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Greetings From 
Free Forests

a film by Ian Soroka




December 9, 2023

Doors at 5pm, screening at 6:30.


Preceeded by a short film by a Slovenian artist/filmmaker.


Drifting through the densely forested landscape of southern Slovenia—GREETINGS FROM FREE FORESTS, like a lifting fog, reveals a refuge of embedded historical memory.

The film travels alongside the testimonies of local hunters, foresters, cavers, and foragers among others—orbiting around an absence left by radical struggle after it has come to fruition and since faded. 

During WWII, this forest served as a sanctuary for the Partisan Liberation Front, who were resisting the Fascist occupation of Yugoslavia. Remnants of this event can still be found throughout the forest in various states of decay, but also within images that sought to preserve the revolution’s emancipatory energy for future generations; images now stored in an underground film archive buried within the forest itself, depicting both the violence and the hope that came with radical change.



“In his debut feature, Ian Soroka creates a hauntingly atmospheric study of the southern Slovenian landscape that was once the site of one of World War II’s most stubborn resistance movements. Following German and Italian occupation of Slovenia, thousands were forced to flee their homes, eventually seeking refuge in the forests of Yugoslavia where a communist-led resistance movement known as the Liberation Front would operate in secret for almost two years. Soroka artfully interweaves archival material with rich landscape photography and evocative testimony from survivors, historians, and naturalists to excavate the traces of memories and unearth the remains found beneath the forest floor.”

– Open City Documentary Fest, London

    RSVP


December 9, 2024
Doors at 5pm, screening at 6:30.
Vallejo, California
RSVP for address & further info.
 




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