Time for the third screening of the films from our XOLA! workshop. This will be our ‘Now Form A Band’-format, also known as our Backpack Cinema. Films will be screened with a smallsize pico projector which has an internal battery, making it highly portable. Projection surfaces will be ad hoc and DIY. Beginning around 19.00, on Saturday October 1:st at the roundabout in Möllan, Malmö. The screening is part of the workshop curriculum, meaning the audience also gets to sit in on a talk by journalist Frida Sandström.

Frida Sandström writes both as artist and journalist. She often writes about art and the work of artists, about difficulties and strategies. She is particularly interested the construction and performance of talks and interviews, and in who gets to be included in these. Frida Sandström is a member of the editorial board of the art magazine Paletten, and often writes for Kunstkritikk and Feministiskt Perspektiv.

The screening is also part of the exhibition Malmös Leende, produced by Statens Konstråd.

Bonus info, from our Manual:

The second screening of the films from the XOLA! workshop were done with the Bicycle Cinema of RåFILM. Two bikes welded together support the filmscreen and the battery powered projector. Sometimes the Bicycle Cinema cruises slowly through the neighborhoods, allowing the audience to walk leisurely along while watching. Looking a bit like a demonstration following a banner.

On this particular night, the Bicycle Cinema was operated by Talat Bhat, Damir Radovic, Roushan Illahi, Anna Klara Åhrén and Alex Veitch.

This screening of the films from XOLA! was also part of the exhibition Malmös Leende, produced by Statens Konstråd.

All images by Talat Bhat, used with permission

Follow the projects of RåFILM here

Read about the exhibition Malmös Leende here

The first screening of XOLA! happened last night, in the roundabout at Möllan, Malmö. We’re just going to share some pics. Thank you everyone who attended. Thank you everyone who helped produce. More soon!

Tomorrow, Monday September 19th, we’re setting up the first screening from the XOLA! workshop in Malmö. Participants in XOLA! will be showing their films on the big screen. At 19.00 there’s a talk by journalist Johanna Karlsson, followed by a presentation of the first six films from the workshop.

Place: the roundabout at the crossing of Kristianstadgatan and Parkgatan in Malmö.

Films made by: Anna Horn, Rebecca Larsson, Amanda Moberg, Marie Hallberg, Gullis Beauvoir, PO Forsström, Ali Alabdallah, Sara Poppler Carredano, and Ahmad Hawwash.

Speaker Johanna Karlsson works as investigative reporter for the newspaper Expressen. She has written extensively on the effects of the Black Economy of Malmö. Read some of her articles here >

The screening tomorrow is part of the exhibition Malmös Leende, produced by Statens Konstråd, curated by Edi Muka. There will shortly be two more screenings from XOLA! in Malmö. More info to follow!

Check the Facebook event for tomorrow’s screening here >

Drove the van up to Gothenburg, checked in at Jubileumsparken in Frihamnen. Set up the cinema, then handed the reins to Isra, Sabrin, Emoi, and all the others. Pantrarna, the Panthers, ended the first evening of their new arts festival with an outdoor screening on the dockside. The film they chose was Dear White People. Our part in the whole thing also includes an upcoming XOLA! workshop for Panthers who want to get their own outdoor cinema going.

Click on thumbnails for full images of dockside Cinema

So, the youth organization Pantrarna (inspired by the Black Panther Party) are putting on their own arts festival in Gothenburg. We’ll just strongly recommend that you go there, don’t miss out on this. It will be brilliant. You can read all about it on their blog

or here

The festival will feature a stellar lineup, performing live and exhibiting. We will also be there, mainly in the capacity of providers of machinery for an outdoor cinema. Selecting films has been left to the reference group from Pantrarna. On the eve of Thursday, September 15th, the film Dear White People will be screened. Haven’t seen it? Come on over, come on over!

Later this fall, we’ll return to Gothenburg to run an outdoor-cinema-workshop with Pantrarna. Our second XOLA!

Tour bus serviced and approved. Furthur!

