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FrançaisThe documentary film “Vitić Dances,” directed by Boris Bakal, produced by Shadow Casters and co-produced with HRT, will premiere on Saturday, April 1st, as part of this year’s International Documentary Film Festival ZagrebDox, followed by a Q&A session with the director.
Time: April 1, 2023 – 7:00 PM
Location: Zagreb, Kaptol Center
“Vitić Dances” is a film about the struggle for the renovation of the building in Laginjina Street in Zagreb, designed by Ivo Vitić, one of the key Yugoslav architects. The iconic modernist building becomes a metaphor for society in this “story about us, others, and the space in between.”
This documentary collage film (composed of photographs, models, TV, and film footage) is the debut of theater and film director and actor, as well as intermedia artist Boris Bakal, and was filmed over almost 20 years. In 2002, during the first major urban transformative performance and research project by Shadow Casters – “Shadow Casters,” as part of the Zagreb Urban Festival, the first shots and sounds of the future film were recorded. This is when the idea for this largest community art project in the Republic of Croatia, “Vitić Dances,” was born. Through performances, concerts, exhibitions, workshops, public forums, and advocacy, working with the local community led to the largest restoration of modernist architecture in this part of Europe – the residential-business block of the National Bank by the famous Croatian architect Ivo Vitić.
At the start of the project, Vitić’s National Bank Block in Laginjina Street 7 and 9, popularly known as the “colorful skyscraper,” was not individually protected as a cultural heritage site in the Republic of Croatia, nor was it in the monument protection zone of the city center (op- Bauerova street). The project by Shadow Casters and Boris Bakal accelerated the protection process, and through collaboration with the local community, city and state institutions, and with significant help from the media, led to the final restoration of this remarkable architectural achievement in spring 2018.
Although the most famous, this is not the first project advocating and leading to restoration by artist Boris Bakal: in 2000, at his initiative, the pavilion L’Esprit Nouveau by architect Le Corbusier in Bologna was renovated during Bologna’s term as the European Capital of Culture, where Boris directed the largest theater project “Hotel Europa” based on the performance script by Macedonian writer and playwright Goran Stefanovski, in the modernist factory of the famous Italian architect Melchioro Bege. Boris is currently working on two new restoration projects: the so-called Railway Block in Skopje from 1942 and the Koujak-Jaber skyscraper by architect Victor Bisharat from 1964.
Learn more about the process of advocating for restoration and its journey, about who was for and against it, where it could have gone but didn’t, in this interesting documentary testimony, signed by Boris in collaboration with the recently deceased editor Martin Semenčić.
Boris Bakal is a theater/film director, actor, intermedia artist, activist, public historian, curator, and educator.
Project Support: HAVC, City of Zagreb, EU Media
