Event

Screening and discussion with Director Iva Radivojevic

The program, organized with Slought, will feature a screening of Iva Radivojevic's film Evaporating Borders (2014, 63 minutes), followed by a conversation between Radivojevic, film scholar Meta Mazaj and art historian Laurel McLaughlin.

Iva Radivojevic's Evaporating Borders engages in the form of an essay film composed of a series of vignettes. The film investigates the effects of large-scale immigration on the sense of national identity, passionately weaving together themes such as migration, tolerance, and belonging. Guided by the filmmaker's personal reflections, the film also dissects the experience of individual asylum seekers in Cyprus, including a PLO activist, an exile from Iraq, as well as activists and academics who organize against fascists. In so doing, the film explores how the erosion of boundaries and borders -- both physical and metaphoric -- defamiliarize the narratives of selfhood through which identities take shape and reproduce themselves. The flow of populations, commodities and information complicates the preservation of tradition, memory and history, challenging normative conceptions of national identity. At the same time, a rise in discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance reminds us of the power of certain cultures and classes over others.

Iva Radivojevic is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She spent her early years in Yugoslavia and Cyprus before settling in NYC. Iva’s films have screened at numerous film festivals including the New York Film Festival, SXSW, Rotterdam IFF, Human Rights Watch, HotDocs, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and were broadcast on PBS, Documentary Channel as well as the New York Times Op-Docs. She is the recipient of the 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2012 Princess Grace Special Project Award, 2011 Princess Grace Film Fellowship and was named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film of 2013 by Filmmaker Magazine.