Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body + Slet 1998| 5 February 2026 | 19:30 | Netherlands Film Academy Amsterdam

ReCNTR and the Master of Film at the Netherlands Film Academy are happy to present a double screening of Marta Popivoda’s work, followed by a Q&A with film critic Neil Young.

YUGOSLAVIA, HOW IDEOLOGY MOVED OUR COLLECTIVE BODY
2013, 62 min, Serbia / France / Germany

Synopsis. The film explores how ideology performs itself in public space through mass performances. The author collected and analyzed film and video footage from the period of Yugoslavia (1945 – 2000), focusing on state performances (youth work actions, May Day parades, celebrations of the Youth Day, etc.) as well as counter-demonstrations (’68, student and civic demonstrations in the ‘90s, 5th October revolution, etc.). Going back through the images, the film traces how communist ideology was gradually exhausted through the changing relations between the people, ideology, and the state.

Directors statement. This research-based essay film offers a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into several democratic nation-states. Experience of the dissolution of the state, and today’s “wild” capitalist reestablishment of the class system in Serbia, are my reasons for going back through the media images and tracing the way one social system changed by performing itself in public space. (Marta Popivoda)

SLET 1988
2025, 22 min, Germany / France / Serbia

Synopsis. In Slet 1988, dancer Sonja Vukićević (74) moves through socialist-modernist spaces, her body is an archive of the last mass performance in Yugoslavia. Her gestures echo past rhythms and present realities, intertwining with a 1988 teenage girl’s diary to reveal the shift from socialist collectivism to rising individualism while a new national collective body is creeping in and will soon shape the future of the country.

Marta Popivoda

Marta POPIVODA (1982, Serbia) is a Berlin-based filmmaker, video-artist and researcher. Her work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale and was later screened at many international film festivals. The film is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York, and it’s featured in What Is Contemporary Art?, MoMA’s online course about contemporary art from 1980 to the present. Her work has also featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp and Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana Popivoda received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste Berlin and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist. Her new feature documentary Landscapes of Resistance will premiere in the Tiger Competition of the IFFR 2021.

Neil Young

Neil Young is a film-critic and curator/programmer based mainly in Sunderland (UK) and Vienna. His reviews and festival reports appear regularly in The Hollywood Reporter, Sight & Sound, Tribune (London), MUBI Notebook and other international outlets. Formerly director of the Bradford International Film Festival (2011-15), he works as a consultant advising several European film-festivals including the Viennale.