06/04/2026

We welcome our new resident, Robin Vanbesien!

We are very pleased to welcome Robin Vanbesien as the third short-term resident to join our  team.

Robin Vanbesien is a Brussels-based artist, filmmaker, researcher, and educator. He explores how cinematic methods align with and contribute to situated struggles of place-making. How can cinema—with or without a lens or a screen—offer ways to acknowledge, reclaim, reassemble, rehearse, and redistribute the social collective body and the sensory imagination of such struggles? How do we create a cinema that arises from the reassembly and recreation with those who speak and act in close proximity to these situated struggles of place-making? And how can we contribute to the ongoing redistribution of this kind of cinema?

Vanbesien investigates cinematically embodied knowledge and collective imagination in social and political struggles. He collaborates with situated initiatives of collective self-organization, exploring cinema as a space for social gathering, militant engagement, speculative rehearsal, and communal assembly. In 2024, he completed a PhD in the arts on Ciné Place-Making. At Sint Lucas Antwerp, he co-coordinates and mentors in the Master’s program Socio-Political Context.

He was co-founder of The Post Film Collective (2020–2024), which explored cinema as a space for collective speculation. He (co-)convened the study circles Ciné Place-Making (2022) and Cinema as Assembly (2025). His edited book Solidarity Poiesis: I Will Come and Steal You was published by b_books (Berlin, 2017). Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016) (2017) premiered at transmediale, and the wasp and the weather (2019) at Cinéma du Réel.

His first feature film hold on to her (2024), which retraces a people’s tribunal on the police killing of Mawda Shawri in 2018, had its world premiere at Berlinale Forum Expanded (2024), its Belgian premiere at Film Fest Gent 2024 (official competition), followed by a theatrical release in Belgium in 2025.

Other exhibitions, screenings, and events from his multifaceted practice have taken place at, among others: Contour 9 Biennale (Mechelen), Athens Biennale, La Loge (Brussels), WIELS (Brussels), Lumiar Cité (Lisbon), Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin), What, How & for Whom (Zagreb), Sculpture International Rotterdam, Kunsternes Hus (Oslo), Videograms (Vilnius), Objectif Exhibitions (Antwerp), Extra City (Antwerp), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Netwerk (Aalst), FOMU (Antwerp), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon), Vooruit/Viernulvier (Ghent), and BUDA (Kortrijk).
His work is included in the public collections of M HKA, MuZee, and Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts.

During her residency, Robin Vanbesien will deliver an in-person seminar on "Posthumous Struggle and Transmission", on April 15, 2026, at 15:00 WEST in room SD of NOVA FCSH (Campolide Campus).

Read the full abstract here.

Film and Death
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07/08/2026

“Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films” is out now!

We are pleased to announce the completion of the Special Issue “Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films”, guest edited by Vasco Baptista Marques and Susana Viegas for Arts. The Special Issue brings together seven original articles examining testament films from a philosophical perspective. Rather than approaching filmmakers’ final works merely as […]
06/08/2026

New Open Access publication by Susana Viegas

We are pleased to share that the book chapter “Derrida on Cinema’s Spectral Images: Time, Repetition, and Belief” by PI Susana Viegas is now available in Open Access through the publisher Brill. Published in “Derrida and Film Studies”, edited by Kamil Lipiński and Andrzej Marzec (Brill, 2025), the chapter explores Jacques Derrida’s reflections on cinema […]
06/08/2026

Join us at the Goethe-Institut Portugal for the cycle “Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém)”!

Organized by the Goethe-Institut Portugal, with contributions from the FILM AND DEATH team, Death Café, the association Doulas do Fim da Vida, and many other partners, the festival Falar sobre a morte (nunca matou ninguém) [Speaking About Death (Never Killed Anyone)] will open on September 17 at 5:00 pm with the interactive sound installation Memorial […]
03/08/2026

Join Anderson Santos and Lucas Ferraço Nassif at the Centro Português de Psicanálise

On September 1, 7:00 PM, the Centro Português de Psicanálise (R. da Assunção 7, 2º) will host a talk by Anderson Santos, moderated by Lucas Ferraço Nassif, on “Félix Guattari: Psicanálise e o Paradigma Ético-Estético”. This presentation will be in Portuguese. This presentation addresses the shift initiated by Félix Guattari within psychoanalysis, as he proposes […]
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Funded by the European Union (ERC, FILM AND DEATH, 101088956). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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