Fantasmagoria Screening

Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, has completely reinvented itself over the past decade. With the Skopje 2014 project, the city rewrote its past: twenty neoclassical buildings and more than 150 statues were meant to strengthen the ethno-national pride of the Macedonian nation. Brutalist architecture was painted over with façade politics. In this way, Skopje transformed into a kind of Disney set: a theatrical reconstruction of a mythical past.

Fantasmagoria (Building Heterotopia) offers a new perspective on the relationship between city, history, and identity in a mosaic of voices and stories that explore the boundaries between past, present, memory, and imagination.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A and a workshop by MEOW COLLECTIVE on public space.

Merlijn Beullens (born 1998) obtained a master's degree in philosophy from Ghent University and studied audiovisual arts at LUCA School of Arts. From 2025, she will participate in the European and interdisciplinary master's programme Film Memory. Since 2023, she has been responsible for Dutch-language youth education at CINEMATEK, where she develops educational film projects for young audiences. In her artistic practice, she focuses on themes such as historical awareness, identity and community. She has written for Fantômas, Sabzian and DeWereldMorgen, among others.

Viktor Van Hoof (born 1996) obtained a master's degree in Audiovisual Arts at KASK Ghent. He lives and works in Brussels. As a photographer and filmmaker, his work has been published on various platforms and in magazines such as VICE, Knack Weekend, SPBH, New Dawn, Plan B, BLVRD and Hart Boven Hard. In 2018, he received the Laureaat Fotoforum Brasschaat Talent Award.