Following the screening of his films Centar (2018), Similar to Ourselves (2023/2024) and Inventory (2025)—three visual studies of Yugoslav modernist architecture—the filmmaker and cinematographer Ivan Marković will moderate a workshop on films centered on architecture and space. The discussion will encompass various connotations of space, as well as different modes of apprehending and representing them in film and video.

Embodiment of ideological strivings and socialist visions of the future, Yugoslav architectural landmarks are depicted as palaces of collective memory. At the same time, Centar and Inventory observe arrested decay as an outcome of collective forgetting spurred by nationalist revisionism. In his discussion of the development, conceptualization and creative aspects of his films, Marković will touch upon other sites, informal and domestic, ephemeral and disorderly, such as the Beijing bomb shelters turned to housing in From Tomorrow on, I Will (co-directed with Linfeng Wu, 2019), and comment on the representation of landscapes and cityscapes as bearers of historical traces in Marta Popivoda's Landscapes of Resistance (2021).

We recommend attending the Filmpodium screening on April 1, at 18:00. The working language is English. The workshop is open to the public. Please register by sending an email to nikola.radic@fiwi.uzh.ch.

Ivan Marković is a filmmaker and visual artist born in Belgrade and living in Berlin. His films screened at numerous festivals, including Berlinale, Doclisboa, Cinéma du Réel, Viennale, New Horizons, Mar del Plata, and Jeonju IFF. His photography and video works were exhibited in galleries and museums such as Bethanien Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, ICA London, VAFT Turku, VideoEx Zurich, Austrian Kulturforum, Silent Green Berlin, and SaSa Gallery Phnom Penh. As a cinematographer, he has worked with Angela Schanelec, Marta Popivoda and Dane Komljen, among others.

2 April 2026, 10:00-14:00 (break 12:00-13:00)
Universität Zürich, Karl-Schmid-Strasse 4, KO2-F-152

The program is convened by Nikola Radić, as part of the SNSF-funded research project Paranational Cinema – Legacies and Practices at the Film Studies Department, University of Zurich.