ARMENIAN PREMIERE OF THE DOCUMENTARY FILM “VITIĆ DANCES” ON APRIL 19TH.

The feature-length dramatic documentary film “Vitić Dances,” directed and written by Boris Bakal and co-written and edited by Martin Semenčić, will be screened on April 19, 2024, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Yerevan at 7:00 PM local time (5:00 PM Croatian time).

The film follows the nearly 15-year project of community art by Boris Bakal and Shadow Casters, attempting to utilize various conceptual artistic means to lead the community of co-owners towards the collective restoration of the modernist architectural masterpiece by architect Ivo Vitić. The film premiered globally at the 19th ZagrebDox and has since been showcased at festivals in Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, India, Sweden, and Ecuador. At the 32nd Days of Croatian Film, “Vitić Dances” received a Special Recognition award, and at the Stockholm festival, it was honored with a Special Award for preserving memory and cultural heritage. In India (Ahmednagar) and Ecuador (San Antonio de Ibarra), it was named the best documentary film of the festivals.

Following this screening, the premiere in Pula will take place on April 30 at the Valli cinema, followed by distribution to cinemas across Croatia. The film has already been invited to five more domestic and international festivals, and this is the only opportunity (for now) to see it in Zagreb.

From the media:

“Bakal develops the film with the skyscraper as the main character, which proves to be part of a broader activist engagement and a renewal of awareness about infrastructure in the service of the community; in short, it affirms all those values that contemporary debates maliciously portray as relics of socialist heritage… ‘Vitić Dances’ is the best reminder of the corrupt environment and the community forcibly organized on the basis of the law of the strongest. Bakal, however, transforms concrete activism, in terms of relocating to the site and developing empowering practices among the participants, into a dynamic film full of twists, documenting a period spanning about fifteen years.” – Iva Rosandić, “Vitić Dances – Dance Against the System,” Dokumentarni.net, April 7, 2023.

“The film’s theme is very important because it shows not only how artists, or individuals from culture, encourage and try to achieve the protection and restoration of valuable protected cultural monuments, i.e., individuals for the common good, for the community, but also how the system in the country, whose task that is, fails to do so. It thus becomes a metaphor for many such cases, but also reveals various interests and interpersonal relationships.” – Marijana Jakovljević, Glas Koncila, “Documentary from Vitić’s Skyscraper – Individual for the Community,” May 27, 2023.

“Yet the film’s message is far from dark. Above all, it is an ode to active coexistence, solidarity, unity, and all the ideas that Bakal recognized in the lively façade twenty years ago. And the documentary does not mark the end of the story – it merely completes one chapter, and Vitić will continue to dance.” – Andrea Stanić, “Social Choreography Behind the Lively Façade,” Kulturpunkt, May 9, 2023.

“Filmed predominantly inside and around the building, often at residents’ gatherings, vividly edited – co-written (alongside Bakal) and edited by Martin Semenčić – frequently accompanied by the fast-paced jazz score of Be-Bop Dizzy Gillespie All Stars, this dynamic film is content-rich, dedicated, enthusiastic, convincing, but without finger-pointing or blame, it portrays the agony of a prolonged, (overly) complicated, exhausting process that is prolonged due to incompetence, irresponsibility, sloppiness, vanity, malice… and also greed. Human nature? There are honest, diligent, and well-intentioned people, but too few to cope with simply much more numerous, and generally more stubborn and persistent wrongdoers, for whom it is actually easier because, isn’t it, it’s harder to build and strive than to destroy and obstruct.” – Janko Heidl, “Easier to Destroy Than to Build,” Vijenac, June 29, 2023.

“Like the architect’s wife Nada, who danced through life with her husband, Bakal dances with Vitić’s house, a paradigmatic example of Croatian modernism. His move to temporarily inhabit Vitić’s building, in order to patiently build an atmosphere of community and restoration right where the house is literally falling apart, is almost unrealistically humanistic.” – Marina Pavković, economist and doctor of architecture, Facebook after the Šibenik premiere of the film, February 21, 2024.

Director: Boris Bakal 

Screenwriters: Boris Bakal, Martin Semenčić (Co-writer) 

Cinematographers: Adam Luka Turjak, Ante Cvitanović, Bojana Burnać, Bojan Haron Markičević, Boris Bakal, Damjan Nenadić, Danko Vučinović, David Oguić, Davorin Fahn, Dubravka Kurobaša, Filip Tot, Ines Lambert, Jadran Boban, Jasenko Rasol, Katarina Pejović, Lovro Cepelak, Mark Modrić, Rino Barbir, Sandra Uskoković, Plakor Kovačević, Srđan Kovačević, Veno Mušinović, Vedran Senjanović, Tamara Cesarac, Tomislav Sutlar, Tomaš Kratochvíl 

Editor: Martin Semenčić (Co-editor) 

Composer: Stanko Juzbašić 

Producers: Boris Bakal, Adrijana Prugovečki, Tibor Keser, Ivan Kelava 

Production Company: Multimedia Arts Organization Shadow Casters 

Coproducers: Croatian Radiotelevision, 15 umjetnost 

Distribution: Radar d.o.o. 

Support: Croatian Audiovisual Centre, City of Zagreb – Office for Culture, EU Media