On March 31, 1994, José León Ramírez Reina died of heart failure in a hospital in the south of Spain. He was 87. He had previously lived in Madrid and in Seville, where he owned an extravagant villa named La Carlina. He was known for hosting elite parties and storing a rich collection of art there. Ramírez Reina arrived in Spain through what could be described as an unusual channel. After fleeing from Germany across Denmark and Norway, he crashed his plane into the shores of San Sebastian, Spain in May of 1945.
The life of Jews in Mostar today is anything but easy. For years, this minority population living in the city on the Neretva River has been trying to improve their position in society and preserve the rich heritage of the Jewish culture in the region.
"Crossing Borders" is a multi-part series aims to explore various facets of Bosnian migration to Germany and to present the personal accounts of migrants and their children in an effort to not only reflect on the shared experiences of Bosnian migrants but to also consider the wider themes and implications of their stories.
Balkan Diskurs correspondent Struan Kennedy provides a review of three films that were recently shown at Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo as part of a retrospective of the work of French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot.