Bless My Hands

Original title: Pomiluj moje ruke

1986

Narrated in the form of a personal prayer, Bless My Hands is Beban’s and Horvatić’s response to a certain questions debated on the art scene of Zagreb in the early 80s.

The video piece possesses a meditative quality, filmed using a fixed camera; the artist kneels before a tray and, as she burns paper, recites: “Bless my hands, grant that I may be good, grant that I may be loved.”

Direction

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Script

Breda Beban

Duration

11 min

Photography

Sven Pepeonik, Peter Bratuša

Performer

Breda Beban

Original format

V8 and U-Matic, colour, mono sound

Filmed in

Multimedia Space, Zagreb

Production

Film Val and Beban&Horvatić

Funded by

Beban&Horvatić, Paolo&Dubravka Cherubini

Meta

1986

Meta is a video performance marking the inaugural collaborative project produced independently by Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić.

The work draws its primary inspiration from medieval Byzantine art within former Yugoslavia, which Beban&Horvatić identify as their sole authentic artistic heritage. At its core, the piece examines love as a fundamental spiritual category defined by the tension between female and male principles. Ultimately, Meta serves as an exploration of the inherent instability of love.

Direction

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Script

Breda Beban

Duration

16 min

Photography

Sven Pepeonik

Editing

Beban&Horvatić

Music

Arco part

Cast

Breda Beban and Tomislav Martić

Filmed in

Zagreb

Production format

U-matic hi.band, 16mm, colour

Funded by

Beban&Horvatić

She, Four Things

Original title: Četiri njene stvari

1986

Breda Beban incorporates her painting into a performance-based context in which the video introduces a more complex temporal dimension, unlike traditional gallery performances staged in front of her paintings. She employs her own private visual language, while drawing upon familiar cultural symbols from Byzantine art as well as alchemical symbols of water and fire. The entire video image is rigorously controlled — as in the painting — with each element in the frame carrying its own symbolic value. The action is executed in the tradition of gestural dance.

Direction

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Duration

20 min, colour mono sound

Film camera

Sven Pepeonik

Camera

Dmitar C.

Production Design

Breda Beban

Editing

Radomir Todorović

Format

16 mm, 1 Inch

Location

TV Beograd Studios and in Zagreb

Produced by

Dunja Blažević

All Our Secrets Are Contained in an Image

Original title: Sve naše tajne nastaju iz jedne slike

1987

There exist moments in life when sudden, transformative changes propel us through a metaphorical sheet of glass. In these instances, we confront fear and pain, only to find ourselves already on the other side. It is the most sensitive skin that retains the deepest traces.

The work constitutes a ritual of capturing this sensation upon the artist’s return to Skopje, which was devastated by the catastrophic earthquake of 1963 — an event that abruptly interrupted her childhood.

Duration

10 min, VR, colour, sound

Production

TV Skopje

Taking on a Name

Original title: Primanje imena

1987

Drawing on the allegory of Plato’s cave, Taking on a Name is a self-portrait in the landscape. The film focuses on the artist’s relationship with her beloved Lake Ohrid. Standing almost at water level, with the horizon and mountains appearing indistinctly above the ground, the artist’s figure oscillates between a state of acute separation from her surroundings and a disintegration into shadow. This effect is achieved purely through a delicate balance between film light and the natural light that rises at dawn and disappears at dusk.

Taking on a Name was filmed near a cave whose ground was covered with water and whose walls were painted with Byzantine frescoes. This cave had been her favourite place since childhood.

Direction and script

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Duration

25 min

Photography

Dime Pejovski

Editing

Ljupčo Argirovski

Musica

Beban&Horvatić

Performer

Breda Beban

Filmed at

Lake Ohrid

Funded by

TV Skopje

Original format

U-matic hi-band, colour

Production

Katica Trajkovska

For You and Me and Me in You to Be One

Original title: Ja u njima ti u meni da budu samo jedno

1988

Filmed in the mountains of southern Serbia, this work is simultaneously a cinematic exploration of painting techniques based on Pavel Aleksandrovič Florenskij‘s theory of the Icon and a love letter to the genius loci of the S. Monastery, which served as the author’s artistic sanctuary during the 1980s. The film explicitly references Sergej Iosifovič Paradžanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

The epic poetry of Breda Beban finds a tangible home within this landscape, which is imbued with privileged moments accessible only to those who open themselves to their mystery.

