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Adnan Softic

Bigger Than Life

Documentaire | hdv | couleur | 29:55 | Allemagne | 2018

BIGGER THAN LIFE is a music film in four acts, based between fiction and documentation, between reality and wishful thinking. The focus is on the fabrication of national history through architecture and urban planning. In Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, a government plan costing several hundred million euros is creating a brand new, ancient city center. »Skopje 2014« is the name of the monumental construction plan, which wants to stage its capital as the cradle of ancient high civilization and as the origin of Europe. So far, some thirty government buildings and museums, as well as countless monuments in the classic style have been erected in the Macedonian capital, in an attempt to put Skopje on a par with Rome and Athens. In some cases, existing socialist structures were incorporated into the new builds. A city looks for a future in history, Macedonia is inventing itself as a nation with historical status based on a model of antiquity that never existed in that form. Would that be something new? Will we buy that (hi)story?

Adnan Softic is an author, visual artist and director. He studied Film and Aesthetic Theory at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, where he also taught as a professor of Film and Time Based Media. Softic? was recently awarded with the scholarships of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo. The current lm "Bigger Than Life" won the 3sat Prize at the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.