When we gather together to consider the big issues facing our field, we usually try to think our way out of certain problems. We try to treat the symptom, such as addressing exclusion by focusing on access, but what might we be overlooking with this type of understanding? Take the issues of programming, distribution, and exhibition: they are often enacted as the transfer of films to audiences by connecting "exceptional" filmmakers with "mortal" audiences.
What if film circulation was instead an embodied gesture connecting filmmaker, film, audience, and the world—as the failures of traditional prestige spaces to hold space for the divisions, the contradictions, and grief of this moment in history become ever clearer. This session will be led by Abhishek Nilamber, Laura Kloeckner of SAVVY contemporary in Berlin and keynote speaker Jemma Desai to imagine beyond the norms embedded in traditional spaces of screening and circulation. Based on their participatory research into models of kinship and community outside transactional models, and strategies of somatic knowledge production, this experiential conversation will think about how the screening space can function beyond hierarchical spectacle and display towards a more meaningful space of embodied connection and gathering.
Facilitators: Abhishek Nilamber (Cultural worker), Laura Kloeckner (Curator, Producer), Jemma Desai (Writer, Cultural worker)
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Laura Kloeckner is a curator and film producer based in Berlin. She is part of SAVVY Contemporary – The Laboratory of Form Ideas, a Berlin based art space and research platform where she co-curates United Screens, a project looking into alternative models for South-South film circulation. For SAVVY she recently co-curated a series of solo exhibitions in the framework of Berlinale Forum Expanded. Since 2022 Laura is a film producer and partner at SEERA Films, a film production company based between Berlin and Cairo. She is a seniour consultant for DAE – the Documentary Association of Europe.
Jemma Desai stands against the the genocide of the Palestinian people and is reconsidering her work biography in light of this, and other interrelated commitments. In the present moment she is a cultural worker and somatic facilitator. Her work spans artistic and administrative practice, writing, curation, performance and other forms of articulation. In this work she is (re)searching new ways to make and circulate outside and inside cultural production, with and against institutions in order to question the role of testimony, desire and political commitment in the social relations that make cultural work. She writes and teaches in a variety of academic and non academic contexts and is a practice-based PhD candidate at Central School of Speech and Drama with a thesis entitled "what do we want from each other after we have told our stories?" She has previously worked with the BFI, British Council, LUX and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. Current collaborations include Blackstar and BAM and she is the programmer of the 2025 edition of the Flaherty Seminar.
Abhishek Nilamber (Hyderabad, 1987) is a cultural worker engaged in curation, research and activism, transituated between Berlin and Kochi. He/him is the instigator of United Screens – a project that enquires into the challenges and opportunities between South to South cinema and video art circulation.
When we gather together to consider the big issues facing our field, we usually try to think our way out of certain problems. We try to treat the symptom, such as addressing exclusion by focusing on access, but what might we be overlooking with this type of understanding? Take the issues of programming, distribution, and exhibition: they are often enacted as the transfer of films to audiences by connecting "exceptional" filmmakers with "mortal" audiences.
What if film circulation was instead an embodied gesture connecting filmmaker, film, audience, and the world—as the failures of traditional prestige spaces to hold space for the divisions, the contradictions, and grief of this moment in history become ever clearer. This session will be led by Abhishek Nilamber, Laura Kloeckner of SAVVY contemporary in Berlin and keynote speaker Jemma Desai to imagine beyond the norms embedded in traditional spaces of screening and circulation. Based on their participatory research into models of kinship and community outside transactional models, and strategies of somatic knowledge production, this experiential conversation will think about how the screening space can function beyond hierarchical spectacle and display towards a more meaningful space of embodied connection and gathering.
Facilitators: Abhishek Nilamber (Cultural worker), Laura Kloeckner (Curator, Producer), Jemma Desai (Writer, Cultural worker)
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Laura Kloeckner is a curator and film producer based in Berlin. She is part of SAVVY Contemporary – The Laboratory of Form Ideas, a Berlin based art space and research platform where she co-curates United Screens, a project looking into alternative models for South-South film circulation. For SAVVY she recently co-curated a series of solo exhibitions in the framework of Berlinale Forum Expanded. Since 2022 Laura is a film producer and partner at SEERA Films, a film production company based between Berlin and Cairo. She is a seniour consultant for DAE – the Documentary Association of Europe.
Jemma Desai stands against the the genocide of the Palestinian people and is reconsidering her work biography in light of this, and other interrelated commitments. In the present moment she is a cultural worker and somatic facilitator. Her work spans artistic and administrative practice, writing, curation, performance and other forms of articulation. In this work she is (re)searching new ways to make and circulate outside and inside cultural production, with and against institutions in order to question the role of testimony, desire and political commitment in the social relations that make cultural work. She writes and teaches in a variety of academic and non academic contexts and is a practice-based PhD candidate at Central School of Speech and Drama with a thesis entitled "what do we want from each other after we have told our stories?" She has previously worked with the BFI, British Council, LUX and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. Current collaborations include Blackstar and BAM and she is the programmer of the 2025 edition of the Flaherty Seminar.
Abhishek Nilamber (Hyderabad, 1987) is a cultural worker engaged in curation, research and activism, transituated between Berlin and Kochi. He/him is the instigator of United Screens – a project that enquires into the challenges and opportunities between South to South cinema and video art circulation.