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Colonialism is often associated with the empires of the British, French or Spaniards. But what happens when we look beyond overseas empires and examine colonialism as a broader system of power, domination and representation? Using historical and contemporary visual material, film and examples (not only) from Central and Eastern Europe, this discussion will explore who creates narratives, whose perspectives shape cultural memory and whose voices remain absent. The discussion will also consider how different societies understand imperial and colonial legacies, including the cases from our region, the Soviet Union, as well as contemporary Russia. Finally, the discussion will ask what it means to decolonise film, media, museums, and other cultural institutions, and whether changing the stories we tell is enough if the underlying power relations remain unchanged.

Guests of the discussion:

Yuliia Kovalenko - Ukrainian film expert and the director of the Docudays UA International Documentary Film Festival.

Eric Seleky - Head of Audience & Development at Movies that Matter, where he works on audience strategy, partnerships and communication. He also chairs the board of Stichting Literaire Activiteiten Amsterdam (SLAA).

Patrick Laviolette - social anthropologist and researcher at Masaryk University, and a member of the Czechs and the Colonial World research project exploring colonialism and representation in Czech art and visual culture.

Moderated by Dobrota Pucherová who is a literary scholar specialising in African and diasporic literature, postcolonialism and Central European literature.

The discussion will be held in English.

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This event was co-funded by SlovakAid.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or The European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.