On Wednesday, 22 April 2026 at 6:00 p.m., the first event was held as part of the newly established Film Club of the Centre for Popular Culture (CePoK) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. The honour of being screened as the first in a series of cult and particularly significant films went to Casablanca (dir. Michael Curitz), the 1942 American classic. Casablanca is a masterpiece of classical Hollywood and one of the most popular films about the Second World War, created in the tense atmosphere following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film was introduced to the audience by Asst. Prof. Luka Pejić, PhD, and student Dominik Aščić.
At the centre of the plot is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical nightclub owner faced with a choice between personal happiness and the fight against fascism. The film combines romance, comedy and political drama, while warning that neutrality becomes difficult to maintain in wartime circumstances. Winner of three Academy Awards (for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay), Casablanca is a multilayered cinematic text which, in addition to exploring the fate of the individual in the context of the eternal search for love, loyalty and friendship, also addresses the social forces that influence global events. Rick’s American bar (Rick’s Café Américain) functions as a place where ideology and money intersect and thus, in addition to serving as a site of resistance, becomes a symbol of American economic interests which, under the banner of antifascist, later anticommunist and ultimately antiterrorist ideology, became the main driving force behind future American wars.
The activities of the Film Club, which in addition to film screenings will include lectures, panel discussions and presentations of books on film, are conceived not only as a complement to CePoK’s research and science popularization activities, but also as a form of educational enrichment of the teaching process at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. For many years, Assoc. Prof. Ljubica Matek, PhD, has taught the course Literature and Film at the Department of English Language and Literature, while Asst. Prof. Luka Pejić, PhD, teaches the course History of Film at the Department of History. In the Film Club, students will be able to watch significant films in a more informal setting and expand the knowledge acquired during their studies. Although the activities are educational and aimed at popularizing knowledge, and are intended primarily for students of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, admission is free for all interested visitors. At the end of May, the Film Club will present the film Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott) to the audience.