Film review
Review of AGON: Constructions of Democracy review
By Martin Bubanović
Medijske studije / Media studies
This article reviews the academic film essay AGON: Constructions of Democracy. It was published in the special issue of the Media Studies journal titled ‘Gendering Character Assassination’.
AGON is a film essay that reflects about the meaning of democracy, and how it is contested. The film combines the aesthetics of the Czech capital Prague with an intercultural dialogue with the Indonesian community (and other communities) living in this city, thus opening up further spaces for democratic inquiry. Inspired by the book “Democracy and Media in Europe”, by Nico Carpentier and Jeffrey Wimmer, the essay merges political and cultural theory with fiction and dance. As an experiment in the reconciliation of academic and artistic approaches, Agon is an invitation to consider what democracy is and what it can be, how it is linked to space, how it is always a location of political struggle, and how it is threatened and always in need of active protection.