In June, MEMPOP members Natalija Majsova, Boris Ružić, and Jasmina Šepetavc attended the NECS – European Network for Cinema and Media Studies – annual conference. This year, the event was dedicated to the topic of “Discovering/Uncovering: Navigating the Complexities of Screen Media”, bringing together film and media scholars, archivists, programmers, and practitioners to present and discuss their research.

Hosted by the wonderfully labyrinthine campus of Lusófona University in Lisbon, the conference featured a number of parallel panels throughout the vast university grounds, which meant our team was at first tasked with discovering the complexities of finding their classroom. When they finally navigated through the city and all the buildings – shout-out to the nice people in front of the Veterinary Faculty for directions – they successfully presented their findings on regional film festivals as sites of memory work at a panel titled “Film Festivals in the Post-Yugoslav Space as Spaces of Memory Discovery, Navigation, and Migration”, moderated by the wonderful scholar Jaka Primorac.

When the team was not academically engaged, the members found inspiration and a bit of drama in the culturally exciting city of Lisbon – its music, sights, graffiti, and above all, its food.