TRICONTINENTAL IMAGE: Reminders for the Future
May 7th – 8th, 2024 Kino Beton – Dom mladih Split, Croatia
Exhibition opening: Kocka club Gallery, May 9th, 2024, at 8 p.m.
The Curatorial School program is an extracurricular education initiative organized by Mavena since 2016. The School aims to educate young art historians, artists, and other interested cultural workers to develop new and innovative curatorial programs in Split and beyond. Each year, an international team of artists and curators explores a different theme, providing participants insights into curatorial practices from various European and global perspectives, introducing them to working methods specific to the chosen theme, and laying the groundwork for international cultural cooperation.
The Curatorial School program is part of the Mavena – 36 of its wonders association, conducted in collaboration with the Coalition of Youth Associations, the Multimedia Cultural Center Split, and the Youth Center Platform, funded through public grants from the City of Split, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, and the Kultura Nova Foundation. This year’s partners include Kino UNSEEN, the Center for Dramatic Arts, and the French Institute Zagreb. The Curatorial School is free for all participants and can be attended online or in person (Beton Cinema, Youth Center Split).
To apply, email mavena@mavena.hr with a brief biography by Tuesday, April 30, 2024, at 11:59 p.m.
Note: Lectures and discussions are conducted in English.
THE TRICONTINENTAL IMAGE: Reminders for the Future
In the late 1960s, the magazine Tricontinental published the text “Towards a Third Cinema” signed by Argentinians Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, emphasizing the concept of cinema as an event that insists on context, dialogue, and using cinema to discuss current and important issues. The Third Cinema establishes itself as one that insists on freer image circulation and criticizes the first (Hollywood) and second cinema (European). This time in Split, through collaboration between UNSEEN and Mavena, we gather to extract reminders for the future from the archive, rethink definitions, and write new dictionaries of solidarity and cooperation. We will discuss how images are preserved and cared for, how new ones are created and connected to existing ones, how they are shared, displayed, listened to, and which methodologies we can use to uncover hidden traces… By creating a discursive and film program based on production conditions, questioning authorship, imagining new cinema potentials, and image circulation, we aim to connect the film research space of Latin America, Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East with the image of Southeast Europe.
SPEAKERS
Karla Crnčević, Croatia
Hrvoslava Brkušić, Croatia
Margaux Chalançon, France
Deva Pereda Areizaga, Basque country
Laura Alhach, Colombia
Jakob Krese, Slovenia
André Di Franco, Brazil
Sita Magfira, Indonesia
Anaís Córdova-Páez, Ecuador
CURATORIAL SCHOOL PROGRAM
May 7th, 2024, BETON CINEMA, Youth Center Split
10:00 – 10:45
- INTRODUCTION: Karla Crnčević
Tricontinental as an Imaginary of Global South Cinematic Future
An introduction to present and contextualize the practices of the Third Cinema established in the 1960s and 1970s, comparing them with contemporary practices that follow similar methodologies and consciously or unconsciously align with them. Referring to the Tricontinental manifestos, the aim is to create a platform for better connectivity between practitioners and theorists who will present their artistic and research works in the following days, focusing on the concept of collaboration and solidarity as continuous and long-term practices that can make a difference in the future.
Karla Crnčević is a dramaturge and film worker. Her films and video works have been exhibited and awarded domestically and internationally (FidMarseille, Zinebi, Dokufest…). She is a member of the Center for Dramatic Arts and one of the founders and organizers of the Unseen initiative dealing with presentation and cultural policies, and cinema space revitalization. She is researching audiovisual archives related to AFŽ (Anti-Fascist Women’s Front).
11:00 – 12:30
- Lecture: Margaux Chalançon, France: Through The Restauration Diary
Through collaboration with the Lebanese organization Nadi Lelol Nas, Margaux Chalançon restored the feature documentary “The Freedom Giver,” directed by Kais al-Zubaidi in 1989 for the Lebanese Liberation Front, experimenting for a year with alternative restoration practices. She will present different aspects of working on restoring such a politically and technically demanding film reel, emphasizing the potential resistance born in collaborative archival restoration methods and intimate reflections in the work process with such material.
Margaux Chalançon is a film archivist, restorer, and post-producer. After several years of post-production in Beirut, she specialized in archiving at the EQZE master’s program in San Sebastian, often combining an interest in archives with post-production experience.
