As part of the international research project “Heritage from Below / Drežnica: Traces and Memories 1941-1945,” a very diverse two-day programme was held on April 29 and 30. From its beginning, the project is based on the assumption that emancipatory memorial practices emerge from and are built through experience first with the local community, and only then with everyone else. Within the programme, a public cinema screening of Slavko Goldstein’s 1964 film about Drežnica was held on Friday night in a packed sawmill.
Extra seats were needed, and thanks to Rade and Mišo Maravić, as well as the friendly sawmill employees, everything went smoothly, and the atmosphere was warm and welcoming. On the second day of the programme, an important, several hours long workshop was held on the topic of mapping the memories of Drežnica men and women, which were directly inscribed onto maps. The maps contain objects, roads, places, shelters, stories, legends, in other words, all the active and important knowledge of the community about their home territory in the long run perspective, and, in this case, about disappearance as well. That is why such activities are extremely important, because they restore the trust of small communities from the outskirts in the scientific and minority public that works on preserving both knowledge and contact with people.
Furthermore, these materials will be used for an exhibition on this topic, which will seek to cover all previous work and findings of this project. It will be held in the Gallery of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. With special thanks to all researchers led by Sanja Horvatinčić from the Institute of Art History, we would also like to draw attention to the hospitality of the people of Drežnica, both those who did not and those who did change their birth addresses, and above all to the Serb Cultural, Artistic, and Spiritual Society (SKUDD) “Đurđevdan”.
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