Shkelzen maliqi biography of martin

Pop Culture and Dealing with the Past in the Western Balkans

This edition of the Balkan.Perspectives magazine examines a broad and diverse area: pop culture and Dealing with the Past in the Western Balkans. On one hand, this edition elaborates on the manifested and latent connections between pop culture, its different products, and its actors through various periods, the different fields of Dealing with the Past and the wars in the Western Balkan region in the 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, the editorial team acknowledges that pop culture provided – and in certain contexts still provides – a platform for the normalisation of nationalistic, one-sided, and authoritarian ideologies and ambivalently at the same time connect us through the common music, theatre play, movies, or TV series.

Vesna Andree Zaimović writes for this edition “musical [However, the articles in this Balkan.Perspectives edition cover other pop cultural products as well] affinity is a powerful means of identification and connection with a collective. Cultural products are often used to affirm belonging to a nation, as a mass collective that is heavily promoted in the countries that emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia.”

On the other hand, this edition includes considerations on how pop culture enables reflections on the scars that the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia inflicted upon the region on the individual and collective level. In her contribution, Aurela Kadriu paraphrases Berthold Brecht “In dark times we sing to dark times.” Hence, we seek with this compendium of discussions, articles, interviews, and podcasts to understand how the current formats of entertainment, cultural references, singing and joking are deeply embedded in the traumas of those dark times. At the same time, pop products may provide spaces for discussion and insights into a peaceful common future by countering emerging authoritarian, reversionistic, and nationalistic tendencies in the region.

We are happy to

This is a list of historical and living Albanians (including ethnic Albanians and people of full or partial Albanian ancestry) who are famous or notable, sorted by occupation and alphabetically.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Religious

Priests

• Dhimitër Frangu (1443 – 1525), friar and scholar of a noble family, treasurer and councilor of Giorgio Castriota, in 1480 wrote the first biography, in Latin, on the life of Skanderbeg, from which all later writers drew.
• Father Marin Barleti (1450 – 1513), Catholic ecclesiastic and writer, author of the life of Skanderbeg.
• Gjon Buzuku (1499 – 1577), bishop Catholic, author of the oldest known document in Albanian: a translation of the Roman Missal, "Meshari" (1555).
• Pjetër Budi (1565 – 1622), Catholic priest and writer, published three books in Albanian and I leave several poems in his native language.
• Papa Luca Matranga (1567 – 1619), priest and scholar, author of the first literary expression arbëresh of the Albanians in diaspora.
• Frang Bardhi (1606 – 1644), Catholic bishop, lexicographer, folklorist and ethnographer, author of the first dictionary of the Albanian language known so far.
• Pjetër Bogdani (1630 – 1689), Catholic bishop and writer, author of the first Albanian work in prose.
• Papa Nikollë Filja (1691 – 1769), priest and writer.
• Nicoleta Kenini (2005-), writer and priest
• Mons. Giuseppe Crispi (1781 – 1859), one of the major figures of the Arbëresh community of Sicily of that era, wrote a number of works on the Albanian language.
• Papa Francesco Antonio Santori (1819 – 1894), writer, poet and playwright.
• Nikoll Kaçorri (1862 – 1917), Catholic religious, politician and patriot, deputy prime minister with Ismail Kemal, in the first Albanian government (1912–1913).
• Gjergj Fishta (1871 – 1940), Franciscan friar, poet, politician and tran

 
Konstantin Akinsha
Born in Kiev in 1960. Studies in art history in Moscow (Ph.D., 1990). In the 1990s Moscow correspondent and contributing editor (since 1996) of ARTnews magazine, New York. He worked on the problem of confiscation of cultural property during World War Two, as research fellow of Kunstverein Bremen, Research Center for Easteuropean Studies, University of Bremen, and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. 1997–98 senior research fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Washington, D.C. 1998–99 adjunct professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA. 1999–2000 deputy research director of Art and Cultural Property of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. Since 2001 Senior Adviser for a Research Project for Art and Archives, New York. His publications include Beautiful Loot: Soviet Plunder of European Art Treasures (1995) and AAM Guide for Provenance Research (2001). He has curated exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and given numerous public lectures in Europe, Asia, and North America. He publishes in leading international newspapers and magazines and has received several awards for journalism.

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Branislava Andjelković
Born in Belgrade in 1966. She graduated in art history at the University of Belgrade and in the history of art and design at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, England. Since 2001 she has been director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. 1999 to 2001 director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Belgrade, where she worked from 1994 as program coordinator. Research interests include art under totalitarian regimes, as well as feminist visual theories. She has lectured in the women’s studies program at the University of Belgrade and at the School for History and Theory of Images in Belgrade, which she helped to found. With Branislav Dimitrijević she has curated numerous

I did not believe this apocryphal version that told the story of Sadik as the main hero of one of the most important events of the antifascist resistance in Tirana. His death, together with his two friends, was heroic. It is not important who “danced” between the tanks! Only that my cousin Valbon had always the desire of rectifying this injustice! In 1971, when for the first time in 29 years we, as a family, went to Tirana and visited and honored Sadik’s grave, once again the family version of the story resurrected: uncle Sadik’s heroism had been neglected because of Enver Hoxha’s vengeance. During our stay in Tirana, we hoped to meet some friends of uncle Sadik, who could tell us what had really happened. But we did not meet anyone and only heard the official version.

Recently, I have found on the internet the story of an eyewitness who, I believe, told the real truth of how uncle Sadik was killed with Vojo Kushi and Xhorxhi Martin. This testimony was taken from Muharrem Llanaj’s memoir. He said that he was the fourth man in the group that happened to be in the street of Kodra e Kuqe in Tirana, at the house of Ije Farka. Llanaj, according to what is cited on that internet site, said that the three heroes were killed as the official version says, but nobody remembers his name, because he, luckily and miraculously, escaped execution.

The fact remains that uncle Sadik had really been against Enver Hoxha, and this is surely the reason why the Communist historiography and the propaganda of Enver Hoxha chose to celebrate Vojo Kushi as national hero, neglecting the other two. In our family we believe that Said was against Enver Hoxha. And this argument served me well, since childhood, to be anti- Enverist. I was convinced that uncle Sadik had known the character of Enver Hoxha well.

I knew Sadik was very intelligent and open. Enver is remembered as a tyrant, a leader with a bad character, who killed, detain