Gestures of Resistance

Description

Gestures of Resistance (2019, 61 min) – a documentary film directed by Olga Ștefan [RO]
Friday, February 9, 2024, 7 pm
Zpace (The House of Zemstvo, 103 Al. Șciusev str., Chisinau)

The screening will be followed by a discussion with the audience. The film’s director, Olga Ștefan, will participate via videoconference and will be able to answer questions from the audience.

Gestures of Resistance is a documentary that compiles the real testimonies of the last survivors of the anti-fascist resistance to the Holocaust in Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This film is divided into four parts. The first part begins with an interview with Ericka Bezdickova, who narrates the experience of her sister, Jolana Kellerman, who supported the Slovak national rebellion and the armed resistance of this group. The second chapter covers the civil and political resistance. The third chapter narrates how art was used as a tool of resistance and vindication. Theodora Iancu, daughter of the modernist artist and architect Marcel Iancu, is another protagonist in this documentary, she agreed to give her testimony in December 2018 for the first time and exclusively for this documentary, before passing away. The fourth and final chapter collects testimonies of resistance through solidarity.

To make this documentary, we have relied on the testimonies of some of the survivors, but we have also carried out research and documentation work, rescuing archive images of protest movements and individual acts, as well as some of the works of art made by the defenders of antifascism. The aim of this documentary is to remind the viewer through real testimonies the facts of the past, to shape a present and a future where equality and justice are fundamental values of our societies.

The film has Romanian and English subtitles.
The meeting will be held in Romanian and English.
This event is organized to commemorate and in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Olga Ștefan is a freelance curator, writer and researcher based in Zurich, born in Romania and raised in Chicago, and currently residing in Zurich. Her work mostly deals with the politics of memory, migration and identity. Ştefan has curated more than thirty international exhibitions in museums, art centers, and galleries and has contributed to magazines such as Art in America, FlashArt, Art Review, Sculpture Magazine and many others. She is the founder of The Future of Memory, the transnational platform for Holocaust remembrance in Romania and Moldova through art and media, where her documentary films can be viewed. Her chapter on the Vapniarka concentration camp appeared in the volume Memories of Terror, 2020, CEEOL Press, Frankfurt.
https://olgaistefan.wordpress.com/
https://www.thefutureofmemory.ro/

This documentary is part of the project The Future of Memory. Educating about yesterday for a better tomorrow co-financed by the European Union under the Europe for Citizens program – European Historical Memory 2018. It was produced with the support of Bratislava Policy Institute and Post Bellum.