In the documentary Language and Reality, representatives of the professional public, as well as language practitioners themselves, talk about the important role that language plays in forming opinions and attitudes in society.

“The film is short (27 min) but very informative. The reason why I would like to use it in teaching is that we can hear different experts from the region and all the time follow in parallel and compare similar as well as different problems in the former speaking community that we shared”, says professor and literary theorist Svetlana Tomić. “I was impressed by the creatively packaged multi mediality, the illustrations and animations send a lot of provocative messages and symbolism, they all make us put ourselves in the position of another person,  be it man or woman, how they can feel marked or excluded  by the language. Through the visual message of a juggling clown, dilemmas and recommendations from direct practice are presented and we have a mapped situation from reality in which people are confused about what gender-sensitive language represents. Even when you talk to highly educated people, they look at gender-sensitive language with suspicion and the first thing they tell you is that it is some new language, heresy, something imposed by the West. And when you look at the facts from linguistics, then you realize how deep our ignorance is, how much systemic teachings about language, the history of language and the history of society are missing from education. Because, by opening dictionaries, you can see to what extent our lexical memory has been deleted.”

This documentary was shot with the generous support of Prof. Svenka Savić and Marjana Stevanović, authors of the Guide for the Use of Gender Sensitive Language in Public Administration, OSCE Mission to Serbia, 2019 and creative support of Maja Mićić, representative of the OSCE Mission’s Democratization Department in Serbia.