This film program originates from a yearlong seminar at the Department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, which investigates portraiture and self-portraiture as catalysts for producing fabulations. Fabulation, and its connection to storytelling, is understood as a process that allows us to summon “the missing people” in order to collectively imagine a “people to come” (Deleuze). The program presents various positions in cinema and contemporary art, exploring how different genres—fiction, documentary, animation, and experimental film—can be used, sometimes blending them together, to convey fabulation and speculations on alternative ways of belonging.

Program

Curated collectively by the students attending the seminar, this first screening will showcase works selected by the group, including works by Meriem Bennani and Lav Diaz, among others. This first screening serves as a precursor to a second event scheduled for June 2025, which will present works created by the students themselves. It will conclude a yearlong exploration of how to imagine community-making through the “singular as plural.”

A film program curated collectively by Master students attending Bouchra Khalili’s seminar “Methods and Practices” at the Department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Meriem Bennani, from: Ghariba, 2017, Courtesy, © Meriem Bennani