12:45 – 14:15
- Lecture / Video Installation and Performance : Deva Pereda Areizaga and Laura Alhach — Keinu militanteak, narratibak eta aldizkari trikontinental bat (Militant Gestures, Narratives and a Tricontinental Magazine)
In the search for the traces, stories and archives of the Third Cinema Movement from the present day, we ask ourselves about identity, geopolitical frontiers and collective imaginaries. As part of the “C3: Non-Aligned Film Archives” research group led by Léa Morin at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, we found a disconcerting lack of resources, both in institutional and official archives. In face of this unexplored theme, we found an abundance of documentation, publications and even films, mostly unpreserved, in private and transnational archives. It was an immense material memory in danger of disappearing. From this, we were lucky to find the CinémArabe magazine, one of these almost totally unknown traces of the existence of a Transnational Third Film Critic Movement.
Dedicated mainly to Arab cinema, but also to Asian, African and Latin American, CinémArabe was created in Paris in 1975 by a group of young critics and filmmakers. The founders fought for the existence of a film critic committed to the cinema of their countries and capable of grasping their particularities; a new critic for a new cinema. From 1975 to 1979, this journal gave voice to many male and female contributors, proposed unpublished interviews with African filmmakers, covered tricontinental festivals, and was also the space for the publication of essential manifestos translated into French and Arabic, such as that of the “Third Cinema” (Solanas and Getino) and “Woman, Filmmaker and Arab” (Heiny Srour, 1976).
Laura Alhach studied Anthropology at University of the Andes, and graduated from the Master’s Degrees in Ethnographic Documentary Film at University College London-UCL and in Film Archives at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. She has been Editorial Coordinator of the Audiovisual, Sound and Interactive Media Policy of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia and co-founded the production company Tres Mil Malas. She is currently part of the “C3: Non-Aligned Film Archives” research group and is developing “Costas: International Exhibition of Cinema and Memory of the Diaspora”, which, in its first edition, will focus on the work of Jocelyne Saab.
Deva Pereda Areizaga Graduated in Law from the Pompeu Fabra University and the UPV/EHU, from which later she obtained the Master’s Degree in the Attorney Profession, finishing it with a research project on copyright and intellectual property rights in alternative artistic practices. She recently completed the Master’s Degree in Film Curating at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, from which she is part of the C3: Non-Aligned Film Archives research group.
16:00 – 17:00
- Lecture: Hrvoslava Brkušić, Croatia: Inhabiting different landscapes
Hrvoslava Brkušić will share experiences from working in Sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, exploring how they have connected and explored the football platform and film as expressive tools. What does it mean to be a woman in football and film today, shaped by different environments from which we come? How can we empty the film space, change it from a space of pure representation, and leave it to the protagonists? From which register do we work in new environments and circumstances, and how do we subsequently apply the experience gained in everyday life? What are the similarities and differences, and how do we use film as a tool of expression?
During the presentation, we will watch films produced in workshops.
Hrvoslava Brkušić graduated in Film and TV Editing from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and completed her master’s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the Department of Animated Film and New Media, specializing in New Media. As an editor, she worked on numerous documentary, feature, and experimental films. Her films have been screened at many domestic and international festivals, including ZagrebDox, 25fps, Pula Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Beldocs, IDFA Amsterdam, IFF Rotterdam, DOK Leipzig, IDFF Jihlava, CPH: DOX, Oberhausen, among others. She is one of the founders and members of the art collective Ljubavnice. She is also part of the Restart educational team and has been a lecturer and mentor at the School of Documentary Film for many years, as well as an external collaborator at the Academy of Fine Arts in New Media and the teaching department.
21:00 – 22:30
TROKUT- Youth Center, Split – Screening of the film “Leila and the Wolves” 1984, Lebanon, Palestine, HEINY SROUR
Drawing from the Arab heritage of oral tradition and mosaic patterns, “Leila and the Wolves” explores the collective memory of Arab women and their hidden roles in history over the past half-century, both in Palestine and Lebanon.
May 8, 2024 BETON CINEMA, Youth Center Split
11:30 – 13:00
- Jakob Krese, Slovenia — An open discussion about ideas for a different possible cinema
Lebanese director Heiny Srour said: “We from the Third World must reject ideas of film narration based on bourgeois novels of the 19th century with their devotion to harmony. Our societies are too burdened by colonial forces to fit into these neat scenarios.”
“Hacia un tercer cine” (Towards a Third Cinema) was a manifesto by Argentine directors Solanas and Getino published in the Tricontinental magazine. They advocated for revolutionary filmmaking. The idea of a cinema that rejects the conventions of the first and second cinema: its commercialization and the concept of a director being an author gave birth to the third cinema, which attempts to embody the practice of decolonizing film. Jakob will share examples that do not separate form from content, filmmakers who have inspired him with their film language challenging prevailing Western narratives. In Jean Luc Godard’s words, “not political films, but films made politically.”
