— An Exercise in Assembling | 2023-present
Subversive Film

AN EXERCISE IN ASSEMBLING presents itself as an exploration of both film programming and film assemblage.

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Assembly as film. Assembly as liberation. Assembly as power. Assembly as method. And as a tool.

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Working with films made during the revolutionary periods of various liberation struggles—emancipatory movements, civil rights movements, and workers' and immigrant movements—the film programme assembles scenes from militant and politically charged cinema. These scenes depict bodies that gather, come together, or assemble to create presence and movement in space—both physical and cinematic—resisting forms of colonial, capitalist, class, or gender violence. Alternatively, they feature bodies celebrating the fall of oppressive regimes, building, and sharing.

 

By editing these scenes together, patterns emerge in how cinema represents assemblies or uses shots of gatherings—both mass and intimate—to construct the space of struggle. Bodies in streets, on mountains, in stadiums, schools, and factories. Bodies in the landscape.

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AN EXERCISE IN ASSEMBLING draws on films from a diverse range of cinematic and revolutionary geographies, including Palestine, Cuba, Algiers, Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, Vietnam, France, and others.