The director’s cut of My Name is Janez Janša is now available on-line for FREE with additional subtitles in English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Croatian languages:

A special edition of the movie has been made for the Slovenian-speaking audience:

The liberation of the film is the final step of the triple publishing initiative [FREE] Janez Janša, a series of on-line publishing events inspired by the documentary film itself.

FREE Janez Janša started in December 2014 with the publishing of the essay What’s in a Name? by Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and film critic Mladen Dolar. The essay takes us on a philosophical joy ride through the name and naming as well as the name changing of the three artists known as Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša.

The second publishing event involved the launch of a special guest blog. From January to May 2015 the “No Land’s Man” and pioneer of net.art Vuk Ćosić teased our curiosity and stimulated our intellectual desire by presenting a series of articulated blog posts on topics such as Names, Pseudonyms, Multiple Names, Improper names, etc.. The posts also included over 50 clips that never made it into the final cut of the film My Name is Janez Janša.

Contributions by Jan Fabre, Ubermorgen, Eva and Franco Mattes, Antonio Caronia, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Mladen Dolar, Marco Deseriis, Geoff Cox, Catherine Soussloff, Lev Kreft and many others have been collected HERE.

For several years now, steirischer herbst has been accompanying Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša. It was with them we made our first major exhibition and published the book NAME Readymade back in 2008.

Now, we are back there: same festival, same gallery… Forum Stadtpark.

This time we take our documentary movie My Name is Janez Janša as the starting point for the project [FREE] Janez Janša, a series of on-line publishing events, presenting content and free materials related to the film which will be delivered to you over the next months: the first one is a brand new essay by Mladen Dolar. A special guest blog written by Vuk Ćosić will then be launched on January 6th 2015. And finally in April a FREE online release of the movie will be made available online to everyone with subtitles in seven languages. All of this thanks to our partners and friends from steirischer herbst and Artribune.

The essay What’s in a Name? by Mladen Dolar is already out. The Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and film critic gives us a philosophical joy-ride through the name and naming as well as name change of the three artists known as Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša.

You can get your free e-copy (pdf and ePub) or purchase your own printed booklet HERE. The Print on Demand copy doesn’t really cost much. Anyway, should you want to pay even less please visit us at the Aksioma | Project Space in Ljubljana or go to the steirischer herbst’s online shop and you’ll get it for 5 Euro only!

In about an hour we’ll be presenting Dolar’s new work for the first time in public at Forum Stadtpark introduced by the screening of our movie.

Here goes a short preview for our online followers… enjoy it!

Janez, Janez, Janez

Dear supporters, dear followers,

It seamed I will never make it, but I’m finally back home!

It was tough hard and stressful. One just need to understand how the system works, persevere and never give up. That’s what I did and they finally let me go. I was the most happy man in the world when I could finally hug my family and my kids after such an odyssey. Now the nightmare is over. I’m back on tracks, ready to continue with renewed spirit and with more determination than before!

What happened?

Flights disrupted at Heathrow as computer failure caused chaos. My flight was delayed and missed the connection in Zurich. Had to spend the night there after cueing for hours to reschedule the flight and get a place to sleep. Exhausting…

No matter, the tour in UK was well worth it anyway. The screening of My Name is Janez Janša at the Royal College of Arts was well attended. Among the audience Richard Barbrook, Rod Dickinson and Bernadette Buckley, to spice up a bit the Q&A.

The main problem though is always the same: to make sure a local audience identifies at its best with the issue you are addressing. So this time we decided to help them a little:

After London we moved to Kent for two more gigs: one at the UCR Canterbury and the other at the Turner Contemporary in Margate where we involved the local audience in an experiment related to our next project titled Trust.

To know what the project Trust is all about I’m afraid you’ll still have to wait a bit. For now, just know that we challenged the audience to give us their valid Credit Cards that we then signed (all three of our signatures on the back of each card) in front of their eyes.

Thanks again to Emma Brasó and Ben Dalton for the impeccable organization and the quality audience they were able to involve!

