Session 1 (Room TS1) – Reclaiming the screen: social mobilization and political agency

Chair:

“The Harlem of the South:” Richard Norman Studios and the Cinema of Resistance in the Jim Crow Era” – David Morton (University of Central Florida)

 Times of Change (1965-1970) in Documentary Cinema in Turkey: The Cinematheque Association, Hisar Short Film Competition, and the Young Cinema Movement – Sonay Ban (Istanbul Kent University & docİstanbul – Center for Documentary Studies in Turkey)

Networks of Care: Film Distribution and HIV/AIDS Activism in Germany, 1985-1994 – Philipp Dominik Keidl (Utrecht University)

Session 2 (Room TS2) – Cinemas in neighbourhoods, small towns and rural areas – I

Chair:

Neighborhood Cinemas in Hong Kong and Changing Cinema-Going Practices – Arne Böttger (Freie Universität Berlin)

Cinema exhibition networks in the Italian countryside: a comparative study (1940-1970) – Sebastiano Pacchiarotti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

Precarious pleasures: Single screens, good times and community in the independent cinema and cinema clubs of three coastal towns. – Corinna Downing (Canterbury Christ Church University)

Session 3 (Room TS3) –

Researching cinema communities with digital tools

Chair:

Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms and The Unknown Suriname: Disclosing Militant Audiovisual Heritage in the Media Suite – Luna Hupperetz (University of Amsterdam)

The Amsterdam Time Machine Data Index as a Hypothesis Generator for Cinema History – Julia Noordegraaf (University of Amsterdam);

Leon van Wissen (University of Amsterdam)

Cinema Context after Twenty Years: Updating the Encyclopedia of Dutch Film Culture – Thunnis van Oort (Huygens Institute); Leon van Wissen (University of Amsterdam)

HoMER Vocabulary: Towards a Shared Terminology for Movie-Going Research – HoMER Vocabulary Working Group (Daniela Treveri Gennari, Adriana Meusch, Virgil Darelli, Leon van Wissen, Julia Noordegraaf, Clara Pafort-Overduin, Arianna Vietina, Denis Condon, and others)

Session 4 (Room TS1) – Art house cinemas, cult film events and their audiences

Chair:

Between Town and Gown: Film Culture in Cambridge – Henry Miller (Anglia Ruskin University)

Lookalikes contests and community celebrations at Cinema Estação: audience engagement for the vitality of “sidewalk cinemas” and the reception of Brazilian films – Talitha Ferraz (Universidade Federal Fluminense); Helena Zimbrão (Universidade Federal Fluminense)

From Alternative Rebellious Space to Landmark Art‑House Cinema: A Case Study of Studio Skoop (1970–2025), Ghent, Belgium – Daniël Biltereyst (Ghent University)

Session 5 (Room TS2) – Community cinemas as educational and pedagogical tools

Chair:

Children’s Cinema as a Symbolic Community: Matinée Practices in Early Twentieth-Century Sweden – Taichi Niibori (Stockholm University)

The ‘Educational Dispositifs’ of Community Cinemas: Exhibition, Education, and the case of the Art Film Tour in post-war Britain – Katerina Loukopoulou (Middlesex University London)

A Learned Society Pursuing the Study of the Worlds Films’ – Sue Porter (De Montfort University)

“Light and life where there was monotony and darkness”: Educational Mobile Cinema and Community Building in Jamaica 1938-1958. – Rachel Moseley-Wood (The University of the West Indies, Mona)

Session 6 (Room TS3) – Wartime and post-war contexts – I

Chair:

Home Movies as Sites of Community in Nazi Germany – Aleksandra Miljković (Film University Babelsberg)

Unravelling cinema-going experiences in Stafford during the Second World War – Linda Pike (Independent Researcher)

Export of Soviet Cinema to Israel after the Second World War – Kristina Tanis (HSE University)

Session 7 (Room SR1) –

Film exhibition and reception around the 1929 International Expositions, between Sevilla and Barcelona

Chair:

Forty Cinemas and a Dream: Mapping the CINAES Network in and beyond Barcelona – Manuel Garin (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Cosmopolitan Trends, Colonial Imaginaries: Film Culture and Sevilla’s Iberoamerican Exposition – Elena Cordero-Hoyo (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)