Production

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić, TV Beograd

Direction & Script

Beban&Horvatić

Duration

43’

Photography

Miloš Mitrović

Editing

Radomir Todorović

Direct sound

Milan Stojanović, Andrija Novaković

Sound post-production

Bojan Kondres, Ante Jergović

Cast

Breda Beban, Radica Despotović, Sister Teodora

Filmed in

Monasteries in Sopoćani, Đurđevi stupovi, Crna Reka

Original format

U-matic, High B&1, col. & b/w

Production format

Beta SP, DVD

Geography

1989

Reaffirming Carl Theodor Dreyer’s assertion that “the human face is the most beautiful landscape”, Geography focuses on the face of a non-professional actor as an unwritten terrain that, during filming, can abruptly turn inward or transform into something entirely distinct. Shot in the summer of 1988, the film is imbued with a palpable foreboding of the tragic events that were to accompany the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the geography invoked in the title pertains as much to the contemplative shifting of contours upon the landscape of the face as it does to the sanguinary cartography of the impending civil war in the region.

Production, Direction, Script

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Duration

9 min

Photography

Dimitar Vladički

Editing

Breda Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Sound project

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Music

Tambuco by Carlos Chavez

Interpreter

Boško, their driver in Macedonia

Filmed in

the summer of 1988 on Lake Ohrid and on mountain Galičica, Macedonia

Production format

Beta SP, colour, mono sound

For Tara

1991

This visual work serves as an affirmation of life set against the backdrop of devastation wrought by the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Rather than directing the lens toward the immediate realities of conflict, the creators employ a series of evocative, abstract imagery that culminates in an apotheosis: the depiction of an infant, serving as a universal motif for vulnerability and renewal. Executed in the manner of a poetic composition set to visual music, the video engenders a profound and compelling sense of melancholy.

Duration

4 min

Format

Betacam SP, colour, stereo sound

Filmed in

Zagreb in 1991 during the bombing of the city

Production

Beban&Horvatić, Studio 5, Zagreb, Momentum, London

Absence, She Said

1994

This visual poem explores themes of isolation and belonging, drawing upon subtle rhythmic structures to evoke the poignant anguish of an unbearable loss. The work implies that the unfolding events exist concurrently as visions, memories, and physical occurrences—a tapestry of evocative, subjective imagery perceived through a lens of grief.

Production, direction and script

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Duration

16 min

Photography

Hrvoje Horvatić&Peter Moseley

Editing

Phil Harding

Music

Beban&Horvatić, Conor Kelly

Filmed in

Stockholm and London

Original format

16mm, Betacam SP, 35 mm, colour, b/w, stereo sound

Founded by

Arts Council of England & Ontario Arts Council

Hand on the Shoulder

1997

This film constitutes a synthesis of Beban&Horvatić’s engagement with personal psychological trauma within a broader historical context, as well as their distinct approach to cinematic language. The work consolidates many of the defining characteristics of their previous oeuvre, most notably their treatment of objects, lighting and camera techniques, and thematic preoccupation with literary archetypes. On this occasion, however, these elements are deployed to directly interrogate genre, narrative, and character. Serving as a deeply personal project for Hrvoje Horvatić, dedicated to his father, the film is imbued with the poignant retrospection and regret characteristic of exile, while simultaneously representing a significant artistic progression.

