On a good day, Rastko Novaković (b. 1981, Belgrade, Yugoslavia) might be making films, writing, curating book/film events, archiving social movements or dancing tango.

He has co/authored over 60 moving image works, ranging from 1 minute lyrical films, to feature length documentaries, experimental docu-fictions, campaigning films, music videos and multi-platform videos. He has exhibited sound works, outdoor installations, as well as a 15 meter long site-specific panorama.

Over the years, he has worked on video activist and DIY media projects with a feminist antimilitarist group (Women in Black, Serbia), a climate justice group (Climate Camp, UK) and London Indymedia. Since 2018, he is Coordinator of the Activist Media Project based at MayDay Rooms.

His writing has been published in the following publications: Salvage, Sabzian, Sight and Sound, The White Review, Conter, Film International, Peščanik.

He is also a contributor to the books Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies (I.B. Tauris, 2016), The Cinema of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Legenda, 2023), All We Have Is the Story: Selected Interviews 1973–2022 - James Kelman (PM Press, 2024).

His films have been shown internationally at: BFI Southbank (British Film Institute, London), Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, Nottingham Contemporary, Pirate Cinema Berlin, Barbican Centre (London), Essay Film Festival, Scanorama film festival (Vilnius) Focal Point Gallery, Kunsthalle Exnergasse - WUK (Vienna), O3one gallery (Belgrade). The Belgrade gallery U10 hosted a retrospective of his works in October 2021. His films are held in the BFI National Archive and the Lithuanian Film Centre Archive. A list of recent screenings can be found here.

As one half of Rebel Tango he teaches queer tango since 2018.

In 2022, Rastko showed Peter Watkins’s monumental 14 hour peace film The Journey, in Glasgow and across venues in Lithuania. At VDFF in 2023 he co-curated a small season of the films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.

Since 2023, he is the programmer of INCLINATIONS Film Club at Glasgow’s CCA - screening Scottish premieres of personal, DIY, slow cinema, experimental, queer, poetic, political, confrontational films.

Over the years, he has been active in the anti-war, housing and trade union movements.