Renata Poljak
Renata Poljak graduated at the School of Fine Arts in Split and got her MFA at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France. Her works have been shown at numerous national and international solo and group exhibitions, biennials and film festivals. She received many awards, like Golden Black Box for the best short film at Berlin Black Box Festival held in Babylon Cinema in 2006, or the T-HT award – one of the most important contemporary art awards in Croatia, in 2012.
In 2002 she was a visiting artist at San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2008 she was selected for the Art In General residency programme in New York. She was also a resident in Citédes des Arts in Recollets in Paris.
In 2010 Poljak showed a substantial selection of her films at the screening programme of Prospective Cinema at the Centre Georges Pompidou and in October 2012 at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
CLOSING EVENT OF RENATA`S RESIDENCY – MEET THE ARTIST AND SHORT FILMS on Wednesday 12th May at 5:30 PM, Spazju Kreattiv Cinema:
Songs For The Sea
PORVENIR, 12’, 2020
Dreaming of better lands, from generation to generation, because of poverty, hunger and wars, we voyage across the seas.
Geography is destiny.
“Do our bodies retain the memories of our grandfathers; are memories of running away in search of better lands imprinted on our bodies?”
Porvenir means Future. It is the only town in Tierra del Fuego, at the bottom of the world, founded by Croatian immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century.
Yet Another Departure, 12’, 2018
3 channel video installation 15 x 3, 2018
The command ship Vis, the most advanced ship of the former Yugoslav Army, was deliberately sunk in 2016, to convert it into a tourist diving attraction.
A woman waiting on her husband, who left exactly a hundred years ago, for one of the promised lands somewhere at the end of the world, froze in time her appearance so that her husband could always recognise her.
To date, not moving much from her birthplace, she has lived through 5 different systems and regimes.
Still alive and preserving her youthful appearance, she gazes at the sea every day.
Several nautical miles off the sunken ship Vis, the Brijuni archipelago rises from the sea. This is where the foundations forming the Non-Aligned Movement were set, during a historic meeting in 1956.
Today, there is also a museum with photographs from the time it was Tito’s summer residence, and a natural science collection of exotic stuffed animals, which were sent as presents to the former president and lived on the island.
Partenza 11’, 2016
Film entitled “Partenza” expresses the global insecurity of contemporary society and the fragility of human existence. Metaphorically, they address a story about departure, waiting and separation, dictated by migrations. In the early 20th century, it was usual yet traumatic for men to leave Croatian islands (mostly bound for the countries of South America) due to poverty and hunger. One of these tragic stories is weaved into the author’s family history. The film is inspired by the life story of Renata’s great-grandmother who lived on the island of Brač, whose husband went to Chile looking for work in order to secure his family’s future. Like many of the island’s women, she waited for her husband who, like many of the men, never returned.
Partenza (Italian for departure, and used in many of Croatia’s island and coastal dialects) is inspired by the contemporary tragedies of migrants at sea. The author uses this phenomenon as a connecting thread and a reminder that not so long ago we were in the same boat. It links two stories – the one of Croatia from the early 20th century and today’s plight of African and Asian refugees. This film, using migrant and refugee stories which repeat throughout history, very powerfully and suggestively points to the human condition as fragile and susceptible to political, economic and social changes.