Commercial Modernity in Conservative Pavilions: Film Programs in the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition – Albert Elduque (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

 Movie Postcards Arriving Too Late: Galicia Film Promotion for the Sevilla Ibero-American Exposition – María Soliña Barreiro (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)

Session 8 (Room TS1) – Cineclubs, screenings and spectatorship in alternative venues

Chair:

Beyond the Multiplex: The Rise of Community Film Exhibition in Puerto Rico’s Cultural Ecosystem – Harold Joel Leonard Navarro (Universidad de Puerto Rico)

Cineclubs and Cultural Policy: Assessing the Impact of Riofilme’s Public Funding Initiatives in Rio de Janeiro – Hadija Chalupe da Silva (Universidade Federal Fluminense)

Near the Sea, Around the Screen: Local Histories of Cineclubism in Coastal Catalonia – Maria Luna Rassa (TecnoCampus – Pompeu Fabra University)

Alternative cinema infrastructures in Medellin, Colombia – Maria A. Velez-Serna

Session 9 (Room TS2) – Wartime and post-war contexts – II

Chair:

Box Office Politics: Film Circle Audiences and the Film Industry in Postwar Japan, 1950-1960 – David Baasch (Yale University)

Leicester Film Society – A Post-war Case Study: cultural film programming and the rise of independent regional film exhibition – Laraine Porter (Exeter University)

Film Liga 2.0: The Post-War Boom of Local Film Societies in the Netherlands – Judith Thissen (Utrecht University)

Session 10 (Room TS3) – Collective practices in the reconfiguration of cinema culture

Chair:

Post-Screen Exhibition: Commentary Cultures and the Reconfiguration of Cinema Community – Sevda Kaya Kitinur (Izmir University of Economics)

Environmental Film Festivals as New Forms of Cinema Experience and Audience Community – Karina Aveyard (University of East Anglia)

Online film communities and local grassroot cinephilia in Northern Spain: the case of Cineclube de Compostela – Gabriel Doménech González (Universidad Camilo José Cela)

Session 11 (Room SR1) – Spheres of distinction, identity and belonging – I

Chair:

Irish female film communities in the 1920s and 1930s – Veronica Johnson (Independent Researcher)

Going to the cinema in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Audiences, Modernity, and Urban Identities, 1928–1935 – Sonia Sasiain (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

The spatial distinction of the cinematic experience between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic: Beyoğlu and Şehzadebaşi – Asra Çira (Istanbul Medipol University)

Session 12 (Room TS1) – Imagined futures and innovative directions

Chair:

Unrealised Screens. The Imagined Futures of Cinema-Going in the 1970s–1980s – Virgil Darelli (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart); Giancarlo Grossi (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart)

Cinema-making and cinematic communing: wayfaring cinema and the journey towards a new terminology – Christo Wallers (Teesside University)

MASBEDO’s ‘Videomobile’ as Community Cinema: Reenacting Collective Spectatorship in Contemporary Art – Eleonora Roaro (University of Plymouth; NABA)

Session 13 (Room TS2) – Cinemagoing practices and spaces of sociability

Chair:

Community-building in standardized theaters: how to study engagement in multiplexes – Arianna Vietina (Sapienza University of Rome)

Sociality and cinemagoing in an era of personalisation and platformisation – Sten Kauber (Tallinn University)

Deaf Spectatorship: technological exclusion, community practices, and alliances – Magdalena Zdrodowska (Jagiellonian University)

Session 14 (Room TS3) – Spheres of distinction, identity and belonging – II

Chair:

A Real Platonic Experience: Cave Cinema as a Minor Public Sphere – Olgu Yiğit (Antwerp University, Galatasaray University); Daniël Biltereyst (Ghent University); Philippe Meers (University of Antwerp)

Screening Settler National Cinema: Field Notes on Showing Australian Films in London – Stephen Morgan (King’s College London)

Indigenous Creole Cinema: Engaging with Community in the Caribbean – Mary Leonard (University of Cincinnati)

