Topolovo becomes a transitional space where differences between homes, courtyards, and festival venues also dissolve. The documentary shows how Postaja Topolovo puts into practice a non-hierarchical vision of the border region, articulated through the language of film by Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček across their entire body of work.
Robert Kuret
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček.
Director, screenwriter: Anja Medved, Nadja Velušček, production: Zavod Kinoatelje (SLO), Kinoatelje (ITA), Slovenia/Italy, 2006, SD video, colour, 48′
A documentary film about the border in Venetia. In the heart of Europe, on the border between the Slavic, Romance, and Germanic worlds, lies a hidden place—beautiful yet neglected, besieged yet forgotten. The border river Idrija flows through it, a river that once separated the Venetian Republic from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and democratic Italy from socialist Yugoslavia. The film weaves together memories of life in these mysterious valleys, where the same people lived in fear of one another for centuries.
Director, Screenwriter: Anja Medved, production: Postaja Topolove, Zavod Kinoatelje (SLO), Kinoatelje (ITA), Slovenia/Italy, 2010, miniDV, colour, 43′
From 1994 to 2022, the remote, compact village of Topolove, situated right on the border with Slovenia, hosted a festival of literature, music, and film that brought together artists from all corners of the world. The film is a collection of scenes and impressions from the 2009 Topolove Station festival. The camera shifts between the stage and backstage, creators and audience, the village and the world, to capture the event’s guiding principle: transcending the boundaries of all forms.
Zone of Transition VII: Departures / Arrivals
10 – 17 June
» View at Slovenian Film Database (BSF)
In the final accompanying program of the extensive retrospective of the work of Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček, we travel to Venetian Slovenia, specifically to the village of Topolovo, where Anja Medved continued her memory-collection projects, which were primarily focused on the border region of Gorica and Nova Gorica (and also to Ljubljana) with Sewn Memory. With the remaining two documentary films, she captures the pulse of the Postaja Topolovo festival: In The Distance Between Two Sounds, she depicts the non-hierarchical structure of the festival, which takes place in homes, courtyards, and squares throughout Topolovo, while Becomings was created in collaboration with participants of a youth workshop she led, where young people discuss their vision for the future of Topolovo. Both the events and the documentary films serve as important presentations of the local scene and, in themselves, contribute to the revitalisation of the area.
Anja Medved, Slovenia, 2016, 43′
In 2012, during the Stazione Topolo, the digitalization of family photos of people from Toplolo and neighboring village Livek, which is located on the other side of the border, was organised. On this occasion anybody who brought the photo was also invited to tell his memory on this particular frozen moment in front of the camera. Once the village Topolovo and Livek were closely connected, so the project aims to rebind memories, that were torn off by the border.
Anja Medved, Slovenia, 2010, 37′
A documentary record of Postaja Topolove/Stazione di Topolo 2010.
Anja Medved, Slovenia, Italy, 2014, 29′
A documentary about Topolovo Station, 2013, created during a youth film workshop led by Anja Medved. Creators: Young people from Topolovo and 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
