The Kolizej – Book and Film

The screening, part of the opening programme of Razpoke, a festival dedicated to renovation and sustainable building, will be followed by a Q&A session.
Moderated by: Ajda Bračič
Featured guests: Helena Koder and Miloš Kosec

The Kolizej was an eclectic building in the heart of Ljubljana, erected in the mid-19th century during the tenure of Mayor Hradecký. Originally intended for the Austro-Hungarian army as a temporary barracks and staging post on the route to Trieste, it later also served commercial and residential purposes. Following the Second World War and the nationalisation of property, the building gradually became a neglected home to working-class residents and society’s most vulnerable.

When screenwriter Helena Koder and director Žare Lužnik decided to make a documentary film in 1984, the building was barely habitable. By the mid-1980s, it was home to a diverse community of residents from different ethnic and social backgrounds who were forced to live side by side.
Forty years later, Helena Koder decided to write a book about the Kolizej. On one level, it is a memoir of the author’s creative process. In its final third, however, the book becomes much more: first, an account of the building’s origins and of the visionary predecessors, investors, philanthropists, urban planners and mayors who, through bold projects, succeeded in putting provincial Ljubljana on the map of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. At the same time, it offers a sharp critique of post-transition Ljubljana and the provincial mindset of today’s investors and mayors, whose decisions led to the demise of the Kolizej and its replacement by a development driven by profit and intended for a privileged few.

In Slovenian, without translation.