44 years after the name of Albania’s dictator was painted on the Shpirag mountain, a group of villagers take the effort to climb the mountain and change the letters by overwriting a new word, referring to the past dictatorship and the current government.
Found footage, visual postcards written in the 1990s on VHS, fragments of a new life abroad passed on, sent by planes or buses to Kosovo, and pictures sent back from the country. Hugs on platforms, cars leaving, weddings and birthdays. Dancing and tears: lots of tears of joy and despair. Repeatable situations create chronicles of torn lives, uncertainty, and suspended existences.
When it left, death didn't even close our eyes centers on the testimonies of laborers working in Kosovo’s construction industry. They attest to how this precarious and unregulated labor market has serious human costs to those that have to seek its employment. Speaking of how they are expected to work hours—from 12, 13, 15, even up to 24 hours—and in conditions far beyond prescribed regulations or normal human expectations. One of the primary consequences is a high rate of injury, which then precludes future work in the industry—some workers even admit that they would rather face death than lose the ability to earn a living.
“Survival and School” is a beautiful story about the bad and evil times. An oasis of peace in war time. A nylon school built in the Berisha Mountains (Kosova) that had gathered around 200 pupils of the surrounding villages. The fate of people seen in the twenty-year-old authentic and timely shooting in quite different circumstances reveals the best the bad fate of man.
Beti, a woman in her late forties, together with her family, is deported by Serbian security forces from her home in the capital of Kosovo to the border village of Bllacë. With war breaking out in 1999, her story of survival is stitched together as the world she knew disintegrates. The seemingly endless cycle of cruelty Beti endures on her journey to a safe haven becomes a collective story of survival.
How many times have we commented on the "problems" of modern couples with different characters? Events full of intrigue and controversy that in fact commonly occur in the provinces throughout the Balkans, but this time are colored by the dialect and cultural character of the Ulcinj area.
Up until the mid-90s if you were openly gay in Albania, you would be sent to prison. Many homosexuals still face bigotry and violence, even in their own homes. In the last five years, Albania has seen a dynamic LGBTQ movement. Gay activist have created secret guest houses in Tirana that offer shelter to young homosexuals who have been brutally abused. VICE Greece traveled to Albania and recorded rare glimpses into the lives of people who have been victimized and neglected because of their sexual orientation in one of Europe’s most homophobic countries.
Homosexuality is one of the biggest taboos in Kosovar society. So much that the main characters of this film are hidden in shadows to protect them from the frequent attacks that occur against gays in Kosovo. This film gives the platform for Kosovo’s homosexual community to speak about their experiences and the discrimination against them, while shedding light on the subject through interviews with Kosovo’s religious leaders, psychologists, analysts and other citizens. Will society learn to accept these people as part of Kosovo’s new liberal reality, or must homosexuals remain in the shadows, hiding their true sexual identities in fear?
Helena was five years old when the Kosovo War began in February of 1998. She and her family were forced to flee their homes as Serbian soldiers swept the countryside, massacring ethnic Albanians and destroying their land. «Days of War» is a meditation on these experiences of war and displacement.
Over 750,000 bunkers were build in Albania for a war that never came. Building them drained vital resources and crippled Albanian industry. Presently, Albanians struggle to put the abandoned hollows to productive, creative use.
Kosovo 1988. Two young boys, a Serbian and an Albanian, raised together in a small town of Kosovo. As they grow up they find themselves in a war between two countries and on different fronts.
The different skin colours of the multicoloured creatures cause their peaceful coexistence to gradually collapse under the weight of discrimination and jealousy – despite the fact that their similarities far outweigh their differences.
In Kosovo, two young men walk in the ghostly space of an abandoned construction worksite. Toni and Bleri evoke memories of a scarcely joyful past, as well as their dream to leave the country in search of a better life. Emigration seems to be the only possibility of a future, but how do you get into the Schengen Area when you do not have a visa or an employment contract and when you come from a region that current geopolitics have relegated to the fringes?
“Prizren - the City of Resources and Beauty” is a documentary directed by Zvonimir Saksida and produced by Zastava Film in 1972, which presents the history, traditions and beauties of Prizren with the aim of promoting the touristic potential of the city. Discovered in the Lumbardhi Cinema archive, it was screened for the first time during the exhibition “At Once Vague and Unavoidable: Modernities 1945-1989” produced as part of the partnership between Lumbardhi Foundation and Oral History Initiative within the project “Prizren Urban Memoryscapes” supported by Franco-German Cultural Fund, the French Embassy, the German Embassy, Municipality of Prizren and Sharrcem. The restoration and digitization of “Prizren - the City of Resources and Beauty” was made possible by the partner of the project, the French National Audiovisual Institute - INA and the French Embassy.
Congress for the unification of youth.
Albanian LGBT community members appear for the first time with their non hidden faces and names and share their personal stories about how the LGBT movement has changed their lives.
