Migrant Cinema
Featured story
Feature-length Screenings
This inter-disciplinary conference will bring together scholars and practitioners to investigate the role of first and second-generation migrants in the European film, exploring the effects that financial and institutional parameters as well as creative and political discourses have on the diversity across the film industries of Europe, including the UK.
From Alice Diop in France and Rosine Mbakam in Belgium to Fatih Akin in Germany and Arash T. Riahi in Austria, migrant and second-generation filmmakers have shaped and continue to shape European cinema. At the same time, projects like the Palermo-based film laboratory FunKino or the Glasgow-based Refugee TV Film Lab, encourage young migrants to express their experiences through the medium of film, while initiatives like Refugee Voices in Film help to raise awareness for migrant filmmakers at important industry events like the Cannes and Berlin film festivals. Nevertheless, great disparities still exist in the extent to which migrant filmmakers have managed to penetrate established commercial film industries across different nations. Moreover, over the last fifteen years, the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and the wars in Syria and Ukraine have substantially changed the political realities in Europe. At the same time, the increased availability of cheap and high-quality digital recording technology, the emergence of Social Media, and the spread of video streaming platforms have had a transformative impact on filmmaking, opening new possibilities for migrants to recount their own experiences through moving images. This conference aims to explore these issues and challenges to provide an up-to-date snapshot of the possibilities and challenges for migrant filmmaking in Europe.
The conference will take place at the University of Kent, a national centre for research and activism on movement and migration, and will be organised between the departments of Film & Media and Modern Languages.
Conference organisers:
- Dr Kaveh Abbasian (Lecturer in Film & Media Practice, University of Kent)
- Dr Tobias Heinrich (Lecturer in Modern Languages, University of Kent)
- Dr Alex Marlow-Mann (Lecturer in Film & Modern Languages, University of Kent)
This conference is supported by