Production, direction and script

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Duration

42 min

Photography

Sven Pepeonik

Editing

Angie Short&Steven Murphy

Cast

Breda Beban, Dušan Lazarević, Ana Karić, Tomislav Martić

Voice over

Frances Barber

Filmed in

London and Zagreb

Original format

16mm b/w, sound

Commissioned and financed by

Council of England, Channel 4, Ontario Arts Council, Beban&Horvatić

Jason’s Dream

1997/1998

Featuring real-life characters and locations, Jason’s Dream is a musical about a hesitant relationship between two young city-dwellers. The events are narrated from the point of view of a beautiful, song-speech gifted waitress.

Jason’s Dream, with its affectionate atmosphere, vibrant colour scheme and seductive camera movements, has been described as if an East European Jacques Demy with pronounced contemporary sensibilities had been let loose in present-day London.

Production

Breda Beban&Hrvoje Horvatić

Direction and Script

Breda Beban

Photography

Paul Swift

Editing

Steven Murphy

Music

Beban&Horvatić and Bell Helicopter

Cast

Aisha Khan, Jason Martin

Filmed on locations in London

Colour

Duration

10 minutes

Funding

LFVDA and Carlton Television

Film was completed by Breda Beban in 1998

May 98

1998

May 98 is a musical shot in London thirty years after the events of May ‘68 and a year after the Labour government came into power. The film’s out-of-joint narrative is held together by Beban’s unfortunate habit of falling down in front of historical buildings that were erected as representations of institutionalised power.

All performers in the film are real-life characters and they play themselves. In production terms, the film was pre-designed for a one shot one take strategy.

Production

Breda Beban & Illumination Films

Direction and Script

Breda Beban

Photography

Sven Pepeonik

Editing

Steve Sprung

Sound

Ron Wright

Music

Peter Astor

Cast

Jonathan Romney, Breda Beban, Keith Griffiths, Bojana Žeželj Kovačević, Peter Astor

Shot on locations in London, thirty years after the events in 1968

Colour and b&w

10 mins, 16 mm, short film/musical

Commissioned by

Illumination Films

Funding

BBC2

Let’s Call It Love

2000; film for gallery staging

Triggered by the bombardment of Serbia in 1999, Let’s Call it Love features a turntable playing a track by Chet Baker which is intercepted by documentary footage of American warplanes.

Let’s Call it Love is about seduction, longing and loneliness. It is also about an overall sense of helplessness within the context of contemporary world politics.

When Let’s Call it Love is staged in a gallery, sound mix equipment is used to boost low frequencies and thus balance the levels between the love song and the sound of warplanes flying over head. In this way the sound of warplanes flying overhead becomes a physical experience for the viewer.

Production and Direction

Breda Beban

Photography

Alessandra Scherillo

Editing

Steve Sprung

Sound script

Breda Beban

Sound

Ron Wright

Music

For Heaven’s Sake written by Elise Bretton, performed by Chat Baker

Filmed on location in London, England and the sky above various countries bombarded by NATO

Black & white and colour

Recommended projection size 500 x 370 cm minimum

Duration

7.30-minute segment looped

Editions

3

Too Early for Sorrow Too Late for Happiness

2001

Photo by Ferdy Carabott

Named after a Balkan folk song, Too Early for Sorrow too Late for Happiness this video essay is a meditation on home and place, that documents the intensity of a moment when personal and social history collide. By exploding landscapes and music her journey suggests that for exiles movement and travel can become an experience and a strategy for survival.

Production, Direction, Pphotography, Narration

Breda Beban

Cast

Dragana Žarevac, Miroljub Mima Marjanović, Srđan Šaper

Filmed on location in London, Belgrade, Novi Sad

Duration

45 min

Format DV-cam, colour

Little Films to Cry To

2002-2003

In terms of genre Little Films to Cry to are home movies, in terms of subject matter they are invested with tragic events and sadness, in terms of production they are happy accidents. In all instances, the name of the film is taken from the name of the song that features in the film. All films are produced and filmed by Breda Beban.

