AZDORE presents: TOWARDS A CINEMA OF THE COMMONS ∙ The Film Is Not Enough

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You can find the complete event description in Italian here.

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This programme begins with a simple question: what happens if we stop thinking of cinema as a product and start treating it as a shared space? At a time of endless content and fast consumption, cinema is reimagined here as a commons: something collective, situated, and relational. Each session introduces a different format that turns watching into an active experience — speaking, sharing, spending time, imagining together.

We propose cinema as a mode of practising collectivity. And this collectivist envisioning of cinema, instead of the normative hierarchical collaboration, underpins the expansive nature of it as well. We also want to emphasise the importance of global alliances: cinema as a global phenomenon through which we learn from one another’s cultures and perspectives. For this reason, the programme will focus on different countries.

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Session 1. THE FILM IS NOT ENOUGH 24/07/26

Manifesto in Action

This session brings together works that act like living manifestos — films that challenge authorship, ownership, and open cinema to collective and political use.

Screening: Short films by Yugantar

• Molkarin, Yugantar, 1981, 25’
• Tambaku Chaakila Oob Aali, Yugantar, 1982, 25'
• Idi Katha Maatramen, Yugantar, 1983, 25'
• Sudesha, Yugantar, 1983, 30’

Yugantar, India’s first feminist film collective, was founded in 1980 by Deepa Dhanraj, Abha Baiya, Navroze Contractor, and Meera Rao. Emerging from the vibrant autonomous women’s movement in India, the collective’s films both contributed to and shaped ongoing debates, as well as innovative practices of protest, organising, and demands for radical change.

Working in collaboration with existing and emerging women’s groups, Yugantar produced four films: with domestic workers in Pune (Molkarin, 1981), women factory workers in Nipani (Tambaku Chaakila Oob Aali / Tobacco Embers, 1982), with Stree Shakhti Sanghatana — a feminist research and activist collective in Hyderabad (Idi Katha Maatramena / Is This Just a Story?, 1983), and with members of the Chipko environmental movement (Sudesha, 1983).

The programme includes a screening of four short films, screened in original language with English subtitles, followed by a discussion.

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About the curators: AZDORE COLLECTIVE

Gerard Voltà, Linda Venturini, Silvia Carobbio, Vivek Jain and Emma Marinoni come from different backgrounds but were brought together by a shared opportunity to program. They aim to make room for new and surprising voices, and want to support works that often stay on the margins.

In Romagna, azdore were much more than "housewives." They were the heart of the household: keepers of everyday knowledge, quiet directors of domestic life, and skilled hands rolling fresh pasta. They were also authoritative figures who held together generations, rhythms, and relationships.

The word conveys a sense of quiet strength, a form of leadership rooted in care, continuity, and creation. Choosing the name Azdore for the film collective meant aligning with this legacy. It represents a way of making cinema grounded in gesture, listening, and collaboration. Like the azdore, they work together, weaving stories, images, and perspectives to build a shared space where each voice adds to the whole.

The program we present reflects this same approach: a cinema that becomes community, that preserves and reimagines, that centres collective practices and ways of seeing capable of holding together intimacy and the world.

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CinemaO is a non-profit space: to access the screening room, you just need the annual membership card (€5), which you can get by filling out the membership form in advance or at the front desk on the day of the event. Thank you!