In the interest of financial transparency: the budget we received from Moderna for arranging the screening at Tempo Documentary Film Festival was set to 10 000 Swedish Crowns (around 1070 Euros, at the moment). We decided to split the sum into five parts, where the participating artists would receive one part each. The fifth part, which would have been our fee for putting the program together, became a topic of discussion in the group. Since our activities at the main site in Höja are financed for many years to come, maybe we could re-direct the relatively small sum of money from our fee into assisting some fellow travellers, some other cinema somewhere?

We’ve written before about the Rojava Film Commune >

Rojava is an autonomous region in the north of Syria (close to the border of Turkey), practicing stateless democracy based on self-governance, gender equality, the right to self-defense, and a communal economy.

The EU and the Swedish state recently promised financial support to Turkey, funds to be used for keeping Syrian refugees in Turkey and preventing them from continuing on into Europe. 3 billion Euros from the EU, 77 million Euros from Sweden. What if these funds were to be given to the re-building of Rojava instead? That’s a big ‘just imagine’.

We got in touch with the Rojava Film Commune and begun discussions on possible forms of co-operation with them. The first step is arranging a transfer of our fee from Moderna – 200 Euros – to the Film Commune. We know this sum is next to nothing for them. But Moderna is a state-funded museum, and so as part of our ‘just imagine’, we choose to see the fee as originating from somewhere within the Swedish state budget.