Category: History

Alternative Facts? Reflections on Violence, Gender and Suppressed Memory in Historical Documentaries from Croatia and Turkey

Happy coincidence and personal enthusiasm were the main promoters for an unusual doctoral workshop which I recently co-organized at the University of Basel, together with my colleague Prof. Bilgin Ayata. We invited two acclaimed film directors, Lordan Zafranović from Prague/Zagreb and Nezahat Gündoğan from Istanbul, to watch and discuss their documentaries on genocidal violence in their home countries Croatia and Turkey, with the aim to explore, in a gendered approach, their visual methods as a means to negotiate violence and memory both from the victim's and the perpetrator's perspective.

Revisiting Non-Alignment and Yugoslavia’s Global Role

The 17th Non-Aligned Summit that took place last month in Venezuela went largely unnoticed and was generally portrayed by the media as an anachronistic event of a Cold War-era bloc. This is despite the fact that the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) remains the second largest international body after the United Nations. It was the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that on this occasion thanked the Movement for mobilising the international community on issues ranging from sustainable development, the fight against poverty and nuclear disarmament, especially commending it for its role as a key player in helping formulate the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. His address also emphasised the often overlooked fact that 'the UN and the NAM are united via a common purpose'.

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