You are invited to a screening of the film I filmed, edited and directed in 2022, titled Glas ljudstva /The Voice of the People/, which highlights a social initiative of the same name, bringing together over 100 civil society organizations and thousands of individuals from all walks of life across Slovenia in the period marked by COVID-19 and demonstrations and protests across Slovenia

The film is part of a short film program in honor of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and accompanies the exhibition Our Claim: Slovenian Protest Photography 2020–2022. The screening will take place on Sunday, October 27, at 6:00 PM at the Jakopič Gallery. For more information, please visit:

https://mgml.si/sl/galerija-jakopic/dogodki/1875/2024-10-27/18-00/projekcija-kratkometrazcev-o-protestih-ob-svetovnem-dnevu-av-dediscine/

Read more about the events and guests HERE

The recent assignment for The New York times.

In the media: 

RTV SLO, VAL 202, Proti etru

DELO, Kultura

RTV SLO, Kultura

RTV SLO, ARS, Kulturna panorama

MEGAFON.SI

VENTILATOR BESED

STA 

SLOGA

My short documentary “Complicating the Narrative”, which was made on behalf of APIS Institute about the D.rad project and its collaboration with artists’s, premiered at TJ Boulting Gallery in London on October 23, followed by a discussion about art’s role in academia, making research accessible through art, and the potential for artists and researchers to collaborate effectively.

 

One third of the ESoDoc – European Social Documentary workshop, which I’ve been fortunate enough to attend with 17 other professionals from 16 different countries, is already behind us. It’s been an intense, as well as invigorating and inspiring learning curve for me thus far, learning more about linear and non-linear storytelling techniques, gaining new insights on social impact strategies and much more… so looking forward to all that comes next!

Check it out on www.esodoc.eu

Istanbul. Faces of freedom.

Year:2023

The book Istanbul, Faces of Freedom, is a delicate and beautiful volume of photography and essays, exploring the idea of freedom in an urban setting. Cities of earlier origins, like Istanbul, must have represented spaces of freedom already in Antiquity, thus outcompeting almost by a millennium the contesting central European concept which came to life in the High Middle Ages. Dubbed The Great City of Istanbul, today a modern megapolis, has been a city ever since its first Greek name Lygos gave way to Bizantium.

Its outstanding history as the center of different worlds, the crossing point between the Asian and the European culture, a place of direct contact between previously unfamiliar regions and civilizations, which’s been capable of absorbing, entangling, or fusing the encountering cultures – the multilayered mixture of different cultures and traditions, makes this city on the Bosphorus Strait extremely special, if not unique.

Istanbul stretches beyond our imagination, which in the European view derives from residual orientalist fantasy. While this book, shaped by a handful of in- and outsiders who struggled with the triangle in-between–metropolis–freedom in the first half of 2020s, takes this position into an account, it hopes to contribute to the endless expressions of Istanbul by trying to capture its different faces, glimpses in the ever-changing structure of a city, and thus invite the viewer/reader to explore the initial question of freedom in the city’s air and embrace its many stories.

 

Order your copy via: https://zalozba.zrc-sazu.si/p/1780

Authors: Manca Juvan, Oto Luthar

Other authors:

Photographs and poem: Manca Juvan

Essays by: Sehnaz Layikel Prange, Oto Luthar, Görkem Özdemir, Hugh Pope

Conversation with Mladen Dolar: Oto Luthar and Görkem Özdemir

Individual contributions: Nafiz Aksehirli, Maaz İbrahimoğlu, Gülen Sungur

Editors: Oto Luthar, Manca Juvan

Copy Editor: Jeff Bickert

Design: Sara Badovinac/Prapra Studio

Publishing House: Založba ZRC

Publisher: Institute of Culture and Memory Studies

ISBN: 978-961-05-0716-1

Year: 2023

Language(s): English

Specifications: box 29,7 × 20 cm 224 pages

Print run: 300

Printing: LUart d.o.o.

Order your copy via: https://zalozba.zrc-sazu.si/p/1780

 

On September 14, 2022, I’ve talked with Taiwanese photographer Simon Chang, as a part of the Xue Xue online photography festival.

The discussion was vibrant and 2hours passed within a blink of an eye.

You are invited to watch a documentary about the Voice of the People initiative, which I’ve been filming for the past months on Youtube now.

The documentary on the biggest civil society mobilisation in Slovenia, resulting from recent threats to democracy in the country, was produced to create a historical record of a civil society movement that significantly contributed toward the highest voter turnout in the last 20 years. In June 2021, Slovenia was placed on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which issues alerts on countries where there has been a recent and rapid deterioration in civic freedoms. The Slovenian government has sought to delegitimise the work of civil society actors by publicly vilifying them and cutting crucial funding resources. Therefore April 2022 Slovenian parliamentary elections were crucial in determining the future of democracy in the country.

The abovem-entioned threats forced the civil society to respond. More than 100 CSOs (civil society organisations) have backed an initiative called Glas ljudstva (Voice of the People). It designed joint action to encourage public participation in election debates, monitor the electoral process, inform citizens, and mobilise them to vote. When the documentary was filmed, the outcome of the elections was unclear. Nevertheless, it followed the strongest mobilisation of civil society in Slovenia, presented the views of some of the most visible representatives and created a historical record of the elections that had the highest turnout in the last 20 years.

The documentary was produced by APIS Institute, as part of the NEXUS project. The first screening of the Voice of the People documentary took place on Friday, May 27, 2022 at 5 p.m. in the ZRC Atrium, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana. There was a conversation with Katarina Bervar Sternad (PiC), political scientist Tjaša Pureber, Primož Bezjak (Activists and Artist) and Mojca Žerak (Voice of the People), about the initiative and how civil society can organize and move forward to continue building, strengthening and maintaining the potentials that have been formed in recent years. *The premiere event was prepared by the APIS Institute with the support of ZRC SAZU.