Prison Theatre Church (Zapor teater cerkev)

Zapor teater cerkev (Prison Theatre Church) is both a dance performance and a film. If a dance performance is a finished work that inevitably conceals the circumstances of its own creation from the audience, Matej Kejžar here reverses the perspective. Through film as an element of choreography, he takes us behind the scenes, to the point where the dance is only just beginning to take shape.

The story goes like this: an artist is searching for a space for his studio and finds it in a building that used to be a prison, a theatre, and a church. A few artists are already present in the building, but there are no contracts; the situation is more or less illegal. If they were to squat the space and truly make it their own, an intriguing artistic scene could emerge. But the authorities, bureaucracy, and capital interests have other plans and are already rubbing their hands together. What was once a space of creativity and peace for the artist turns into one of disruption and prohibition.

Matej Kejžar’s film draws a parallel between two central forces of contemporary capitalist and authoritarian society: art encountering a space defined by a state serving capital.
Unfolding before us is a documentary on transience, layered precariousness, and the persistent struggle for freedom in artistic practice.