Page - 76 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

76 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 different issues related to all sorts of rights. These festivals are “driven by intentional- ity, be it to increase awareness, to expose, to warn, to prevent and sometimes change the course of events”.16 Their goal is to mobilise, and by means of communication they “generate sui generis activism”.17 In other words, human rights festivals are de- fined not only thematically but also by their mission.18 At such festivals and seminars the general audience has the opportunity not only to see films but also to participate, through forums and debates.19 A large number of films of different genres depict the struggle of a citizen (or non- citizen) in society, with themes such as belonging, otherness, and transborder iden- tity running through their cinematic narratives. I claim that a number of films that focus on human rights could not be categorised as expressing activism but rather as products of active citizenship for, broadly speak- ing, they are limited to operating within the existing hegemonic ideology and do not want to transform this ideological context. The problem, especially when it comes to what are perceived as “problematic” areas of the world – conflict and postconflict ar- eas – is that often the narratives have been dramatised by “outsiders”. This outsider’s gaze is often understood as a “superior gaze”20 and has been deployed especially in “global”, or popular Hollywood, cinema, where “the universality of human rights” has frequently masked forms of exclusion,21 in a way that paradoxically allowed “free- dom of others” to become “freedom from others”. In order to avoid framing this discussion with different ideological definitions of activism, I have chosen to focus on creative and autonomous acts of filmmakers as an expression of their personal exploration of the topics of peace and otherness. The explorations of the filmmakers construct something new, something that is not nec- essarily intended to be political but that becomes subversive through the creative practice of film. Here is precisely the reason why in this article I focus on filmmakers (Haifaa al-Mansour and Srdan Golubovic) whose films represent a form of personal exploration of freedom (in not just a political but also an ontological sense), other- ness, conflict, and peace. This article presents part of my current wider research on transnational cinema and activism, but here I consider only two films, in order to be able to provide in-depth analysis of the films and consequently of the wider topics at hand. I have chosen to examine Circles (Srdan Golubovic, SRB/D/F/SVN/HR 2013) be- cause this film is a story about citizenship: it explores the issue of membership in a 16 Iordanova 2012, 13. 17 See Iordanova 2012, 14. 18 Grassilli 2012, 37. 19 In the 1950s the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar showed that “film education and activism … as an art orm was inextricably interwoven in the post-War period”, Zimmermann 2012, 175. 20 The “outsiders’ gaze” often deploys a stereotyped and ideological view on a specific area of crises or the issues related to that area. See also Zizek 2005. 21 See Radovic 2014.