Nika Petković –
Vacations in Yugoslavia – approaching the archives of home movies

The research project “Vacations in Yugoslavia“ refers to the social memory related to tourism on the Adriatic coast, starting primarily from archive footage, which plays a special role in interpreting and shaping the perception of our past. The booming period of tourism, in the 1960s and 1970s, was also the moment when the popularity of amateur film spread, which meant practicing the seventh art with complete freedom and independence. The appearance of the Super8 film tapes and cameras in the mid-60s represents a decisive moment in the history of amateur cinematography, especially in the context of home movies. Amateurs approach the camera out of purely hobbyist urges and with the desire to record significant moments from everyday life, among which vacations and trips abroad. In the archive materials found in different archives abroad (Bologna, Southampton, etc.) we can get an insight into the experiences of foreign tourists who used amateur cameras to record the impressions and memories of their summer stays in Yugoslavia. Cities along the Adriatic coast, islands, the Adriatic highway, monuments to the National Liberation Movement, hotels, and their interiors recorded are motifs that today are being largely emptied of their initial meaning. The research questions the role of home movies and amateur films in producing nostalgic pictures of the past and in the development of the phenomenon of Yugonostalgia.

Biography:

Nika Petković (1992, Rijeka) holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Film Studies from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Bologna. After completing her studies she started collaborating with the “Cineteca di Bologna” on a project “Cineturismo in Emilia Romagna” and with the festival “Il Cinema Ritrovato” as a jury coordinator and as a production assistant on educational workshops. In Bologna, she also collaborated as a researcher of archive material at Home Movies Archive and with the festival “Archivio Aperto”, mainly focused on amateur and experimental cinema. In 2019 she moved to Zagreb, where she continued collaborating as an archive researcher for the film “Fiume o Morte!” (Igor Bezinović, RESTART). She collaborates with the educational program Sedmi kontinent (Seventh continent) as editor of the educational film platform Vrti svoj film. She was one of the film programmers of the 18th edition of the ZagrebDox festival. She also writes film reviews and essays for film journals (Hrvatski filmski ljetopis) and websites (Kultupunkt).