Museum of the Revolution

synopsis

Belgrade’s Museum of the Revolution was meant to become another Brutalist monument celebrating socialism in Yugoslavia. Its construction plan later failed and this desolate building from 1961 is now a refuge for homeless people. Among them is a young mother with her child and Mara, an aging woman. Their lives could not be placed further away from the utopian visions of the perfect world. The Serbian filmmaker Srđan Keča moulded his 2014 video installation into a documentary, a humble glimpse into a fragile personal cosmos lying aside from all social structures. It takes note of a world amid emptiness, on the brink of state affairs, outside of the major population’s field of vision, with human lives flowing slowly through.

“There’s a whole genre of socialist ruin porn, especially in photography with Yugoslav monuments, representing them as if some alien civilization built them and playing with SF [science fiction] tropes, but these monuments have histories and represent histories.”

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Source: https://povmagazine.com/srdan-keca-on-museum-of-the-revolution-and-documenting-paradise-lost/

biography

Srđan Keča (b. 1982) is a Serbian filmmaker, visual artist and teacher, currently lecturing documentary filmmaking at Stanford University, USA. His authorial style includes exquisite observation of social reality and its poetic stylization. His experimental essay Fata Morgana (2011) won the Between the Seas section at Ji.hlava IFDF 2012.

more about film

director:	Srđan Keča
producer:	Vanja Jambrović
script:	Srđan Keča
photography:	Srđan Keča
editing:	Hrvoslava Brkušić, Srđan Keča
music:	Hrvoje Nikšić
sound:	Radiša Cvetković

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