FAR

Želimir Žilnik: Essential Work
Roundtable Discussion at FAR Center for Contemporary Arts
Wednesday, October 4th 4:30PM – 6:00PM with a reception to follow (6:00PM – 7:00PM)

Since the mid-1960s, Želimir Žilnik’s most groundbreaking and influential films have explored the category of work in its multifaceted and often overlooked forms. This includes unemployment (The Unemployed, 1968), migrant labor (Inventory, 1975), housing and homeless (Black Film, 1971), sex work (Marble Ass, 1995), women’s work (Vera i Eržika, 1981) and work as a political ideological concept (Early Works, 1969). Together with the film series at IU Cinema, “Želimir Žilnik: Essential Work,” this roundtable brings together leading scholars of film and South Slavic culture to examine work as a critical category and thematic thread that run across Žilnik’s six-decade long career. Drawing on the COVID-era coinage “essential workers” and “essential work”, and with the recent wave of union strikes and labor actions in mind, this conversation also takes stock of the continued significance of labor and work for culture and society today.

Guest speakers:
Pavle Levi, Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts in the Art Department’s Film and Media Studies Program at Stanford University

Marijeta Bozovic, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Film and Media Studies, at Yale University

Ivone Margulies, Professor of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York

The conversation will be moderated by
Joshua Malitsky, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Director of the Center for Documentary Research and Practice at Indiana University, Bloomington

Stick around after the roundtable for a Q & A and reception with the filmmaker Želimir Žilnik in attendance. This event is part of the Creative Collaborations program at IU Cinema and the film series “Želimir Žilnik” Essential Work.” All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the film series and upcoming screenings at IU Cinema, please visit: https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/series/elimir-ilnik-essential-work.