Yesterday, we had the privilege of presenting a research paper at the annual NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) conference. Hosted at the University of Oslo, the conference centered around the theme of ‘Care’. Together with Liesje Baltussen, we took this opportunity to present part of our research project on Fugitive Cinema to an international academic audience for the first time. While I gave a general introduction about Fugitive Cinema as a Belgian film collective established in 1966 and closely connected to the contestation movement of the time, Liesje focused on the collective’s film distribution activities.
We were part of a panel which also featured interesting presentations by Tereza Czesany Dvorakova (on women at the Czech FAMU Film School), Marta Rocchi (on gender inequality in medical dramas) and Ruby Cheung (on independent Hong Kong filmmaking). I also had the opportunity to attend a workshop on historical film festival research by Estrella Sendra, a wonderful panel on the representation of caring women in comtemporary European art cinema (with Mariana Liz, Olga Kourelou, Anna Fonoll Tassier and Anna Viola Sborgi, and a great keynote speech by Shohini Chaudhuri.
Gertjan Willems 