Netherlands Film Academy | March 21st, 2024

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A rumbling of change in Landslide by Giraldo and Bernal. Hypnotic shamanism in Guerras Floridas by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos. Utopian future and healing red screens in This is Cosmos by Anton Vidokle. Questioning The System through performance art in Roadworks by Mona Hatoum. Transcending confinement through dreaming in Homesick for Another World by Mei Liu.

[un]learning media scripts was hosted after a warm invitation from group member, Nduka Mntambo, who offered the academy as a place to share a community meal, watch films, exchange and reflect. This programme highlighted artists and activists who are using the moving image as a tool in resisting oppressive and damaging scripts fed by the media broadly, effectively [un]learning and opening new ways of knowing. 

We’re constantly fed “scripts” on how to act, learn, and know. [Un]learning these means questioning the ways in which they’re created and whether they can be trusted. This is particularly relevant in examining the scripts shown by the media. In an influx of social media and misinformation, understanding the media’s role in creating narratives, altering scripts and censoring various knowledge, is vital. Activists have long dismantled and disrupted these scripts - rewriting, queering, and making space for the underrepresented. 

Participants suggested the five films above, building the programme together and discussing their significance in “[un]learning media scripts” through filming techniques and thematics. Through these films, the group discussed the power of documentation versus documentary, film’s ability to capture something fleeting, and how values are represented through filming techniques, such as slowness or transparency. Moreover as an open ended question, how can the moving image transform our lived reality?