As the seemingly eternal fractions along Europe‘s east-west axis started gradually vanishing from the political maps of the continent in the 1990s, the once imagined and ever-distant ‘other side’ was suddenly within hand’s, as well as camera-eye’s, reach. Following the reciprocal process of movement, the space not so long ago divided - and defined - by the presence of the Iron Curtain became subject to the foreign gaze in search of its new definition. 

In this programme, ranging from travelogues to pornography, from fast food commercials to dictators‘ executions on live TV, six films capture the first encounter with the newly rediscovered ‘other’ in a recently unified post-Cold War Europe while interrogating the fractured notion of European identity, both past and present.

Programme curated by Martyna Ratnik. The programme‘s title is borrowed from Alexei Yurchak‘s 2005 monograph of the same name.

Programme:
The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography, dir. William E. Jones, USA 1998, 19mins
89mm from Europe, dir. Marcel Lozinski, Poland 1993, 12mins
Men of Gariūnai, dir. Algirdas Tartvydas, Lithuania 1995, 19mins
Détour Ceauşescu, dir. Chris Marker, France 1990, 8mins
Kenedi, Lost and Found, dir. Želimir Žilnik, Serbia 2005, 26mins

Total runtime: 85mins