City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts

History

The 12th City of Women Festival of 2006 presented artists from 13 countries and focused on the meaning of history and memory. On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a special tribute was paid to this German political theorist of Jewish origin whose works the organisers said 'created one of the most influential works of reference on political thinking of the 20th century'. A performance reconstructing a 1972 conference on her work, followed by a debate, was staged at Metelkova. The festival was opened by Germaine Dulac's Smiling Madame Beudet, a silent film screened to live music accompaniment. Joseph Valencic, who is involved with Slovene-American immigration history and popular culture, gave a lecture on Slovene women in American arts. Some 50 archival photographs from his private collection were put on display under the title We Are Bold American Women. Slovene women and their descendants in the US were also portrayed in the documentary 100% Slovenian by Mirjam M Hladnik and Hanna A W Slak. The festival also featured Life Differently, a documentary by Loredana Bianconi (Italy) which depicts four Moroccan-born Belgian women, and One Point Two by Silvia Ferreri (Italy), which deals with the problem of declining birth rates in contemporary western society. Italian journalist Sabina Guzzanti also showed her Viva Zapatero!, a satire of the Berlusconi government. In 2006 one of the debates, themed 'Gender, Literature and Cultural Memory in the Context of South Eastern Europe', compared two periods: the era of Yugoslavia, with its common literary market and inter-textual and intercultural links, which were broken as a result of the disintegration of the common state, and the post-conflict literary milieux that exist today in Yugoslavia's successor states. A party dubbed Valpurgis Night with City of Women Witches closed the 2006 festival at Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone.

City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts

History

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