Presenting at EYE International CONFERENCE 2026
The annual Eye International Conference at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam takes place next week, on May 31 and June 1.
Each year there’s an open call to submit a proposal for a talk or presentation based on the theme. This year’s theme is ‘The Future of Film Programming’.
Jasmine Soliman and I submitted our project Collected Histories: Personal Archives and Documentation since film programming is an essential part of the project. I was happy we got selected, but by the time we had to confirm our participation, the US-Israel war on Iran was underway, and one of its effects were missile and drone attacks from Iran targeting the United Arab Emirates. At the time we didn’t know how long this would last and had doubts about travelling. There was an option to present online which we decided to take.
Our presentation, which is pre-recorded will be part of a section titled Contextualising Beyond Screenings. The conference will be streamed online, so I am planning to watch it at home and will be available online during our presentation slot in case there are any questions from the audience or other speakers.
I am sad I won’t be there in person to present, to hangout with the participants I know, or meet the ones I admire. This will be my second participation at Eye International Conference, the first time was in 2022 where I presented in person.
Below is information about the section that includes Collected Histories, and you can find the complete schedule here.
Monday, June 1
10:05 – 11:05 (CET)
Contextualising Beyond Screenings
Moderated by Floris Paalman (UvA)
Re-establishing Relevance: Strategies for Small-Scale Festivals in a Changing Cultural Landscape
Andreas Anastasiades (Ethnofest-AthensEthnographic Film Festival)
Konstantinos Aivaliotis (Ethnofest-Athens Ethnographic Film Festival)
Nikoletta Charou (Ethnofest-Athens Ethnographic Film Festival)
In recent years, the cultural and socio-political landscape of Athens has posed significant challenges for festivals like Ethnofest. The growing number of cultural and cinematic events, particularly in the latter part of the year, has intensified competition for limited funding and audience attention. In response, Ethnofest is actively re-evaluating its strategies to maintain relevance, sustainability, and impact. By adapt ing programming, exploring inter disciplinary collaborations, and incorporating immersive media, the festival seeks to sustain engagement with diverse audiences while contributing to ethnographic and hybrid documentary practices. This presentation examines how smaller festivals can redefine their role in dynamic cultural eco systems, highlighting innovative approaches such as periodic initiatives, educational programmes, and the integration of VR, AR, and other inter active formats. Through these strategies, Ethno fest demonstrates a model for maintaining cultural significance amid evolving audience
expectations and technological change.
Filmhuis Cavia Archival VHS Jam Sessions
Giovanni Rossetti (Filmhuis Cavia)
Franka Bauwens (Filmhuis Cavia)
This presentation introduces an experimental programming format developed to activate the dormant VHS archive of Filmhuis Cavia, Amsterdam’s long-standing volunteer-run micro-cinema. Each event begins with a 40-minute archival jam session in which audience members browse and preview VHS tapes at multiple viewing stations, collaboratively deciding which tape(s) to screen theatrically. Drawing on Cavia’s eclectic collection (festival submissions, tape compilations, and neglected movies) the format treats the archive as a participatory research space rather than a fixed repository. The project embraces VHS aesthetics and their material traces of use, foregrounding vernacular histories of circulation often absent from formal institutions. By merging tactile engagement, collective curation, and magnetic tape projection, the programme proposes a community-driven model of film programming that rethinks access, film history, and the social role of community cinemas.
Five Cuts: Writing Recent History Through Film Programming
Gülce Özkara (Salt)
Evrim Kaya (Hamburg University)
This session presents a case study of Five Cuts, a collaboration between film critic Evrim Kaya and curator Gülce Özkara, which examines how recent history can be approached through pro gramming as an archival practice. Structured as a monthly screening and discussion series, the program explores Turkey’s recent past from 2015 to 2020 through five films, one for each consecu tive year. Spanning arthouse cinema, documentary, artists’ film, and experimental video, Five Cuts demonstrates how programming can function as a media archaeology of the present, assembling moving images to record histories that are still unfolding.Five Cuts is the inaugural strand of Supercut, a long-term research program at Salt that reframes programming as a primary method of
history-writing and memory-making in relation to moving images, beyond material preservation. The project operates reflexively, researching, imagining, and performing its subject ‘programming’ through formats such as screenings, talks, discussions, and round tables, as well as new methodologies.
Collected Histories
•Hind Mezaina (Independent)
•Jasmine Soliman (Independent)
Collected Histories is a project that combines public film screenings with talks and workshops, co-founded by Hind Mezaina and Jasmine Soliman. It is born out of Mezaina’s art practice, film curation and personal archiving and Soliman’s work in archival collections manage ment, and inspired by self-published Internet Archive projects. Its aim is to foster discussions on personal documentation and archiving in the United Arab Emirates, with an ultimate goal of inspiring and supporting individuals to become ‘citizen archivists’ by cataloguing, and exploring ways to self-publish and preserve personal collections, and to have discussions about the complexities of communities and belonging. Another objective is to dispel academic or art institutional language that is associated with the topic of archives, and to make it feel more accessi ble to individuals and to expand their knowledge of a wider range of films that aren’t normally programmed in our local cinemas or art institutions.