Yugoslav Urbanities on Film: Documenting and Remembering Socialist Communal Spaces

The presentation will focus on the documentary practices during and after socialist Yugoslavia that depict and examine the concepts of communal spaces and redistribution of wealth. I will trace a trajectory from the socialist filmmakers’ embrace of the notions of public goods centered on class-based coalitions and solidarity, to postsocialist, frequently reactionary depictions of Yugoslavia’s communal practices as ‘undemocratic’ and, by revisionist implication, oppressive in their favoring of redistribution over private property.