In an era marked by the dominance of commercial imperatives in theatrical cinema and the accelerating convergence of Hollywood and Silicon Valley—facilitated by algorithmification and corporate consolidation— we also observe emergent countercurrents pointing us to alternative trajectories. This presentation explores the resurgence of community-led filmmaking practices that resist centralized gatekeeping and subvert market-driven logic. These initiatives cultivate communal decision-making through decentralized, collective practices, non-institutional knowledge exchange, community-based value metrics and more sustainable political imaginaries. In my presentation I will explore initiatives such as Think Wells which has established a transnational network of “relational, sympoeitic” film financing, production and circulation (taking cues from Édouard Glissant and Haraway). Other examples include the anti-imperialist filmmaking cooperative Freefilmers collective from Mariupol, Ukraine, and SINEMA TRANSTOPIA in Berlin. Drawing on Walter Mignolo’s theoretical framework of decoloniality, I propose understanding these initiatives as decolonial venues—spaces that not only resist and delink from Eurocentric institutions and a political imaginary that poses as universal but also foster regenerative, plural and transnational modes of cinematic practice. Such practices, I argue, generate what Lauren Berlant describes as “terms of transition that alter the harder and softer, tighter and looser infrastructures of sociality itself.” In the final part of my presentation, I will draw a historical analogy between these current manifestions and the Black Audio Film Collective (1981-1998). Produced at different junctures and under different techno-social conditions, the BAFC also functioned as a decolonial venue, I argue, and therefore offers a vital point of comparison for understanding contemporary practices.

Authors:
Nina Köll, Utrecht University, Netherlands

About the Presenter(s)
Mag. phil. Nina Köll, M.A.,
Assistant Professor Media and Cultural Studies
Visual and digital culture, critical data studies, media industries, cultural critique
Decentralised, transnational, decolonial approaches to filmmaking and film distribution

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.uu.nl/staff/NKoll

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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