Jasmila Žbanić: The role of contemporary art in today's society

Public evening session of the 22nd Grantmakers East Forum

PROGRAMME
Welcome by Boris Marte (ERSTE Foundation), Vesna B. Agić (Grantmakers East Forum )
Keynote by Jasmila Žbanić
Moderated by Christiane Erharter (ERSTE Foundation)

Jasmila Žbanić, born in 1974, is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and artist. In 1997, she founded the artist's association "Deblokada" and started making documentaries and short films. Žbanić belongs to an important group of filmmakers and artists who were very young students when experiencing firsthand the war against Bosnia and Herzegovina and against the capital city of Sarajevo in particular. During this time art became a kind of life-saver when self-organized film nights were the only thing to look forward in the besieged city of Sarajevo. While the war was still raging, they decided to start making films. The battles and attacks on the civilian population are over for almost more than 20 years but the war and its aftermath still play a crucial part in Žbanić’s films.

Her feature debut Grbavica won the 2006 Golden Bear and several other prestigious awards. On the Path premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales at the Toronto International Film Festival. It won the 2013 Femme de Cinema Award.

Films (selection): Grbavica (2006), Builder΄s Diary (2007, doc), Na putu (On the Path, 2009), For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (2013), Love Island (2014), Jedan dan u Sarajevu (One Day in Sarajevo, 2015, doc)

Many European societies are facing increasingly complicated challenges to their economic organization, political legitimation, and social cohesion. Coincidentally – or consequently – we witness governments constricting those civic spaces available and necessary for healthy political debate, expression, and interaction. Restrictions on freedom of expression and association allied to targeted discrimination and attacks towards specific societal groups are threatening inclusive and open societies. This is a phenomenon present not only in those societies that suffered historically from repressive or autocratic governments but also in democracies with longstanding traditions of supporting and promoting universal rights and democratic norms. It is in this context that the Grantmakers East Forum (GEF) will explore the role of institutional philanthropy in seeking innovative approaches to reclaiming and reasserting civic spaces. It will do so from a starting point that such approaches require mutual dependence and solidarity among a wide range of different actors seeking positive societal change.