Rastko Novaković (b. 1981, Belgrade, Yugoslavia) makes films, writes and curates.

Over the years 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.

He has a wide experience of media projects, having collaborated with a number of artists and filmmakers, as well as completed work commissioned by Newham Council (London), Arts Express (London), London Southbank University, ArtLink (Serbia). He was awarded artist-in-residence grants by The Leverhulme Trust (2009) and Arts Council England (2017).

Over the years, Rastko 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. He is currently coordinator of the Activist Media Project based at MayDay Rooms.

He has contributed to 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 (eds. Duijzings/Campkin, I.B. Tauris, 2016) and The Cinema of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (eds. Brady/Hughes, Legenda, 2023).

His work has 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.

He is the programmer of INCLINATIONS Film Club at Glasgow’s CCA. In 2022 he 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.

He taught a BA module on the Theory and practice of Experimental Film and Video at the University of Westminster, at the Urban Practices MA at University College London and co-hosted a focus week at the MA in Social Design at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He co-initiated the interdisciplinary exhibition Cities Methodologies (2009) which explores the intersection of academia, art and urban practices.

Rastko holds a BA (Hons) degree in Contemporary Media Practice from the University of Westminster, an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths College and a Diploma in Employment Law from the Workers Educational Association. He has been active in the anti-war, housing and trade union movements.