Nina Bačun (University of Zagreb) The Architectural Essay Film: Screening of 2 Shorts & Q+A

Thursday 15 October 2026, 5–7 p.m.

Film and Screen Media Auditorium, Kane Building B10B (Basement)

Screening:

The Architecture of Healing: Sulphurous Scapes (2024, 9min.) examines the Sulphur Baths in Split, built over natural sulphur springs, as a liminal space between order and disorder, where healing becomes a pause from everyday life. Moving beyond conventional historical representation, the essay film interweaves fact and fiction, mythology, and perspectives on sulphur. Through static and moving images, voice, and sound, filmmaking becomes a critical method for investigating architecture, memory, and spatial experience.

Bonding Humanity (Perhaps Manifesto) (2022, 11min.) rearranges and juxtaposes fragments from New Yugoslav Film (“Black Wave”) to explore collective spaces and their uses. Personal, social, and political contexts intersect through a dialogic narrative, while a manifesto-like voiceover connects individual trajectories with collective memories. Using the essay film as a tool for critical and creative inquiry, the work explores uncertain boundaries between past, present, and future through a patchwork of decontextualized personal and historical memories.

NINA BAČUN is a designer, researcher, filmmaker, and educator working at the intersection of architecture, design, visual culture, and moving images. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from the University of Zagreb and an MFA in Experience Design from Konstfack, Stockholm. In 2026, she completed her PhD in Architecture and Urbanism, investigating cinematic space as an operative framework for architectural analysis and thinking. Since 2020, she has been a teaching and research assistant at the School of Design, Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb. She is also a co-founder of OAZA, an interdisciplinary design and artistic research collective established in Zagreb in 2013. https://oazabooks.com/home/ 

– All welcome –