- This event has passed.
Film Screening and Discussion with the Filmmakers: The Mysterious Mr. Šlomović
February 12, 2017 @ 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Join us for the screening of a documentary film called “The Mysterious Mr. Šlomović” by two Los Angeles based documentary filmmakers Miodrag and Mia Ćertić. The film was made in 2016 and is narrated by Elliot Gould. The film tells the story of Erich Šlomović, a young Jewish art collector in Paris in the 1930s. A protégé of the great modernist art collector Ambroise Vollard, Erich Šlomović was a Jew from Yugoslavia who, in the 1930s, when he was only in his mid-twenties, managed to amass a collection of 600 modern artworks by masters such as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Klee, and many other masters – only to be killed by the Nazis and have his collection stolen by the Communists.
Alongside the fascinating issues the film raises about where the art comes from, and where and to whom it belongs, the film provides a springboard for debate about the intertwined history of Jews and modern art, the fate of cultural property looted in wartime, anti-Semitism and post-Cold War identity in the Balkans.