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.
Found footage compilation of Albania’s turbulent 20th century history is also a bitter and telling essay on the nation’s worship of personality cults and a warning of false prophets to come.
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.
In the 1960s after Albania's break with the Soviet Union, the country became an unlikely satellite of communist China (Newsweek referred to the alliance as ‘Mediterranean Maoists’). Enver Hoxha called the bond between the two countries the ‘coming together of the 702 million’, China being the 700 million, Albania representing the two. In exchange for its chrome exports and introducing the 1971 resolution that got China into the United Nations, Albania received sustaining economic and military support. This short documentary focuses on the Chinese table tennis team’s friendship visit, which soon began to sour after US president Richard Nixon visited Beijing.
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?
“What if women could move a house?” In “As If Biting Iron” (2019), Rizaj uses the medium of film to challenge this very question as we witness the walls of a brutalist building, situated in the forests of Kosovo, being moved by the forces of over 100 anonymous women. Pushing against the deadweight of the concrete, the burden of oppression literally and figuratively comes undone.
Four women, four heroines, who share a common fate. They have been brutally stricken by misfortune. It is not their shared past that brought them together, but it is “Hope” that keeps them alive, encouraging them to move on. “Hope” presents the different but powerful stories of Ferdonije, Auntie, Makfirete and Valentina. Although life can sometimes be very difficult, one must always try to find something to hold onto. Without hope, these four characters’ lives would have ended a long time ago. “Hope” has a power that even magic does not.
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 Albanian transition has obliged Loro Shestani to give up: his wife is dead, his daughter is a refugee in Italy and has forgotten her roots, the sea does not offer fish any more. Loro has passed over the middle of his life and he has understood that his life is in vain, he is not prepared to accept this new world. He shares his solitude with his pigeons.
“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.
Documentary about the soprano Tefta Tashko Koço. It uses only photographs of her, as well as short interviews with various friends of her. Although the audio is not perfect, you can enjoy many fragments from her songs.
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.