Janez Janša

Getting ready to leave for a series of presentations and events in the UK. The schedule is quite intensive but the entire mini-tour looks promising.

On MON 8 at 6.30pm we screen My Name is Janez Janša at the Royal College of Arts in London (Battersea) as part of the RCA Film Series 2014/15.
The venue is called, Gorvy Lecture Theatre and the event is open to all. No admission fee. After the screening we’ll be there spending some time answering questions from the audience. Thanks to our friend Ben Dalton for organizing this!

The day after we move to Canterbury where we’ll have a talk at the University for the Creative Arts as part of their Visiting Lecturer Series. The event, in the framework of the exhibition Despite Efficiency: Labour, will start at 12.45pm sharp at the Cragg Lecture Theatre. It’s mostly meant for all Fine Art BA and MA students, but I’m sure one can manage to sneak in easily, if she really wants…

And finally on December 10 we are at the Turner Contemporary in Margate where we present Name Readymade (lecture/performance starting at 6pm), the concept of Collateral Art we are developing in the last couple of years, and the outlines of Trust, the upcoming net-based project we are developing together with UCA Canterbury.
This event is part of the public programme designed in parallel to the exhibition English Magic by Jeremy Deller.

Special thanks to Emma Braso for the coordination of this challenging set of events. We are really looking forward!

Janez, Janez, Janez

Finally the time for the screening of our movie in Ljubljana has come.

My Name Is Janez Janša will be screened twice at 23rd International Ljubljana Film Festival in the avantpremieres section, on Nov. 11th at 9 pm at Cankarjev dom and on Nov. 16th at 9.30 pm at Kinodvor in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

It has been said and written so much in the past about this movie, especially from people who never watched it and whose primary intention was the public discredit of its authors and stopping the movie from being released.

It has been said that “the movie is pornographic”. It has been hindered the production. It has been asked the Slovenian Film Center to consider withdrawing its financial support to this production. It has being written that the law in Slovenia will be changed in order to “provide legal grounds for the minister’s discretion management or elimination of such projects at his will”. It has been written that the movie is completely out of place as “instigates political mockery and hatred and discredit an individual”. It has been written that the documentary “is an audio-visual record of sorts, which could have been made for the internet by anyone, without them getting the taxpayers’ money to do it, of course”…

Now it’s about the time to set a mirror in front of these people.

Let’s screen the movie and see what the audience has to say. Looking forward!

Janez

“My name is Janez Janša” will be screened four times in four days at the Zagreb film festival! But let’s start from the beginning. Our documentary is one of the 16 selected for the documentary program at the 10th Zagreb film festival (ZFF). The film’s international premiere will take place just a fortnight after its first screening at the Slovenian Film Festival – that “bloody” Sunday at 10.30 a.m., remember?! And that’s not all. Ours is the only documentary in the program that will be screened four times (two screenings on October 18th and one on October 19th and 21st). Screenings will take place at the Grič Cinema, Dokukino DIC and Museum of Contemporary Art. Prime time, this time!

As quite some of the documentaries at this year’s ZFF represent artistic endeavors, Janez Janša will be in good company: Marina Abramović and Ai Weiwei among others.

Not a bad way to start…
All documentaries will compete for the Golden Pram Award and the author of the best film will receive the amount of 1,000 €. So keep your fingers crossed! For Weiwei, of course

I wonder how the movie will be perceived abroad. I’ll keep you posted on this.

Will the critics differ much from the Slovenian ones?

My Name Is Janez Janša is certainly one of the best Slovenian documentaries in recent years. It brings a seemingly abstract, philosophical issue into the field of social reflection and concretises it to its foundations. As such it will further trigger a multitude of interpretations, because it constantly moves on slippery ground, keeping the viewer in suspense. In addition, it realizes the medium of documentary filmmaking excellently: although it could be conditionally labelled a “talking heads” film, these heads are incorporated in an original and extremely dynamic form of presentation. The film would undoubtedly deserve the best documentary award at this year’s Festival of Slovenian Film…

— Ženja Leiler, Pogledi, 10.10.2012

Click, Janez

P.S. If you are in Zagreb come around. Janez, Janez and I will be there only on the 18th

After Janez Janša has seen this documentary, he will wish to be in a porn movie. He will wish to be in a hundred porn movies.

