Alternative Film Video 2021 Research ForumNAM (Non-Aligned Moving Images)organised by Alia Ayman and Greg de Cuir Jr10 December 2021

Call for submissions

Alternative Film Video 2021 will take place from 8-12 December 2021 at Students’ City Cultural Center in Belgrade. The Alternative Research Forum, scheduled on 10 December 2021, will be organised as a hybrid online event, offering a focussed, intimate environment in which to share thoughts and promote exchange of ideas. The organisers of the Alternative Research Forum invite academics, artists, curators, writers and researchers of all types to submit proposals for presentations on the topic of the Non-Aligned Movement and moving images. In 1961, the first official summit for the Non-Aligned Movement took place in Belgrade and was attended by the representatives of more than twenty countries. 60 years later, for the tenth edition of Alternative Research Forum, we are inviting artists, filmmakers, scholars, curators and researchers to revisit the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement and to imagine future practices of solidarity and cinematic alliances that this history can inspire.

Although the Non-Aligned Movement has often been associated with failure, nostalgia or overly romanticized accounts of a utopia that never was, this cross-continental encounter had a considerable influence on filmmakers and artists working at the time. From manifestoes envisioning what an anticolonial cinema means to thorough critiques of capitalism as it relates to film production and circulation, the Non-Aligned Movement had considerable influence on the history of the moving image across the Global South and beyond.As we continue to grapple with the ongoing violence of colonialism in the present, how do we engage with the legacy of non-western film and transnational cinematic solidarity? How can we work with this history to envision different futures, infrastructures, and aesthetics for a decolonial cinema whose framework is not necessarily tied to the nation state? What kind of new film histories emerge when we follow the flow of images, ideas and people across different routes of exchange that do not conform to a view of the world where empire was the focal point? And how has the understanding and practice of political cinema changed since then?

Embracing a theoretical or a practice-based approach, the proposals can deal with these and other topics:

• Offer an overview of the Non-Aligned Movement and its intersections with film culture
• Considering the historical antecedents and the heritage of the Non-Aligned Movement in contemporary film and video
• Focus on the politics and aesthetics of the Non-Aligned Movement and film
• Examining alternative film and video from the Global South, including curatorial practices that support these films and videos
• Explore the Non-Aligned Movement in its relation to other art forms that interact with film and video in various ways
• Imagine a decolonial future inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement, specifically with a focus on non-western cinema and other anticolonial moving image practices. 
• Failure with regards to the Non-Aligned Movement and how it relates to the ongoing challenges faced by filmmakers and artists in the Global South today. 

We are accepting abstracts of 300 words along with short biographies of 150 words for consideration. Details on the platform to be used for the Forum will be provided upon acceptance. Please forward inquiries and submissions to Greg de Cuir Jr, Selector for Alternative Film Video, and Alia Ayman, Independent Curator, Cairo/New York, by 15 October 2021 at [email protected] and [email protected].