Commemorating <PERSON>, a Macedonian Filmmaker Who Gave Voice to Marginalized Women · Global Voices
<PERSON> holding the ‘Heart of Sarajevo’ Film Festival award in 2010. Photo by <PERSON>, used with permission.
Macedonian social media users connected to alternative culture reacted with astonishment to the news that filmmaker <PERSON>, 43, had passed away in Berlin due to illness.
Germany-based <PERSON> is mostly known as director of award-winning documentaries focused on the lives of underprivileged women in Macedonia. She is also the script writer for the feature film “The Golden Five,” due to premier in a week, at the closing of the Manaki Film Festival in Bitola.
Her friend and collaborator <PERSON> broke the news via Facebook, and it was then spread by independent news portals SDK and Okno.
Some of <PERSON>'s human rights-centered films are available online, subtitled in English. One of them is “The Seamstresses,” about female textile workers in Štip.
Another of her films posted online is the “Tobacco Girl” about fourteen-year-old <PERSON>, member of the Yörüks, a Turkish ethnic group from the mountains of eastern Macedonia, struggling against traditions that impose early marriage on teenage girls.
In a 2010 interview for Radio Free Europe about this film, <PERSON> explained the gist of her approach:
Kao angažovana dokumentarna autorica motivacija mi je bila da skršim sliku koja postoji o ženi u Makedoniji. Uvijek je predstavljana kao seksualna žrtva, objekat, kao domaćica i prostitutka ali nikad kao heroina. Stoga sam željela predstaviti ovu moju heroinu koja se bavi veoma napornim poslom – bere duhan kako bi mogla platiti školarinu. 260
Sa svojih 14 godina <PERSON> razmišlja da napusti selo jer ne želi da cijeli život provede sušenjem duhana i rađanjem djece. Naprotiv, želi se emancipovati i otići u grad, završiti školu, postati učiteljica i, jednostavno, osjećati se slobodna.
As an engaged documentary author my motivation is to break the existing image about women in Macedonia. They are always represented as a sexual victim, an object, as a housewife and prostitute, but never as a heroine. Therefore I wanted to present this heroine of mine, who works in a very hard job – picking tobacco so she can gather money for school expenses. At her 14 years of age, <PERSON> has very mature plans to leave the village because she does not want to spend her whole life drying tobacco and giving birth to children. On the contrary, she wants to emancipate herself and to go to the city, finish school, become a teacher, and simply feel free. 990