Subversive Festival

Subversive Festival logo
Location	Zagreb,Croatia
Founded	2008
Awards	The Wild Dreamer
Language	English,Croatian
Website	http://www.subversivefestival.com/

TheSubversive Festival is anannual internationalfortnight ofpolitical,activist,cultural,educational,literary andartistic events that takes place inZagreb,Croatia every May.^[1] Its activities are divided into the Subversive Film Festival (which was the official name of the festival until 2011), the Subversive Forum, the Balkan Forum and the Subversive Book Fair. The cross-cutting activity is the Subversive Festival's Conference that includes major keynote lectures and round tables held in Cinema Europe.

The Festival was initially founded as theSubversive Film Festival in 2008 which celebrated the 40th anniversary of theprotests of 1968. The initial edition of the festival included screening of the films byChris Marker andJean-Luc Godard as well as public lectures bySlavoj Žižek,Ernesto Laclau,Chantal Mouffe and others. Each edition of the festival has an overarching theme that invites critical examination and public debates. In 2009 the Festival was dedicated toChina, in the context of the 60th anniversary of theCommunist Revolution, whereas in 2010 its theme was the history, present and future of the idea ofsocialism.

Following the "Arab Spring", the 2011 edition was dedicated todecolonisation as well as tonew social movements. The situation in theEuropean Union prompted the organisers in 2012 to tackle "The Future of Europe",^[3] whereas the major theme of 2013's "The Utopia of Democracy" responded to the rise of global movements demanding realdemocracy,participation and socialjustice.^[4] Che Guevara's daughterAleida was one of the guests in 2013, as well asAlexis Tsipras, the head of Greece's leftistSYRIZA parliamentary group, both taking part in debates at the festival.^[5]

In 2013Srećko Horvat andIgor Štiks left the Subversive Festival together with other members of the program team, "due to differences in understanding the goals and direction of the activist platforms within Subversive Forum and, more generally, the general purpose of Subversive Festival".^[6] From 2014 onwards it has been run by a different team.^[7]

In 2021, after the 2019 closure of the festival's primary venue Europe Cinema, the event moved to four venues and streamed online.^[2]

Subversive Festival has several sections.

In 2011 the Subversive Film Festival, originally the core of the festival, became one of many festival sections.

Thefilm festival consists of a selection of films according to their relation to the main theme of that year's Festival (e.g. 1968, China, Socialism, Decolonisation, Europa Incognita, Utopia of Democracy),retrospectives of acknowledgedleftist film authors andpanel discussions betweenfilm theoreticians andfilmmakers.

The most notable film retrospectives so far include an overview of the revolutionary films of the 1960s and 1970s, a selection ofChinese film classics and contemporary films, a majorretrospective ofYugoslav cinema (curated by Sergio Germani Grmek) and a selection of contemporaryThird World cinema.

The sixth edition of the Subversive Film Festival (in 2013) introduced competition categories for contemporaryEuropean and international films, selected by theartistic director Dragan Rubeša. The first Wild Dreamer Award for Lifetime Achievement was given toOliver Stone, whose latest 10-hour-long series theUntold History of the United States was shown in the main film programme.^[8] The Wild Dreamer for Best Documentary Film went to Italian directorDaniele Vicari forLa nave dolce [it].The Land of Hope by Japanese directorShion Sono, a story about a family whose father refuses to evacuate his sick wife from aradiation affected area, won the Best Feature Award. French filmmaker Sylvain George'sVers Madrid (en.The Burning Bright!), which documents demonstrations of the15-Mgrassroots protest movement in Spain, was voted Best Film by theaudience.

The Subversive Forum is a leftist andprogressive event that established itself as an open platform for different and even opposing positions. The Subversive Forum is not connected to anypolitical party but it attracts individuals of various political stripes on the progressive left and is related to almost all significant Croatian,post-Yugoslav andBalkanssocial movements – fromstudent movements,trade unions,feminist organisations, the Right to the City movements,green andLGBTactivists etc. The Subversive Forum has been supported by theWorld Social Forum as an official event of the WSF. According to the organizers, the Subversive forum has become "one of the key European mobilisation points for activists and intellectuals from the region and the world, thinking jointly how to build better social systems"^[5]

The Balkan Forum was established in 2012 as the platform for cooperation for pan-Balkan social and political movements and organisations from 10 post-socialist countries (Slovenia,Croatia,Bosnia and Herzegovina,Serbia,North Macedonia,Albania,Bulgaria,Romania,Montenegro, and with strong participation fromHungary). The conclusions of the First Balkan Forum^[9] highlighted a need for strongercooperation among these movements as well as for joint action across thepeninsula. A huge number of activists gathered in 2012 and 2013 to discuss topics relevant to the region, includingneoliberal policies, rampantprivatisation, the defense of theCommons, student and workers movements, sex andgender equality,social change, as well as the questions ofdemocratisation andparticipation, the media andpublic sphere, and alternativeeconomic models.^[10]

The Balkan Forum includes bothself-organised sessions by movements and organisations themselves as well asplenary sessions.

The Subversive Festival established strong ties with theWorld Social Forum, The World Forum of Alternatives,Transform! Europe Network,Attac,Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung,Heinrich Böll Foundation^[11] and similar international organisations.

The events at the Subversive Festival are usually reported by local and internationalmedia (Al Jazeera,Croatian Television,Slovenian Television,Arte TV, etc.). The Festival benefits from special media support by media sharing its political vision such asle Monde Diplomatique, La Memoire des Luttes,^[12] Transeuropeennes,Zarez, Critic Attac, etc.

The 6th edition of the Subversive Festival provoked special attention since it took place just beforeCroatia's accession to the EU. In this context, the visit of the head of theGreekoppositionSyrizaAlexis Tsipras andfilm directorOliver Stone was particularly followed both by local audience and international media. A joke made bySlavoj Žižek during the public debate with Tsipras provoked a controversy in Greece.^[13]

The Festival's conference attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world. Many prominent intellectuals have givenkeynote lectures and participated inpublic debates, includingSlavoj Žižek,Oliver Stone,Alexis Tsipras,Tariq Ali,Aleida Guevara,Terry Eagleton,Gayatri Spivak,Michael Hardt,Antonio Negri,Saskia Sassen,Wang Hui,Minqi Li,Karl-Heinz Dellwo,David Harvey,Erik Olin Wright,Bernard Stiegler,Franco Berardi,Karl-Markus Gauss,Renata Salecl,Boris Buden,Dubravka Ugrešić,Želimir Žilnik,Aleš Debeljak,Samir Amin etc.

• 
  Stipe Mesić^[14]
• 
  Alexis Tsipras
• 
  Oliver Stone
• 
  David Harvey^[15]
• 
  Terry Eagleton^[16]
• 
  Antonio Negri^[17]
• 
  Slavoj Žižek^[18]
• 
  Zygmunt Bauman^[19]
• 
  Shyam Benegal^[20]
• 
  Michael Hardt
• 
  Gianni Vattimo^[21]
• 
  Tariq Ali^[21]
• 
  Gayatri Spivak^[21]
• 
  Želimir Žilnik^[22]
• 
  Renata Salecl
• 
  Stéphane Hessel^[23]
• 
  Saskia Sassen
• 
  Yanis Varoufakis
• 
  Aleida Guevara
• 
  Samir Amin

• Official web site

Media related toSubversive Festival at Wikimedia Commons

• Festivals in Zagreb
• Spring (season) events in Croatia
• 2008 establishments in Croatia
• Recurring events established in 2008
• Film festivals established in 2008

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from October 2020
• Commons category link from Wikidata