Jakob Krese grew up between former Yugoslavia and Germany. He studied camera and directing at Babelsberg, Havana, and Sarajevo. Since 2018, he has worked as a cinematographer, director, screenwriter, and producer of creative documentaries. His films have been screened at internationally recognized festivals such as IFFR Rotterdam, Vision du Réel, Palm Springs, and Busan, winning numerous awards. He is working on his second feature-length film “The Gods Must Be Mistaken.”
13:15 – 14:45
- Presentation: André di Franco, Brazil — Archaeologies of Oppression
In this presentation, we turn to the intersection of archaeology and film to contemplate memory preservation and construction, specifically concerning architecture and spaces of repression in the global South. Filmmakers such as Rithy Panh, Alain Resnais, Paulo Sacramento, the Forensic Architecture collective, and others encourage us to consider how film can operate as an archaeological practice, uncovering memories and pasts hidden beneath layers of official history.
With this in mind, thinkers like Didi-Hubermann, Le Goff, and Walter Benjamin help us understand memory construction and fabrication processes through materiality and space. By blending visual imagery, references, and discussion, we aim to engage with materiality: “How can we create images that question institutional history? How can we use materiality to reveal the history of the oppressed, spaces of violence, and repression?” are some of the questions we intend to explore together.
André Di Franco is a Brazilian director, curator, and educator. He is currently completing his first feature-length documentary “Palimpsest.” He has selected films in Croatia, Spain, and Brazil. In 2022, he was part of the NEST competition jury at the International Film Festival in San Sebastian; in 2017, he was a member of the young jury at the Tiradentes Festival (Brazil) and the critics’ jury at the Ver e Fazer Filmes Festival (Brazil).
16:00 – 17:30
- Practical Teaching: Anaís Córdova-Páez, Ecuador — Small Daily Revolutions
Based on the idea that the power of images lies in their ability to influence our imagination, this meeting will attempt to expand our imaginations by referencing various engaged artistic practices. The relationship of artists to the body, environment, and feminism questions processes of memory and aesthetics in the global South. In this practical session, we will open up the possibility of recognizing and locally reflecting on existing and potential collective feminist practices as small daily revolutions, and we will create a speculative collaborative action.
Anaís Córdova-Páez is dedicated to reflecting on how politics, ecology, gender, and moving images communicate in the internet era. She focuses on her work as a way to provoke creativity processes in film production and exhibition. She is the director of the short film “Lubricas” (2016), part of the team of the series “Amazonia+Covid” (2020), and working on the experimental series “Hematica,” from which the short film “Hematic Cultures” (2023) is a part. She is a curator at the EQUIS Feminist Film Festival (Ecuador), Zinegoak, LGBTIQ+ Film Festival and Performing Arts (Bilbao, Spain), and a collaborator at UNSEEN cinema (Croatia). She has programmed for various exhibition spaces in France, Spain, Ecuador, and Colombia. She was a participant in the Flaherty Seminar (2022) and an international guest at “Atmospheres of Violence” at Harvard University (2023).
17:45 – 19:15
- Participatory Workshop: Sita Magfira, Indonesia — How The Collective Work?
Sita’s academic interest focuses on distancing from nationalist readings and writing about history, particularly through connections between Southeast Asia and Central-Eastern Europe. Through her research, she focuses on individual testimonies and unofficial sources. Using a scientific methodology, she explores the phenomena of migration and the effects they provoke. Parallel to this, Sita explores the potential of thinking through political ruptures or incompleteness.
The session will begin by exploring these interests through a participatory workshop with other participants. Following that, Sita will introduce the work of her collective, Lifepatch, which primarily focuses on an ongoing project about the colonial history of North Sumatra. The project touches on questions of environmental history (including the construction of a botanical garden), loss of knowledge and collective memory, and the involvement of European countries in colonialism. She will also present the continuation of some of these practices in contemporary Indonesia.
Sita Magfira (Budapest/Yogyakarta) is a writer, curator, and researcher. She holds a Master’s Degree in History in the Public Sphere with an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees scholarship. She has worked independently and collaboratively, mostly with the Lifepatch collective. Currently, she is researching fiction and poetry as tools for finding meaning in everyday life.
21:00 – 22:30
TROKUT – Dom mladih, Split: FILM SCREENINGS OF COLLECTIVELY CURATED SHORTS
IMPRESSUM
Concept 2024: Karla Crnčević, Kino UNSEEN
Curatorial School curated by: Natasha Kadin
Design: Nikola Križanac
Lecture & Translation: Katarina Duplančić
Technical assistance: Franko Sardelić Kolinac
Production: MAVENA – 36 njezinih čuda
Coproduction: Multimedijalni centar Split, Platforma Doma mladih, Koalicija udruga mladih, Kino UNSEEN, Centar za dramsku umjetnost i Francuski institut Zagreb
Donors: Grad Split, Ministarstvo kulture i medija, Zaklada Kultura nova