On Wednesday, October 11, the 18th edition of the Pravo Ljudski Film Festival (PLJFF18) will commence. During the next six days the festival will feature a programme dedicated to creative documentary and experimental film.

PLJFF18 continues to explore possible and impossible forms, practices and shared spaces of film and audio-visual art, and furthers our ongoing focus on cinema that questions anthropocentric narratives, labour and work conditions in the present day. This year’s 18th edition, through one of the four programme sections, places a special focus on care work, and social reproduction through unpaid female domestic and reproductive work.

At today’s press conference, programme curator Kumjana Novakova and curator of the section Care Work as Political Site, anthropologist Nejra Nuna Čengić, presented the 18th PLJFF programme.

“This year’s festival programme is the result of extensive consideration and work of the Pravo Ljudski team with the aim of responding to changes that are the result of various dynamics, such as the pandemic, but also overwhelming surge of superfluous content to which we are all constantly exposed. Embracing the ethos of degrowth or challenging the imperative of constant growth, Pravo Ljudski has streamlined its programme over successive editions to reach its goal of having only content that we consider to be absolutely necessary. We will present an impeccably coherent film programme consisting of 21 films in 4 programme sections at the Meeting Point Cinema which will be followed by a public lecture and a public discussion, in addition to our usual doxing with filmmakers after film screenings.” – says programme curator Kumjana Novakova.

This year’s four programme sections: History Otherwise: Critical Cartographies, Back to Basics, In the Name of Health… and Care Work as Political Site, are interwoven through the social and political invisibility predominantly experienced by women at the crossroads of work and politics. The programme insists on and revolves around the issue of invisibility of women’s and/or the work of “others” – from the unseen and unpaid domestic work social reproduction carried out by women, to the erasure of women artists from the established “canon” of art and cinematography.

The curator of Care Work as Political Site, Nejra Nuna Čengić, said:

“While one of the goals is to show the importance of both unpaid and paid care work for social reproduction, we aim to steer clear of an existing moralistic patriarchal discourse on care work that both glorifies and undervalues care work as innate female attribute. Through screening of 5 films, 3 doxing discussions with film authors and two public dialogues, our goal is to jointly explore, imagine and contribute to the creation of better infrastructures of care work, consequently fostering the creation of better societies.”

We are looking forward to watching films together, discussing and challenging these topics during the Festival, from 11th to 16th October at the Meeting Point Cinema.

Entrance to all programmes is free. For more information on festival’s schedule and film screenings, visit https://pravoljudski.org.