Please enjoy our latest CEERES interview, with researcher and curator Greg de Cuir Jr.! He discusses the Yugoslav Black Wave with Meghanne Barker.
Independent researcher and curator Greg de Cuir Jr. (DPhil, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade) focuses on the history of kino clubs in the former Yugoslavia. These institutional spaces were where nonprofessionals could gather and exercise a common ‘kino-enthusiasm’ for film viewing and production. Kino clubs were state-funded by Socialist Yugoslavia, part of a larger initiative to spread technological cultures throughout the populace, and birthed a new wave of filmmakers who transformed Yugoslav as well as European and international film culture.
Meghanne Barker is a Collegiate Assistant Professor in Social Sciences and a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago. She is a linguistic anthropologist whose research examines intersections of play, performance, materiality, and childhood in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Barker received her PhD in 2017 from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is currently developing this research into two book projects. First, an ethnographic monograph, Animating Childhood in Almaty, shows the role of everyday enactments of ideal childhood, family, and home for preschool-aged children growing up in a temporary, state-run home. In her second book project, Puppets of the State, Barker expands her historical investigation of the vast network of Soviet-era, state-run puppet theaters and their contemporary legacy, examining puppets’ roles in socializing young citizens and in international campaigns of soft power through tours and festivals.