— Marcel Štefančič jr., Mladina, 18 May 2012.

The movie “My Name is Janez Janša” has been officially selected for the 15th Festival of Slovenian Film that will take place in Portorož, Slovenia, between 27-30 September 2012.

The movie is in competition for the best feature-length documentary and medium-length film and will be screened at the Auditorium of Portorož on Saturday 30 of September at 10.30 am!

This innovative screening hour proves the movie is rather harmless and inoffensive, and doesn’t contain pornographic scenes as some “eye-witness” suggested much before the movie was completed and released.

Where are you going then to spend your last Sunday morning of September?
Sunday mass or Janez Janša? The choice is hard, I know, but it’s yours!

Amen!

I started to work around the idea of making this movie about names, homonymy and name changes, long time ago. Now I’m about to finish it. But recently Janez Janša, my name sake, came back to power and the perception of my work has taken a drastic distortion, especially in the media. In some of the press the movie has been labeled as “degenerate art” (Heil!), in other as pornography produced with public money, and the director of the film studios VIBA Film (our technical partner, where we suppose to finish the sound mix) is pulling-out of the project…

Nevertheless, we decided to finish the film professionally and to screen it soon in Slovenia and around the word. This is why we launched a crowdfunding call.

Crowdfunding is a way to finance projects collectively, from the bottom up is to say.

How does it work?

You have an idea. You publish it on a crowdfunding platform and you indicate the rewards you offer in exchange of contributions (merchandising, special editions, access to downloads, etc). Then you open the call and start looking for supporters. A project is successfully funded when it raises 100% of its funding goal within 40 days. You are charged at the end of the campaign and only if the project reaches its goal!

Now we are in the middle of this process for our film My Name Is Janez Janša. 62 patrons gave us already their support! THANKS TO ALL OF THEM!

There’s a long way to go to reach the goal though and you can be with us.

THE MORE WE ARE THE FASTER WE WILL REACH OUR GOAL!

Yours sincerely… Janez!

Since our name change, my colleagues and I were investigating issues such as identity vs identification, multiplicity vs multiplication, the name as an interface between the private and the public, and the personal name as a brand.
We then started to tour with our performative lectures entitled NAME Readymade. In the last four years we had more then 35 public presentations at various festivals, museums, galleries and universities around the world.

It is from this experience that the script for the movie My Name Is Janez Jansa started to take shape. While modelling it I was taking into consideration feedbacks I’ve got from the audience. So, in a way, this project had an element of crowdsourcing since its early stage.

Today we are presenting NAME Readymade again and, this time, on two different continents in the same day!

I’ll be doing it at Uppsala Stadsteater in Sweden in the frame of the Festival TUPP
http://www.uppsalastadsteater.se/forestallningar-2011-2012/name-readymade/ whereas Janez will be doing it at the Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island during an event entitled “Performing Under Pressure”: Life, Labor, and Art in the Academy. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Janez

My name is Janez Janša and I am the director of the documentary »My name is Janez Janša«. Right now the film is in its postproduction phase. In this phase we resorted to an innovative way of financing our project: crowdfunding or funding by the masses. In this way a high number of individuals financially support creative projects by offering small or large amounts and thus ensure that good ideas are realized. Most of the funds, which will be collected through the crowdfunding platform Verkami, will be used for the postproduction of the international cinema and shorter television versions of the film and their worldwide distribution. You can support the film »My name is Janez Janša« through the webpage www.verkami.com/projects/1752-janez-jansa/lang/en. As a thank you for the support we will give out interesting rewards – ranging from mentioning your name in the end credits to works of art.

Stay tuned and you will be the first to know what’s going on in the following weeks.