Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd, Okemos, MI 48864
USA
Dijana Jelača, Fordham University
“Gender, Class and the Socialist Minor Cinema of Soja Jovanović”
This lecture will discuss the “minor cinema” of a pioneering Yugoslav woman director, Sofija “Soja” Jovanović (1922-2002). Even though she was the first woman director in socialist Yugoslavia, and her 1950s and 1960s comedies were extremely popular, Jovanović has largely been ignored by Yugoslav film historians, or relegated to a secondary. This is due, in part, to her work being predominantly situated within the genre of comedy, and perceived as light entertainment. The lecture will urge a rethinking of Jovanović’s oeuvre through the lens of socialist minor cinema that possesses “low” cultural capital yet frequently articulates what might be deemed a socialist woman’s intimate public sphere. In focusing on the class components of her later work in particular, the gender politics of socialist women’s cinema will be explored vis-à-vis their distinction from the famed Yugoslav New Film, or the Black Wave. With this, the presentation seeks to reestablish Jovanović’s rightful place in the history of Yugoslav socialist film, but also in the project of mapping new transnational constellations of women’s cinema more broadly.
DIJANA JELAČA is the first speaker in the “Rethinking State Socialism” speaker series — organized by Dr. Nikolay Karkov
SPONSORED BY: Global Studies in the Arts & Humanities, Film Studies Program, Department of English, and the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and James Madison College