Dimitar Anakiev

He resided in Slovenia, beginning in 1987, but shortly thereafter and without warning found himself among the victims of administrative ethnic cleansing ("Erased"), the result of secret illegal action enacted 26 February 1992 by the democratic Slovenian government one year after the disintegration of the state of Yugoslavia.

At this point he purchased a small video camera and began his film career, in an attempt to make himself and other marginal Balkan people visible.

He helped educate a generation of Slovenians through powerful films that juxtaposed the actions of politicians and rightwing nationals with the day-to-day privations of erased people.

His use of montage reflects Eisenstein’s revolutionary dialectics and, ironically, Anakiev’s film practices raise awareness of the brutal imperialism that is sometimes embedded in what we have come to think of as democracy.

"[3] - Stuart C. Aitken, anthropologist, San Diego State University "Dimitar Anakiev has been a filmmaker from the social margin for three decades - by subject matter and by the circumstances in which he creates.

Using filmic means, he also gives his own commentary, on the other hand, it offers viewers the feeling that the people portrayed have revealed themselves to them in some fundamental personal dimension.