Blink starts with an encounter between Jakov and Ivan in Vienna, where Ivan fled from his family house in Kaštela and has been missing for almost 2 months. Upon his arrival back in Croatia, Jakov films his brother Ivan, his life with schizophrenia and his treatments in psychiatric clinics in Split, Rab and Ugljan. Most of the video footage was taken secretly in order to expose the inhumanity and brutality of the treatment to which the residents of these institutions are subjected, and the real impact that medicine has on their mental and physical well-being. The title of the film refers to the director’s ill brother whose eyes do not blink due to the use of invasive medical drugs.
Jakov Labrović was born in 1983. He has a master’s degree in sculpture, and he is the artistic leader of the performing arts collective ROOM 100, which produces and distributes ‘risky’ contemporary circus performances that combines circus skills with sculpture arts, electronic music, break and butoh dance. He is the artistic director of and performer in the C8H11NO2 performance, which has been awarded the Jeunes Talents Cirque Europe 2010 laureate (with the highest jury score in the project’s history) and performed at various festivals in the USA, France, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Lithuania, Croatia etc. He has also directed and performed a solo piece ‘split’ that was one of the six performance-finalists at the Arte Laguna Prize contemporary art award in Venice in 2013, and a finalist for the Aesthetica contemporary art award in England in 2014. The short documentary Blink is Jakov’s first film.
Blink (2017)