As part of XOLA! in Malmö this September, there’ll be a technical workshop headed by RåFILM.

RåFILM is a collective of filmmakers connecting film and activism. Their aim is to facilitate collaborative filmmaking that deals with political issues and questions norms.
They work with documentaries, animation and fiction films, organize campaigns, and arrange filmmaking workshops. Check their website for films, activities, and info on the fantastic bicycle cinema – an outdoor cinema in motion! More info here >

The technical workshop will be side-dished by a series of talks on citizen journalism, auto-ethnography, and media critique, from amazing people like journalists Abigail Sykes, Johanna Karlsson, and Frida Sandström, plus research collective Making A Living. First up, on September 3rd, is Abigail Sykes.

Abigail Sykes is a journalist who has worked in radio and newspapers since 2005. She was born i New Zealand but now lives in Malmö. She’s editor-in-chief of Landets Fria Tidning, an alternative media voice with a focus on subjects such as ecological, social and economic sustainability outside of the metropolitan areas. Landets Fria Tidning is one of a few newspapers in Sweden which regularly provides an outlet for citizen journalism. She has also educated hundreds of citizen journalists over the last few years, in collaboration with Glokala Folkhögskolan.

Then, on September 4th, there’s a talk with the group Making A Living. They are a collective of women who work with an auto-ethnographic process. While walking and talking, they document and map their movements through the city, from their homes to their places of work. Making A Living is influenced by methods from militant research and auto-ethnography, wherein the distance between the researcher and the subject gets erased. The term ‘to make a living’ is understood as not just going to work to earn a salary, but as an accumulation of everyday experiences, social interactions, spaces and subjectivities.

The workshop in Malmö (the technical part and the first talks) will take place in the ‘creative workshops’-space of Kontrapunkt. The address is Norra Grängesbergsgatan 26b. To find the entrance, go to the address, and locate the building across the street from Malmös King Falafel & Kebab. Round the corner of 26b, walk halfway towards the power station until you find the doors that are pictured here.

Entrance (round the corner from Norra Grängesbergsgatan 26 B)

Kontrapunkt is a house of culture and a social centre. As a bonus, the participants in our workshop will receive a membership in the creative workshops of Kontrapunkt which provides access to  the video editing area but also for example the carpentry, photolab, and screenprinting areas. The computer equipment and editing programs that we work on during the workshop will be left behind, so that participants can continue working on their own in a familiar environment after the workshop ends. Kontrapunkt also runs a Folkkök, which includes a mobile cooking unit – which will be present during the first outdoor screening of the workshop. But more on this later!

Info about Kontrapunkt here >

The filmmaker collective RåFILM, which is leading the technical workshop, also happens to be located in the same building, by the way.

We’re developing a workshop for politically motivated outdoor cinema producers. This fall there’ll be two workshops, one in Malmö and one in Gothenburg. In Gothenburg, the workshop is arranged for young activists and artists involved with the organization Pantrarna. In Malmö, the participants come from a variety of organizations for young people, gathered through Den Nya Konstutbildningen.

The workshops will provide some basic technical know-how and some hands-on practice with doing outdoor screenings. We’ve talked a lot about what happens after the workshops, once we leave. What we’re trying to do is make it as feasible as possible for the participants to continue without us there. This means that we’ll be leaving technical equipment behind, for the participants to continue using, but also that we’ll try to introduce them to existing local networks, for example.

The workshop has grown out of our work with a presentation called To Own The Means Of Image Production, and with our Manual – info on both can be found here on the blog.

As a socialist cinema, we’re happy to say that both workshops are funded by the state, through The Public Art Agency, or Statens Konstråd. Special thanks to Edi Muka, Isak Mozard, Martì Manen, and Joanna Zawieja at Statens Konstråd! Both workshops are also produced in collaboration with Konstfrämjandet, the art wing of the people’s movements in Sweden. Special thank you’s to Lisa Nyberg and Kim Einarsson from Konstfrämjandet!