Session 15 (Room SR1) –

From ASIFA to local fields: Cold War animation between transnational exchange and regional formations

Chair:

Possibilization: ASIFA Network and the Zagreb School of Animation – Sanja Bahun (Royal College of Art)

The Thaw in Motion: Intra-Socialist Aesthetic Exchange at the Mamaia International Film Festival – Andrei Voineag (National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale”)

Protocols of Exchange: ASIFA as a Transnational Infrastructure of Polish Animation (1952–1989) – Ewa Ciszewska (University of Lodz)

Beyond the East–West Bridge: Japan in the ASIFA Network – Yuuki Arai (Kyoto University)

Session 16 (Room TS1) – Methodologies, mapping and databases

Chair:

FIRST STEP’ Towards a Narrative of the Rise and Decline of Cinemagoing as a Social Ritual in the City of Thessaloniki: 1944 – 2000 – Paraskevas Mouratidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki); Ioannis Bais (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

United Artists Contract Registers, 1919-1951: Microfilmed, Scanned, and Opened for Analysis – Eric Hoyt (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Film Societies in The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum Collection – Phil Wickham (University of Exeter)

Session 17 (Room TS2) – Attracting the eye: sensation films and the (e)motional appeal of adventurous bodies

Chair:

Screening the Impossible: Harry Piel’s Sensational “Detective Brown” Films – Hemma Marlene Prainsack (University of Vienna)

The Sisterhood of Female Silent Sensation-Film Actors – Julie K. Allen (Brigham Young University)

Taking the Leap: Luciano Albertini’s Sensational Star Body in Weimar Cinema – Anna Ragni (University of Udine)

Session 18 (Room TS3) – Reimagining independent cinema through community ownership: a case study of The Ultimate Picture Palace Community Cinema, Oxford

Chair:

Oxford’s Dream Palace: A social history of the UPP Cinema and its communities – Liz Woolley (Freelance Local Historian)

Towards a Toolkit for Community Ownership of Independent Cinema – James Cateridge (Oxford Brookes University)

Managing a Community-owned Independent Cinema: a discussion between James Cateridge and Micaela Tuckwell, MD of the Ultimate Picture Palace Community Cinema Ltd. – Micaela Tuckwell (Managing Director of the Ultimate Picture Palace Community Cinema Ltd.)

Session 19 (Room TS1) – Resistance, activism and cinema venues

Chair: 

Gauging Residents’ Views on Cinema Closures and Reuse in Rome – Edward Bowen (University of Kansas)

The Politics of Keeping a Cinema Open: Beyoğlu Cinema and Urban Cultural Resistance in Istanbul – Sena Öndün Sivas (Istanbul Kadir Has University)

Sites of Vision, Sites of Protest: Film Exhibition, Communities and Youth Contestation in Parma – Lorenzo Carlo Tore (Università degli studi di Parma)

Session 20 (Room TS2) – Cinemas in neighbourhoods, small towns and rural areas – II

Chair:

Between Continuity and Contingency: Local Film Exhibition Practices in Hopa and Fındıklı – Sibel Kaba (Trabzon University)

Cinema Without Theatres? Film Societies, Amateur Networks, and Community Exhibition in Kairouan – Enes Akdağ (Üsküdar University)

Community Cinema and the Weaving of Representations: An Analysis of the Revealing Brazil Project – Dafne Reis Pedroso da Silva (Federal University of Santa Maria)

A Cinema of Distinctive Attractions: People, Place, and Power at the Latchis Theatre – Paul T. Klein (University of Michigan)

Session 21 (Room TS3) – Shared screens, shared worlds: Hollywood memories and global audience communities

Chair:

Blockbuster Mentality: Building Identity and Community in US Video Rental Stores –

Tina Pahnke (Leibniz University Hannover)

Screams, Sequels, and Social Bonds: Horror Audiences in Mexico – Kathleen Loock (Leibniz University Hannover)

Young Chinese Audience Communities of Hollywood Fantasy Blockbusters – Yining Zhang (Leibniz University Hannover)

Session 22 (Room TS1) – Migration and diaspora contexts

Chair:

