High Noon at Eastern Neighbours

Thursday 10 & Friday 11 November | 12:00 hours | Studio A | Filmhuis Den Haag | Free admission

In the last year the Western media devoted much more attention to what’s going on in Southeast Europe. Unfortunately, not for the best of reasons. Topics like: the Balkan route, refugees in Macedonia and Serbia, the fence between Hungary and Serbia, recent fall of the government in Croatia and the destabilizing rhetoric of Bosnian political leaders, dominated the news coverage.

How do these recent social upheavals affect the people living in the Balkans? And how do they perceive the changing political movements that the whole European continent is experiencing. These are the topics which will be discussed with people who have recently dealt with the Balkans – traveled to do research or have a special bond with the region.

GUESTS:

Donald Weber – photographer and author
Valerie Sluijter – first Dutch ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina
Moderator: Mak Kapetanovic – former executive director of ENFF, currently Sarajevo-based and working in the field of public diplomacy and political analysis.

The exhibition Stray Dogs Walk the Red Carpet is the backdrop for the discussion and reveals the experiences of 34 international photography students from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, after embarking upon a weeklong photographic journey in an attempt to unravel the experiences of working in an unknown city. Together with design students from the Akademija Likovnih Umjetnosti, the photographers themselves are the stray dogs, wandering the city of Sarajevo.

The exhibition encompasses a range of themes, topics and issues, from LGBT rights, to the Oslobođenje building. Students were engaged in the worlds of landmines, unemployment, and of course stray dogs.

Selected works by Jamy Osinga ‘Dodi dodi’ Stray Dogs, Nathan Doorduin, ‘I saw a man pursuing the horizon’, Trees Heil, ‘I will make your visual CV’