Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires: Zine Launch at The Social Life of Film

Image Credit: Gulzat Matisakova, My Mother’s Wound, 2021, 10 min.

What does it mean to consider the social life of film not as a feature but as its sole enabler?

The third edition of The Social Life of Film takes place from 20–23 November 2025 in Berlin. Hosted by anorak (Lukas Ludwig, Johanna Markert), carrick bell (Xanadu), and Kristofer Woods in collaboration with Aktionshaus, the congress will centre on alternative structures of support.

The Social Life of Film is an annual congress which brings together independent screening initiatives to further the communal potential of the moving image. While different in their approaches, the initiatives generally share two values:

A desire to facilitate moving image practices typically excluded from commercial platforms and state funded institutions; and a belief that the community and conversation surrounding a screening can be as important as the film itself. This year’s congress brings together over thirty initiatives, working transnationally, with bases in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Lebanon, The Netherlands, Norway, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom, among other places. With the German cultural capital as a backdrop, this edition of The Social Life of Film turns its attention to interdependency and self-organised forms of solidarity.

D’EST presents
Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires
Zine Launch with Screenings, Conversations, Readings and Songs
November 22, 2025, 9 pm

with contributions by Angelika Nguyen, Fehras Publishing Practices with Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings and Fairuz, Gulzat Matisakova, Jyl Franzbecker, Krёlex zentre, Nhà Sàn Collective, Nino Bulling, Omar Gabriel Delnevo, Suza Husse, Ulrike Gerhardt, and Vũ T. Thu Hà

Vũ T. Thu Hà, Shut Up White Boy, 2002, 13 min., USA, 16mm, black and white, sound

Gulzat Matisakova, My Mother’s Wound, 2021, 10 min., Kazakhstan, colour, sound

Omar Gabriel Delnevo, Azza El-Hassan, Khadijeh Habashneh Abu Ali & Mustafa Abu Ali, Untitled, 2024/2004/1979/1974, 20 min., Palestine/Lebanon/Germany, collage film, colour, sound 2.0

On the occasion of The Social Life of Film, D’EST launches a new series of zines accompanying the cycle Postsocialism as Method: Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires. The zine series is part of D’EST’s ongoing investigation into post-socialist, decolonial and queer feminist perspectives in moving-image cultures. The evening brings together three chapters of the cycle: Krёlex zentre’s reflections on translocal queer imaginaries from Central Asia; Nhà Sàn Collective’s exploration of Vietnamese pop and underground music as archives of political desire and ecological utopia; and Fehras Publishing Practices’ Hader Halal [Present is Halal], a collective fabulation around the literary journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings (1968 – 1990s), with a focus on Palestine and connected spaces of resistance and liberation. Through films, readings, and songs, the evening traces how artistic practices interconnect anti-colonial and anti-totalitarian socialist histories and life worlds from different and sometimes contradictory times and geographies.

https://anorakanorak.com/projects/the-social-life-of-film-a-congress/