Film in the Museum / Behind the Tide: The Sea Is History
10.6.–12.6.2025.
From June 10th to 12th, a three-day program of film screenings will take place at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and on the rooftop of the Children’s House, alongside the exhibition Behind the Tide.
Film in the Museum is a three-day film screening program that takes place as a side program of Behind the Tide exhibition.
Subtitled after Louis Henderson’s film The Sea is History, the program will completement and deepen the reflections, contexts, and questions raised by the Behind the Tide exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Through contemporary audiovisual works and film and video essays by internationally recognized artists, it will also feature a trilogy of short films by Renata Poljak, artist whose work has been exploring the theme of the sea over the past ten years.
This selection of audiovisual essays presents the thought-provoking works of artists who offer a deep analysis of the contemporary world. Interested in the relationships between image and the world, image and counter-image, and the forms of their transmission, this “forum of images” focuses on current cinematic and artistic trends, new visual languages of contemporary art, and media expressions, which offer fresh critical perspectives on current aesthetic and socio-political phenomena – from the contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean, Fortex, and Fortress Europe in the work Migrating Image, through colonial histories in Sea is History, to the monumental experimental documentary by William Raban from 1986. The documentary follows the course of the River Thames, alternating scenes that juxtapose different forms of image and text, archival film, and contemporary footage. As the river and the film unfold together, we see different layers of history that have shaped the development of the British Empire, reflected in the rise of capitalism – in a film that sheds light on a period when the river was the Empire’s lifeline and the busiest waterway in the world.
Program and schedule:
10 Jun 2025, 8 PM – The Sea is History, Louis Henderson, 27′, The Migrating Image, Stefan Kruse, 28′ (venue: MMSU)
11 Jun 2025, 8 PM – Thames Film, William Raban, 66′ (venue: MMSU)
12 Jun 2025, 7:30 PM – exhibition tour with the MMSU staff and artist Igor Eškinja (venue: MMSU); 9 PM – film trilogy by Renata Poljak: Yet another departure, Porvenir, Songs For The Sea (venue: roof of “Dječja kuća”
!For the film screenings by Renata Poljak on June 12th at 9 PM, a reservation is required.: https://forms.gle/RdKbwQ1c62q5436Y8