I Would Have Freed Myself
Between 1998 and 1999, during the War of Kosovo, hundreds of thousands of Kosovar citizens were forcefully displaced under threat of violence. Many were killed, and many are still yet to be accounted for. Even today - almost a quarter of a century later - bodies are still being discovered throughout the country and neighboring regions. At the same time, historical tensions germinating from the war in Ukraine threaten to provoke a renewed ideological conflict between Belgrade and Pristina; one that would invariably lead to similar displacement and catastrophe.
Amidst this backdrop, multidisciplinary artists Helena Deda and Alex Faoro have created a series of films that contend with these visceral, perpetual and immeasurable damages of war, through a comparable form of retrieval and exhumation. Drawing on a number of Helena’s childhood and adolescent experiences - using a variety of found footage and personal materials - the duo creates thoughtful and penetrating works that address pervasive modern conditions like dispossession and refugeedom, and reflect their own universalist sensibilities.
Screenings / Exhibits:
July 8th and 9th at Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn, New York
October 21st to the 26th at Prokultura gallery in Split, Croatia
November 12th with Blackhole Cinematheque at Beauty Supply in Oakland, California
I Would Have Freed Myself at Millennium Film Workshop in Brooklyn, New York / July 8th and 9th 2022
Gallery views from anti-war exhibit in Split, Croatia, alongside works from The Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine / October 21st - 26th, 2022
Screening with Blackhole Cinematheque at Beauty Supply in downtown Oakland / November 12th, 2022