We're on the side of the people in the mass graves, against those who put them there. We reject political stunts, calling one mass grave a war crime while dismissing another as 'self-defence' and 'counter-terrorism', Ed Vulliamy, the legendary journalist and writer who opened this year's WARM festival, the tenth international festival about conflicts, said in Sarajevo.
Vulliamy also set the tone for this year's WARM festival.
Damir Sagolj, director of the WARM Foundation, stated that one should insist that Sarajevo remains a place where no one will be restricted from speaking openly about everything, especially about conflicts.
The festival's focus this year is on Gaza and Ukraine and Sagolj pointed out that all other world events can be viewed through those two wars.
“We insist on being on the side of the people who are in the mass graves against those who put them there, whoever they are. We reject political stunts and political pornography, that one mass grave is declared a war crime while another is dismissed as ‘self-defence’, ‘counter-terrorism’, ‘imperialism’ or some such disgusting nonsense,” Vulliamy stated.
The journalist is known for reporting on the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and the discovery of concentration camps in 1992.
“We are on the side of the bones, directly on the side of the bones, in Tomasica, Srebrenica, al-Basra, Ground Zero, Fallujah, Mariupol and al-Shifa – and all others – against those who took their lives and those who have turned their families into people mad with grief,” Vulliamy pointed out.
The festival will also host several exhibitions by the WARM Foundation, whose authors came to Sarajevo because they cannot talk about their exhibitions in other places.
The Unmute Gaza exhibition opened at the Manifesto gallery on Monday. The exhibition was named after the international movement which was founded with the aim of overcoming the media wall that isolates Gaza, and to publicly express the position: “We do not agree, we are not complicit, we do not look away.”
“I'm a photographer, I observed the genocide in Gaza for about eight months and two months ago I was evacuated from Gaza but the movement started when I was still there. Other artists around the world and I have built this movement to talk about those people. With this work of art, we wanted to show these crimes in Gaza,” said Belal Khaled at the opening of the exhibition.
On Wednesday, the Academy of Fine Arts will host a multimedia exhibition of photos “MY HOME” by Samara Abu Elouf, a Palestinian photojournalist who reports from Gaza for The New York Times.
On Thursday a multimedia exhibition of Ukrainian artists and journalists, whose curators are Slaven Tolj and Lejla Hodzic, will be opened at the European House of Culture and National Minorities. The exhibition was created in Sarajevo through the WARM Foundation “BOSNIA: UKRAINE Reporting from the Future”.
In the coming days, world-famous journalists, writers and artists, such as Amira Hass, David Rieff, Paula Bronstein and Newsha Tavakolian, will participate in the festival.
Kakvo je tvoje mišljenje o ovome?
Budi prvi koji će ostaviti komentar!