Imagination is Funny, 2002

super 8 mm & DV cam, 5mins 20sec

with Breda Beban

super 8 mm footage filmed by Hrvoje Horvatić (1996)

song by John Burke e Jimmy van Heusen, vocals Chet Baker

locations: Paris & Zagreb

Together Again, 2003

super 8 mm film, 4mins

with Hrvoje Horvatić

song by Buck Owens, vocals Emmylou Harris

filming location: London

Angel, 2003

mini DV cam, 12mins 30sec

with Cressida Lewis, Catherine Dempsey and Sam Blunden

song by Caroline Franklin e Sonny Sounders, vocals Aretha Franklin

location: London

One Day in a Far-off Place Somewhere, 2003

mini DV cam, 4mins

composer Angelo Vlatković, song written by Slobodan Marković, 1961

vocals: Lola Novaković

location: London

Monastic Calling, 2003

mini DV cam, 5 mins 30 sec

with Željko Stojanović, Dubravka Cherubini, Breda Beban

song written and performed by John Sturman

locations: Zagreb & Adriatic coast, Croatia

Love Itself, 2003

mini DV cam, 6 mins 30 sec

song written and performed by Leonard Cohen

location: Island of Ugljan, Adriatic coast, Croatia

Beautiful Exile

2003; five screen film for gallery staging

‘What sleeps in a rock, dreams in a plant, lives in an animal, becomes conscious in a human being’ 14th century, anonymous

Beautiful Exile comprises of five portraits of women before, during and after orgasm. Filmed as silent single takes, the portraits are staged as projected on five large screens.

Beautiful Exile was triggered by the word arrivals, which is Breda Beban's favourite word, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Robert Bresson who said: ”The human face is the most beautiful landscape”.

The portraits were filmed by cinematographer Robby Müller in Duino, Italy. Müller was best known for his work with a number of influential directors including Jim Jarmusch, Lars von Trier and Wim Wenders.

Production & Direction

Breda Beban

Photography

Robby Muller

Cast

Breda Beban, Dubravka Cherubini, Cressida Lewis, Kati Lopez, Irena Rodić Mičijević

Filmed on location in Duino, Italy

Duration of individual segments looped varies from 6 to 15 minutes

Minimum screen size

300 x 400cm each screen

Commissioned by

Peer

Funding

Peer, Bloomberg and Henry Moore Foundation

Editions

3

I Can’t Make You Love Me

2003; two screen film for gallery staging

I Can’t Make You Love Me is an homage to Gertrude, a film by Carl Theodore Dreyer about a woman who refuses to speak any other language except for the language of love.

The film was predesigned for one continuous shot with two film cameras mounted back to back on a dolly. When staged in a gallery, the film takes the form of a dialogue between two ex-lovers, each of which is projected on a separate screen. In this way, two characters who are sharing the same cinematic space and time are also at once each inhabiting their own frame. Seated on either side of the same table, these two figures cut off at midriff, move away from each other and then into each other and then away from each other again. They are like two moving icons engaging with one another yet unable to exchange or share anything. The movement of the cameras cuts with cruel regularity through the scene. It creates a cinematic point of view which can be thought of as that ‘of the wind on the table’. With this movement the viewer is drawn inside the encounter and a space is opened up for the possibility to share in this spectacle of non-sharing.

Shot on location in London, England

Colour

Screens

custom made front/rear projection screens with aluminium frame

Size 371cm W x 215cm H each screen

Two 8-minute segments looped on two screens

Editions

3

Stories I Tell Myself

2003; Movie for gallery staging

Stories I Tell Myself is a recording of two genuine sessions involving the psychoanalyst Chris Oakley and Breda Beban. The subject of the first sessions is money, the subject of the second is love. In both sessions the artist demonstrates a substantial degree of what in psychoanalytical terms is referred to as ‘the nonsense of the patient’.

The two sessions were selected from numerous sessions, all documented in the same cinematic style. The visual component consists exclusively of a continuous, static, close-up shot of the psychoanalyst who is listening, while the sound element documents the event in its entirety. It is the artist/patient who does most of the talking. While listening to Beban’s stories we are looking at the psychoanalyst who is also listening. In this way, listening collapses into an observation of listening, the language meets its other in the silent openness of the visual image.

