Jasmina Tešanović


Jasmina Tešanović is a Serbian-American author, feminist, political activist, translator, and filmmaker.

Early life

Tešanović was born in March 7, 1954 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her family later moved to Cairo, Egypt with her parents where she attended the primary Port Said School in English. In Cairo she took piano lessons with Croatian pianist Melita Lorkovic. In 1966 her parents transferred to Milan, Italy where she attended the international School of Milan. In 1971 she enrolled at University of Milan and studied Law School for two years which she abandoned to study Art and Cinema. In 1976 she graduated Lettere Moderne at the University of Milan with a thesis on Andrei Tarkovsky with Prof. Adelio Ferrero.

Early work

In 1975 she went to live in Rome after assisting Miklós Jancsó's movie Private Vices, Public Pleasures, shot in Ormož, Slovenia. She lived with actress Laura Betti where she met and befriended director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
In 1977, she collaborated with Umberto Silva on the movie Difficile morire.
She did conceptual video performances at the student cultural center of Belgrade SKC and shot short films together with Radoslav Vladić.

Transition to an author and as an activist

She translated Italian authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Sandro Veronesi, Andrea de Carlo, and Aldo Busi, and published an anthology of contemporary Italian literature within Yugoslavia.
After the fall of communism in East Europe, together with Slavica Stojanović, she founded the feminist publishing house "Feminist 94".
Her first book of essays "The Invisible Book" became a manifesto for alternative Serbian feminist/pacifist culture. Since then she published several other fiction and essays books translated in several languages.
She is the author of Diary of a Political Idiot, a war diary written during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and widely distributed on the Internet.
In 2004 the Hiroshima Prize for Peace and Culture was awarded to Borka Pavićević, founder of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade, with additional prizes to Biljana Srbljanović and Jasmina Tešanović, Serbian authors and peace activists.
She is the member of the Norwegian PEN center.
Jasmina Tešanović is also an internationally known writer, feminist and political activist. She was one of the key figures on the feminist scene in the former Yugoslavia and Serbia.
Jasmina Tešanović was the co-organizer of the first international feminist conference in the former Yugoslavia in 1978.
She was extremely involved in numerous women's and peace initiatives in the early nineties that opposed Slobodan Milošević's policies. She is the author of several books in the field of non-fiction and fiction, as well as films.

Later work

With her husband Bruce Sterling, she started the Casa Jasmina project - the first "open source" house, aimed at exploring the potential of electronically networked objects in the household.
She is the curator of electronic art festival "SHARE" in Turin, since 2008

Personal life

She has a daughter.
In 2005, she married American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling.

Non-fiction

  • Mai più senza Torino Espress Edizioni, Torino 2012
  • The Scorpions: Genocide in Srebrenica,
  • Dizajn Zlocina, Sudjenje skorpionima
  • Processo agli Scorpioni
  • Me and My Multicultural Street
  • Diary of a Political Idiot — published in 12 languages
  • ''The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia''

Fiction

La Clandestina, Editkit editore, 2023, Italia
Klandestina, Rende, Beograd, Serbia,2022
  • La mia vita senza di me, Infinito edizioni, Italy 2014
  • Moj život bez mene, Rende, Belgrade, 2013
  • Nefertiti
  • The Necromancers/Nekromanti
  • Nefertiti Was Here/Nefertiti je bila ovde
  • They just do it
  • The Mermaids — Borislav Pekić Award recipient
  • A Women's Book
  • In Exile
  • ''The Invisible Book''

Essays and short stories

Filmography

  • Difficile Morire, artistic collaboration on Umberto Silva's film,
  • Mother and Sinner, with Rade Vladic
  • Morning Midday Evening, with Rade Vladic, film based on a short story by David Albahari
  • Nefertiti Was Here
  • Nefertiti Was Here in Belgrade
  • Jasmina's Diary, with Dinko Tucakovic.The film "Jasmina Diary" based on her diary of a political idiot, produced by SWR TV was distributed in many languages: ARTE TV, Italian TV, German TV, Serbian TV. It was screened in various film festival, Venezia film festival 1999 among others, Leipzig film festival etc
  • Stencil Art in Serbia
  • A Minute to Twelve
  • Invisible Cities
  • Rafts
  • Participation
  • Blogs
  • ''Recycling Romany''