Files Authority recalls director Viktor Stratobërdha, punished by the communist dictatorship

The story of filmmaker Viktor Stratobërdha (1925–2000), whose creative path was cut short by the dictatorship, returned to attention through archival documents, films and testimonies of family members.

The event was part of the Film Club “Learning from the Past”, organised by the Authority for Information on the Documents of the former State Security, in cooperation with the Central State Film Archive.

The event, themed “Viktor Stratobërdha: the film, the file and the memory”, was held within the AIDSSH educational platform “Learning from the Past 1944–1991”, bringing to the public the story of one of the young filmmakers of the dictatorship period.

The Film Club was opened by the Authority’s member Skënder Vrioni, who said that Stratobërdha was “the filmmaker with the shortest longevity in the history of Albanian cinema”, linking the interruption of his career with the punishment for free thought.

Stratobërdha, passionate and talented about cinematography, was an assistant director on the film “Skënderbeu” and was educated in cinematography in the former Soviet Union. During the dictatorship he was considered an “anti-party element”, was interned and imprisoned.

The documents of the former State Security testify to the surveillance against him. Around 600 pages of documents were administered in his file, where in the operative language of the time he was treated as “the Stratobërdha object”. According to the materials presented at the event, he twice refused cooperation with the Security organs.

At the centre of the event were also Stratobërdha’s films, preserved in the Central State Film Archive, which testify to his creative language, characterised by realism, humour and criticism.

Through archival documents, films, correspondence, interviews and the memories of people who knew him, the event aimed to reconstruct the figure of Stratobërdha not only through the Security file, but also as an artist and as a man. The Club brought back not only the filmmaker, but also the man who, as Skënder Vrioni stressed, “did not betray himself”, standing until the end by free thought and free speech.