Skribonauti
Continue the Story
“Creative collaboration between prisoners and short stories authors...
a fictional journey whose main goal is to win the space of freedom.”
Skribonauti Association has been working on promotion of contemporary culture and art and artistic production and distribution through educational workshops in prisons since 2011. The project was initially intended to promote the culture of reading and contemporary Croatian writers and it took place in 6 prisons. In 2013, we launched creative workshops project in prisons and penitentiaries throughout Croatia, where prisoners had the opportunity to try not only writing but also comics, documentary and animated film, experimental theater and radio journalism.
The main task of the project is to provide prisoners with knowledge and tools to articulate their own experience through various media, and to enable young artists to explore new methods and media in new contexts. Wanting to include as many users as possible, we also launched an interactive cinema in the Lipovica penitentiary called Kino Sloboda, which promotes contemporary Croatian film production and allows prisoners to enter into direct discussions with the authors. At the end of 2016, we launched a new program of the Literary Club in Požega Penitentiary.
Photo: Aleksandar Selak
Since 2015, the organization has been successfully involved in film production and has so far produced the documentary omnibus Free Weekend (filmed in the Lipovica Penitentiary) and the short documentary The Right to Work: The Way We Left It (filmed in collaboration with young people from the Home for Children and Youth from Split). Both films were screened in the main program of the 25th Croatian Film Days, while the film The Right to Work: The Way We Left It won the Ethics and Human Rights Award at the festival of the same name, and was included in the main program of the Liburnia Film Festival (2016). The short animated film Hell Lemonade was shown in the program "Outside of the Frame" at the Croatian Film Days 2019. In 2020, the Skribonauti Association published a collection of collaborative short stories "Continue the story" created in the framework of the Literary Club program in Požega Penitentiary. In 2021, we launched a new program of the Lastovo picture book intended for children and young people from the isolated community on the island of Lastovo.
Photo: Aleksandar Selak
The collaborative collection of stories "Continue the story" is one of the results of many years of work, between 2018 and 2020. The process of creating the collection involved women writers who were inspired by fragments created during the creative writing workshops in the prison in Požega, authored by the prisoners. The collection is therefore the result of creative collaboration between prisoners and short stories authors, and apart of being a cooperation in the field of short stories it is also a small anthology of our best women writers of short stories. The project that resulted with this publication, was awarded the Sozial Marie Prize in 2021.
The collection "Continue the story" contains 12 stories from 12 writers, namely: Marija Andrijašević, Staša Aras, Lana Bastašić, Ivana Bodrožić, Maša Kolanović, Tanja Mravak, Marija Rakić Mimice, Korana Serdarević, Nora Verde, Jelena Zlatar Gamberožić, Jasna Žmak and Luiza Bouharaoua.
Loved by critics and audiences, these women are winners of numerous domestic and foreign awards and in this book they were faced with the challenge of continuing someone else's story. These stories are dealing with the female and occasionally male experience of different forms of confinement: from physical and emotional, to family and social. Armed with strength, endurance and sensitivity, the heroines of these stories emerge from the suburbs of Split, New Zagreb apartment blocks, cramped homes and Kaptol toilets, and embark on a fictional journey whose main goal is to win spaces of freedom.
Meet Skribonauti on 8th of December:
19-21h Promotion of the collection "Continue the Story"
Join us for the promotion of the first collaborative collection of stories and conversation with the authors, on Wednesday, December 8th. The authors Tanja Maravak and Marija Rakić Mimica will be present at the event together with the editor of the publication Luiza Bouharaoua and Paula Zore from Skribonauti association. The talk will be moderated by the writer Nada Topić.
The maximum number of participants is 25, and the event is free.
Reservation is required at info@culturehubcroatia.hr or whatsapp: +385 91 547 5811 (Marina).