Production and Photography

Breda Beban

Editing

Steve Sprung

Cast

Chris Oakley and Breda Beban

Filmed on location in London

Colour

90-mins segment looped

Commissioned by

Film & Video Umbrella

Funding

Arts Council of England

Walk of Three Chairs

2003; film for gallery staging

Walk of Three Chairs shows Breda Beban floating on a raft between two banks of the Danube in Belgrade, believed by some to be the point at which the Balkans end and Europe begins. One bank reveals an industrial landscape whilst the other is populated by trees and wooden dachas. The movie takes its title from a traditional Balkan pagan ritual, one that the artist recalls her grandfather performing after winning at gambling. The precarious yet celebratory act performed by Beban against the shifting backdrop, is for her an expression of ‘a complex kind of joy, joy informed by sadness’. This idea of bitter sweet is encapsulated in the love song Beban attempts to sing as she travels: Who Doesn’t Know How to Suffer Doesn’t Know How to Love.

Production & Direction

Breda Beban

Photography

Robby Muller

Editing

Steve Sprung

Sound

Dejan Pejović

Music

traditional Balkan song ‘Who Doesn’t Know How To Suffer Doesn’t Know How to Love’

Cast

‘Jova’ band, Breda Beban

Filmed on location in Belgrade

Colour

Recommended projection size 400 x 225 cm minimum

10-mins segment looped

Commissioned by

Film & Video Umbrella

Funding

The Arts Council of England

Editions

3

How to Change Your Life in a Day

2004; film for gallery staging

Based on Breda Beban’s personal experience of war, How to Change Your Life in a Day features a soundtrack from Paul McKenna’s mind-programming CD How to Change Your Life in Seven Days.

How to Change Your Life in a Day is set to the sound of a hypnotic voice that induces a trance like state in the viewer. The images show the domestic setting of a covered window, overlooking a residential area in London, interjected by news-reel archive footage of grieving women. The window is covered by a blind which moves with the wind in tandem with the voice and appears to obey its instruction, occasionally revealing the outside view. The quest for the ideal self and perfect life is set alongside the outcomes of the grand narratives of contemporary world politics.

Production, Photography & Direction

Breda Beban

Editing

Steve Sprung

Sound

Mind-programming CD ‘Change Your Life in Seven days’ by Paul McKenna

Sound id delivered through headphones for each viewer

Archive footage and material filmed in London

Colour

Recommended projection size 400 x 300 cm minimum, a full-wall projection

10-minute segment looped

Commissioned by

Shot by the Sea Film Festival, Hastings, England

Editions

3

The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha

2006; two-screen film for gallery staging

Staged on two screens, The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha encapsulates a tension between the realness of a documentary situation and its fictionalisation by the camera and post-production strategies.

Filmed at the gathering of trumpet musicians in Serbia, the film captures a moment of magic instigated by a passionate encounter between a dancer, a young man and a group of Romany musicians.

Production, Direction & Cinematography

Breda Beban

Editing

Steve Sprung

Sound script

Breda Beban

Filmed on location in Guča, Serbia

Colour

Projection size

screen 1 minimum W 160 cm H 120 cm minimum; screen 2 minimum W 400 H 300 cm

Duration

screen 1 -19 min segment looped, screen 2 – 8.30 min segment looped

Editions

3

My Funeral Song

2008 – 2010, five screen film for gallery staging

Whenever I want to move people without upsetting them, I use music – Breda Beban

My Funeral Song shows Beban’s close friends as they embark on internal journeys in anticipation of death. The project centres on the power of a well-loved song to compress an outlook on life into a telling moment that is at once emotional and thoughtful, melancholic and full of joy.

Production, Direction & Photography

Breda Beban

Editing

Steve Sprung

Filmed on location in London, Buenos Aires

Cast

Eveline Schijf, Dušan Lazarević, Ana Čavić, Irena Micha, Pablo Casacuberta

Colour

3 – 7 mins segment looped

Five screen film for gallery staging

Sound is delivered through headphones for each viewer

Editions

3 + 2 a.p.