Hrvatski
Italiano
FrançaisEIGHT PROJECTS, ONE TRNJE, AND “AMERIKANKA” OPENING A NEW STORY 56 YEARS LATER
Written by Boris on 2026-10-13
EIGHT PROJECTS, ONE TRNJE, AND “AMERIKANKA” OPENING A NEW STORY 56 YEARS LATER
Culture and art in the Trnje community
19 October 2026 at 6 PM / Main Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo / Free admission
What happens when eight different cultural and artistic programmes begin operating almost simultaneously in the same city district? Beyond their individual projects, can they create something together that did not exist before — a network of cooperation, a shared calendar, an exchange of audiences and spaces, greater mutual visibility and a stronger cultural life in Trnje?
On 19 October at Pogon Jedinstvo, Shadow Casters will launch a new cycle of the Urboglifi / Urboteka II project, but the opening evening will not be dedicated to a single project alone.
For the first time, the event will bring together programmes supported through the City of Zagreb public call Culture and Art in the Community for activities in the Trnje city district: Vodena biblioteka (The Water Library) by Ganz nova kultura promjene, Glazba za ekološki osviještene uši VOL 3 (Music for Environmentally Conscious Ears VOL 3) by Hrvatska glazbena mladež, Otvoreno Trnje 2026. (Open Trnje 2026) by Operacija grad, KSET Open Air 2026., Urboglifi – Urboteka II (Urboglyphs – Urbotheque II) by Shadow Casters, Vrbik (kv)art (Vrbik – Neighbourhood Art) by Skribonauti, Nezavisno Trnje (Independent Trnje) by Udruženje za razvoj kulture URK and Savica priča – glas i kultura zajednice (Savica Tells Its Story – the Voice and Culture of the Community) by Udruga Žaruljica.
These are eight very different projects approaching Trnje through film, music, literature, ecology, public space, neighbourhood relations and cultural participation. Through this year’s call, the City of Zagreb allocated a total of EUR 86,000 to these programmes.
The projects will be presented, among others, by Dubravka Dujmović Kušan on behalf of Hrvatska glazbena mladež, Ivana Vilović Marušić for Nezavisno Trnje, Dina Popović for Savica priča – glas i kultura zajednice, Luiza Bouharaoua for Skribonauti and Vrbik (kv)art, while KSET will be represented by Ena Dvojak, Katarina Pešić and Dino Islamović. Sven Janovski will present Otvoreno Trnje 2026., a project of the Upgrade Platform run by the Operacija grad network of associations.
Organisations unable to attend in person on 19 October are invited to present their projects through programme materials and announcements of their first events.
Because the aim of the evening is not to produce yet another sequence of short presentations.
We want to open up the question of what eight programmes working in the same area can do together: can they coordinate schedules, promote one another’s activities, direct audiences towards one another, exchange contacts, experience and resources, and over the coming months create a visible cultural network in Trnje?
But first — “Amerikanka”
The evening begins with a screening of Zoran Tadić’s 1970 short documentary Amerikanka, made in the context of the ORA Sava youth work action, and screened with the consent of the Tadić family.
Film scholar and critic Višnja Pentić, architect and architectural theorist Maroje Mrduljaš, Shadow Casters and the audience will discuss the film, the city, work, community and space. The programme will be moderated by dramaturge and writer Anja Pletikosa.
This time, however, we do not want to view Amerikanka merely as an important example of Tadić’s documentary approach or as a cinematic document of a particular era.
We will try to do what Urboglifi always does with the city: change the point of view.
What does the film see, and what does it leave unseen? Who is the young American woman observed by the camera? What do we know about the world she came from? From today’s perspective, how do we understand the film’s irony towards youth work actions, and what do we now know about the enormous role played by Yugoslav and international youth brigades in constructing Zagreb’s flood-defence system along the Sava? And how does our reading of the film change when a person who for decades existed only as a film character reappears as a real person — with her own life, memories and view of what happened?
While preparing this screening, our research unexpectedly uncovered living traces leading far beyond the film itself.
From a single film frame, a broader story began to emerge: a story about American women and men who came to Zagreb and Yugoslavia during the second half of the twentieth century, some of whom stayed while others returned home, and who often almost imperceptibly influenced our cultural space — film, visual art, design, literature and the ways Zagreb communicated with the world.
This research is only beginning.
It is already opening connections to people, works and biographies stretching from Zoran Tadić and Zagreb cinema through design and visual culture to the much broader question of cultural transfers between Croatia, Yugoslavia and the United States.
Perhaps it will develop into a new research strand of its own — Americans in Zagreb.
For now, we will reveal only the first trace.
Because one of the fundamental principles of Urboglifi is that the city is not a finished story. We read it as a hypertext in which a single frame, a name, a discovered document or an unexpected encounter can alter the meaning of something we thought we already knew.
On 19 October, we will try to do the same with the eight projects in Trnje: to look at them not merely as eight separately funded programmes, but as the possible beginnings of a new cultural infrastructure for an entire city district.
19 October 2026 at 6 PM
Main Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo
Free admission
The Urboglifi / Urboteka II project is supported by the City of Zagreb. Project partners are the Trnje City District, Trnjanska Savica Local Committee, Pogon – Zagreb Centre for Independent Culture and Youth, Pučko otvoreno učilište Zagreb and the Zagreb City Libraries in Trnje – Marina Držić, Savica and Ivan Goran Kovačić libraries.
