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Side Institute News Brief—November 2003
Fred Newman's Feature Film, "Nothing Really Happens," Premieres at Belgrade's Annual International Auteur Film Festival
Belgrade
– November, 2003 -- Nothing Really Happens: Memories
of an Aging Stripper, Fred Newman's newly released feature
film, made its European debut at Belgrade's 10th Annual International
Auteur Film Festival - "View to the World."
Newman is founder and principal trainer at the East Side Institute,
which has a long history of collaboration with psychologists and
social workers in the former Yugoslavia through the refugee support
organization, Zdravo Da Ste.
Nothing Really Happens received three screenings –
including a special showing at the Belgrade International Theatre
Festival theatre. It also screened at the Belgrade Students Center,
a non-traditional cultural institution that attracts students
and intellectuals; and in a local movie theatre with a reputation
for novel art films. Each screening was filled to capacity and
the film was received with enthusiasm. Since the festival screenings
of Nothing Really Happens continue sponsored by a network
of community organizations.
Representatives of Zdravo Da Ste, who helped bring the film to
the festival, introduced the film as a continuation of the Institute's
work in the arena of psychology and human development. In interviews
with columnist and film critic, Jovan Cirilov, and with reporters
from Festival News (a public television program broadcast
throughout the festival), Vesna Ognjenovic, co-founder and director
of Zdravo da Ste, explained that the film is a new kind of artistic
creation. "Nothing Really Happens was created within
the context of community development, and is inseparable from
it," she said, referring to the network of independent cultural,
psychology and political projects, that Newman has helped to create,
and that gave birth to the film project.
The 90-minute independent film produced by Mary Fridley, Director
of Development at the East Side Institute, stars 1960s theater
legend Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theater with her
late husband Julian Beck. Malina plays a prizewinning author whose
interview with a Village Voice reporter triggers a series
of surreal flashbacks that challenge the young reporter's attachment
to truth and reality and turn a therapeutic gaze on issues of
adolescence, sexuality and class.
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