Transformation [SVT-25]
documentary short film, 31 min
© Panic Film Limited 2025
A filmmaker inhabits Belgrade’s abandoned 1930s power station, weaving expert voices with nocturnal city imagery to reveal how industrial ruins continue to shape the memory, sound, and future of the city.
Once the main source of Belgrade’s electricity, the Power & Light (Snaga i Svetlost) power station has been abandoned since 1969. In this 30-minute documentary, filmmaker Nik Panic explores the building from the inside out, after living there for five weeks. The film combines immersive footage of the decaying industrial interior with pre-dawn images of an emptied Belgrade.
Interwoven with these images are conversations with architects, urbanists, historians, engineers, and artists — who reflect on the building’s history, symbolism, and possible futures. Visually shaped by a textured aesthetic of decay, the film moves between essay, archive, and sensory portrait, asking what remains when monumental infrastructures outlive their original purpose.
Developed for FASIH — Future Art Science Industrial Heritage, the project investigates how industrial ruins can be understood as dynamic research sites where technology, memory, and material processes interact. Nik Panic and sound artist Sz. Berlin engaged in an on-site exploration that combined experimental filmmaking, architectural observation, and acoustic analysis.
Central to the project is a large-scale sonification process: more than 400 micro-vibrations, resonances, and structural emissions were captured using specialized recording method – sonification. These sounds – produced naturally by the building – form the basis of the film’s score, transforming the structure into an active sonic instrument. The images document the building’s industrial geometry, surface decay, and light behaviour, revealing patterns of entropy and renewal.
This film began with a question that followed me into the empty halls of Belgrade’s former power station: what remains after functionality ends?
For five weeks, I lived inside Power & Light (Snaga i Svetlost), allowing the building to shape both my perception and my filmmaking. The power station is not merely a ruin; it is a residue of a historical promise — a time when industry symbolized collective progress. By immersing myself in the space, I sought to move beyond nostalgia and instead encounter the building as a living archive of material, sound, and memory.
In the documentary, I wanted to open this personal, sensory engagement to multiple perspectives. I spoke with seven Serbian specialists — architects, urbanists, historians, engineers, and artists — whose knowledge and experiences deepen our understanding of the site’s past, present, and potential futures. Their voices do not “explain” the building in a conventional way; rather, they resonate with it, complicate it, and situate it within Belgrade’s evolving urban landscape.
The nocturnal footage of empty streets, filmed in the early hours from both ground level and drone, mirrors the power station’s abandonment. The city and the building become reflections of one another — two forms of silence shaped by time, politics, and economic change.
Visually, I embraced an aesthetic of decay, not to romanticize destruction, but to make visible the layers of erosion that history leaves behind. This documentary is not a preservationist plea, nor a lament. It is an exploration of how industrial ruins continue to inhabit us — psychologically, spatially, and acoustically — long after their machines have stopped.
Ultimately, the film asks viewers to listen differently to their own cities and to reconsider what we choose to forget, preserve, or transform.
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