Cinema as Assembly
with Forum Lenteng, Marinho de Pina (Mediateca Abotcha), La Voix des sans papiers de Bruxelles in collaboration with Mieriën Coppens and Elie Maissin, Marwa Arsanios, Massimiliano Mollona, Bojana Cvejić, Elettra Bisogno, Lara Khaldi, Elhum Shakerifar, Subversive Film and Robin Vanbesien.
In a time of genocides and authoritarian crises, how can contemporary cinematic practices align with and support political imaginations striving for social justice and antifascist liberation? How do they help us rehearse these imaginations? Cinema as Assembly is a three-day study circle that invites the public to come together – as an audience, as thinkers and as makers – to explore cinema’s potential as both a method and medium that can help rehearse collective organisation, militant imagination and liberatory transformation.
Grounded in a relational geography of translocal struggles, imaginaries and resources, this study circle brings together film collectives from diverse locations (Jakarta, Malafo, Palestine, Lebanon, Brussels, and beyond) and with different cinematic practices. What insights emerge when they share their tools and methods for creating decolonial, speculative and collaborative narratives and methodologies in cinema?
The Cinema as Assembly study circle is co-conceived by Robin Vanbesien, Subversive Film, and Grégory Castéra as part of the World Histories of the Commons programme at KANAL-Centre Pompidou. It builds on the Ciné Place-Making study circle developed by Vanbesien in 2022 at Kaaistudios.
Program Overview
Thursday 13 March 2025
19:00 - 22:00, An Exercise in Assembling
A Ciné Lecture by Subversive Film in conversation with Bojana Cvejić
Friday 14 March
16:00 - 18:30
A Ciné Conversation by La Voix des sans papiers de Bruxelles in collaboration with Mieriën Coppens and Elie Maissin
20:00 - 22:30, Building Utopias
A Ciné Conversation on Mediateca Abotcha, between Marinho de Pina and Elettra Bisogno, including the Belgian premiere of Resonance Spiral (2024) by Filipa César and Marinho de Pina.
! Diner between these sessions can be booked on site. Please note: first come, first served !
Saturday 15 March
14:00 - 16:30,
A Ciné Lecture by Marwa Arsanios, in conversation with Lara Khaldi
18:00 - 20:30 Forum Lenteng
A Ciné Lecture by Otty Widasari of Forum Lenteng, in conversation with Mohanad Yacubi
21:00 > 22:30, Harvest Assembly
A Closing Assembly by Massimiliano Mollona, in conversation with Forum Lenteng, Marinho de Pina (Mediateca Abotcha), La Voix des sans papiers de Bruxelles with Mieriën Coppens and Elie Maissin, and Marwa Arsanios
! Diner between these sessions can be booked on site. Please note: first come, first served !
• Robin Vanbesien explores modes of embodied knowledge and collective imagination engaged in social and political struggles. Through the notion of ciné place-making, he acknowledges the capacity of cinema to preserve, reclaim, and redistribute invisibilized memories, histories, and lived cultures, using a cinematic language that probes beyond the prevalent scenes of representation. He collaborates with situated emancipatory grassroots movements, exploring cinema as a space for social gathering and political engagement that rehearses the capacity to hold space collectively. In 2020, Vanbesien co-founded The Post Film Collective, which explores cinema as a form of speculative rehearsal and communal assembly. ‘Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016)’ (2017) and ‘the wasp and the weather’ (2019) premiered at transmediale and Cinéma du Réel. His first feature ‘hold on to her’ had its world premiere at Berlinale Forum Expanded (2024).
• Subversive Film is a cinema research and production collective that aims to cast new light upon historical works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions. Formed in 2011, Subversive Film is based between Brussels and Ramallah.
Supported by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) of the Government of Flanders x Robin Vanbesien’s doctoral research Ciné Place-Making at Sint Lucas Antwerpen Research Group (SLARG) & Antwerp Research Institute of the Arts (ARIA) x Mohanad Yaqubi’s research Aesthetics of Transnational Solidarity Cinema/ Archival Sensations Cluster at KASK & Conservatorium
