Beacons portrays eight women who transform archival material from cultural workers from Non-Aligned countries into a musical composition. They translate and decode words into sound, music, and choreography, turning the unfulfilled promises of the past into a rehearsal for our present. Filmed all over former Yugoslavia at remote architectural sites surrounded by breathtaking nature, formerly used to foster transnational solidarity, Jasmina Cibic seeks to reinsert the absent female voice into the history of building alternative worlds. To achieve this, she draws from speeches delivered at the first conference of cultural workers from Non-Aligned countries, held in 1985 in Titograd. At this event, scholars, artists, curators, and politicians outlined strategies for achieving cultural independence, spiritual decolonization, moral rehabilitation, and the emancipation of non-Western nations. Cibic’s protagonists use monumental architecture and landscapes as amplifiers for their voices and actions, advocating a feminist reinterpretation of architectural spaces and reactivating their potential as platforms for imagining new worlds through a feminist lens. The absent female voice is embodied here as a powerful coded signal, one that reaffirms the possibility of an emancipated future and collective action. (Dina Pokrajac)
Awards and Festivals:
Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (2024) – World Premiere
Jasmina Cibic is a multimedia artist whose work explores the intersections of state power, culture, and gender constructs. She investigates how culture has been instrumentalized by political forces in times of social and ideological crisis. Cibic conceptually links issues of human rights, institutional authority, and social justice with the role of art, highlighting the value of artistic expression as a form of soft power. The results of her research are translated into the language of film and theatrical composition, incorporating photography, performance, and installation. She represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennale with the project For Our Economy and Nation. Her films have been screened at museums, galleries, and festivals including the Barbican (London), Whitechapel Gallery, CCA Montreal, HKW Berlin, the Louvre, Les Rencontres Internationales (Paris), Aesthetica, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Dokfest Kassel, and CPH:DOX, among others. She has won the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image Award (2020) and the Film London Jarman Award (2021).
