By Andrea Matošević It is the end of August 2018. The weather in the City of Pula, well known shipbuilding centre in the Northern Adriatic is hot and dry as summers usually are in that part of the Mediterranean, but the atmosphere in town is far more heated than any other summer in recent history.... Continue Reading →
Zoran Milanović as “Presidential Opposition Leader:” More Blessing, More Curse?
by Oliver Kannenberg (Institute for Parliamentary Research, Berlin) The presidential elections were already the third round of voting for Croatian citizens in 2024. Prior to that, early parliamentary elections had been held on 17 April, followed by the European Parliament elections in June. In both cases, the conservative Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ),... Continue Reading →
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.