A Community Within the Community: Asian American Cinemagoing and Family Labor at Seattle’s Kokusai Theater, 1960-1982 – Lisa Dombrowski (Wesleyan University)

Island Deserts: “Cinema Deserts” on the Big Island of Hawaii and the Disintegration of Communal Moviegoing and Moviegoing Communities – Ross Melnick (University of California Santa Barbara)

Mobile Galician Identity: The role of the Galician Film Forum and Transcultural Cinematic Practice – Adriana Páramo Pérez (Royal Holloway University)

Session 23 (Room TS2) – Collaborations in community-driven cinema experiences

Chair:

The Evolution of Community Cinema in The Bahamas – Monique Toppin (University of The Bahamas)

“Salas y butacas” and “Nuestros cines ya no están” projects as mediators and collaborative archives – Claudia Bossay (Universidad de Chile)

Histories in Motion: Curating Cinema History and Affective Memory beyond Academia – María Paz Peirano (Universidad de Chile)

Session 24 (Room TS3) – Postwar French film culture: challenging gender hierarchies, rethinking cultural heritage

Chair:

The Ciné-Club and the Cinémathèque française: Challenging the Centrality of Parisian Cinephilia – Kelley Conway (University of Wisconsin)

From Film societies to Film Museums: Cinephilia and Film Heritage in France in the 50’s and 60’s – Stéphanie E. Louis (Centre Jean Mabillon, École nationale des chartes – PSL)

The Many Women of the Cinémathèque française, or How Gender Shaped French Film Culture – Aurore Spiers (Texas A&M University)

Session 25 (Room TS1) – Cinema culture and diasporas: India and Malaysia in context

Chair:

Malaysian Indians and Memories of Moviegoing: From Rubber Plantations to Tamil Cinemas – Agata Frymus

The diasporic experience of Tamil cinema in France: a sense of community? – Shakila Zamboulingame (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry, CESAH – EHESS)

Watching the (end of) the empire: cinema and diasporic memories amongst British Bengali East Londoners – Clelia Clini (London Metropolitan University)

Trouble in paradise—Indian cinema’s controversial debut in British Fiji, 1927-1940 – James Burns (Clemson University)

Session 26 (Room TS2) – Film magazines, paratexts and cinema consumption

Chair:

The British Film Society Movement in its Own Words: Film Magazine, 1952-1972 – Matthew Rule-Jones

Viewing community, reading community: letters to the editor of Les deux écrans magazine and the development of Algerian cinefilia – Maïssa Koudri

The Last Days of a Fleapit: Exploitation Cinema Goes to Hull and Back – Neil Jackson

What Happened to Jeanne, Mag, Wallace, and Gina? Star Biographies and Their Uses in Popular Publishing in Interwar France – Nataliya Puchenkina

Session 27 (Room TS3) – Censorship, morality and regulatory policies

Chair:

The Little Man in a Small Space: Towards a Brief Historiography of Chaplin in the Indian Public Sphere (1910s-1920s) – Ayan Dawn

“Only Attend the Parish Cinema!”: Film Screenings at the Catholic Cinema of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Rio de Janeiro) in the 1920s – Sancler Ebert

The Dromcolliher Burning: Centenary of Disaster at an Irish Community Cinema Event – Denis Condon

Session 28 (Room TS1) – Migrant audiences and memory: experiencing the cultural breach (Project Workshop)

Theoretical Grounding – Åsa Jernudd (Orebro University); Clara Pafort-Overduin (Utrecht University)

Methodology & Practical dimensions – Daniela Treveri Gennari (Oxford Brooks University)

Workshop-style Discussion (Collaborative format)

Session 29 (Room TS2) – Pedagogical communities and slow spectatorship: rethinking cinema as a shared learning practice (Workshop)

Part 1. Collective framing circle

Part 2. “Slow viewing agreements”

Part 3. Screening

Part 4. Post-screening activities

Workshop led by: İpek Çelik Rappas (Koç University); Aslı Ildır (İstinye University);

Özge Özyılmaz (Istanbul Kent University);

Olgu Yiğit (Galatasaray University, Ghent University, University of Antwerp)