In the early 2000s, Kino Bistrica, and from then on Kino Lumbardhi, was left to the dust of time, and only operated in a few specific moments during the year. The building is still infamously situated teetering over onto a piece of road, creating a continuous friction with its environment. Due to its central position in the city, it was the subject of proposed demolition several times. The cinema and the city evolved, transformed and came into conflict, always in relation to each other. Today kino Lumbardhi serves as home to Lumbardhi foundation and international documentary and short film festival, Dokufest, making Prizren a vibrant cultural town in Kosovo.
Kinofiguration: An open archive aims at showing that Kino Bistrica, at least for a period in the twentieth century, provided a peculiar and delirious mass cultural experience to the city. This mass cultural experience, in relation to the city, is centrally important to the research. The underlying notion, here, consists on the fact that as cultural objects, buildings entail in them social, cultural and political relations, far beyond mere empirical interactions.
The exhibition contains images, objects, documents and articles embedded in the building, from the offices to the hall, from the loggias to the projection room. The exhibited pieces and “remnants” of the archive do not create a whole story and they are not based on chronological order, but are incomplete and open to many interpretations. Rather, they constitute a cinematic and non-linear composition which highlights in fragments aspects of this complex history.
Kinofiguration: An open archive opened on August 9, from 18:00 at Kino Lumbardhi and it remains open until September 27, 2021. It will be followed by events, a publication and conversations related to the research and the multilayered history of Lumbardhi Cinema.
The project has been carried out by Lumbardhi Foundation in partnership with Pro Peace Kosovo Program, and is supported by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Foundation for Arts Initiative (FFAI), Raiffeisen Bank in Kosovo and the Kosovo Privatization Agency.
