Thomas John - research associate at University of Münster
Research Associate, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Institute for Latin American Studies at the Free University Berlin
At the moment he is finalizing his PhD thesis on affective and emotional negotiations within a local South Mexican indigenous audio-visual documentary art scene.
He is a trained filmmaker and visual anthropologist, too, and teaches since 2013 practical and theoretical audio-visual anthropology classes at the WWU Münster, where he is involved at the Institute of Ethnology and the MA Visual Anthropology, Media and Documentary Practices.
https://weiterbildung.uni-muenster.de/anthropology
He is interested especially in exploring the filed of intersection between documentary arts and visual anthropology, artistic research practices, and experimental modes of the representation of human experience.
Dragan Nikolić -director, screenwriter, cinematographer . His movies areThe Undertaker (ranked among the TOP 10 European TV documentaries by the Prix Europa jury and winner of Best Serbian Documentary at Beldocs), Caviar Connection (awarded Best Documentary at major regional festivals including Sarajevo Film Festival, ZagrebDox, and Trieste Film Festival), and National Park. All three films premiered at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) and were screened at over 100 international festivals. They have been broadcast on ZDF/Arte (Germany / France / Austria / Switzerland / Italy), Channel 4 (UK), SVT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), YLE (Finland), RTV SLO (Slovenia), Al Jazeera Balkans, DBS (Israel), Global Voices (USA) and 92 PBS channels in the USA. He is the screenwriter of the feature film Love Cuts (Reži) (FEST, 2019), co-writer of Made in Serbia (FEST, 2005) and Run Rabbit Run (Beži Zeko, Beži, Cannes Film Festival, 2003 – Best Film, Cinéfondation), as well as numerous TV series (Suspicious Characters, Felix, Emergency Room, Sinđelići, Little Manchester, Theologian, Farmers).
Iva Nenić teaches at the Department of Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade.
She received MPhil in Theory of Arts and Media (2009), and PhD in Ethnomusicology (2015) with a dissertation on women’s performance of traditionally male folk instruments in Serbia, coupled with the attendance of the advanced undergraduate one-year programs at the Belgrade Open School and the Women’s Studies Center in Belgrade.
Her research spans theory of ideology and identification, gender regimes, transgenerational memory, and the sustainability of cultural and artistic scenes in late capitalism. In ethnomusicology, she focuses on the Serbian and Balkan world music/ethno scenes, alternative/independent culture, cultural revival, and women’s roles in music.
She has lectured internationally (Austria, UK, Japan, Italy, Slovenia, Finland), presented at numerous conferences in Serbia and abroad, and translated works in ethnomusicology and philosophy. Her monograph "Gusle Players and Female Instrumentalists in Serbia: Identification by Sound" (2019) received the SEFEM “Anđelka Milić” Award (2020). She co-nominated frula playing for Serbia’s National Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage (with Dr Mirjana Zakić) and led the project “Female Leadership in Music” (Science Fund of Serbia, 2020–2023). She is Vice-Chair of the ICTMD Study Group on Music, Gender, and Sexuality and co-editor of Women’s Leadership in Music (with dr Linda Cimardi, transcript Verlag, 2023).
Jelena Jovčić, anthropologist, new media artist, documentary film maker, digital
archivist, and curator.
Autobiographical narratives merge with critical reflections on cultural policy and archival practice, opening a space where private experience becomes collective memory. Her work was presented at Cinéma du Réel, DOK Leipzig, and in the Museum of Yugoslavia and the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. For many years she edited and curated the International Festival of Ethnological Film, while also contributing to major archival projects, including the digitization of the national television collection.
As co-founder of Ateliers Varan Belgrade and then the artistic collective Remorker, she weaves film, anthropology, and new media. Active in film education and consulting since 2006, she maintains a long-term collaboration with Columbia College Chicago. She has given guest lectures and workshops at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts and Masaryk University, FAMU Centre. She previously held the position of coordinator for film education at the Film Center Serbia.