Screening of Scuola senza fine (School Without End), Launch with Soft Fiction Projects; introductions by Charlotte Procter of Cinenova and Alice Butler from aemi

This film is captioned by Collective Text.

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Adriana Monti is an Italian-Canadian independent producer, feminist filmmaker, and author. She started her career in Italy in the late 1970s by developing a collaborative and experimental style that allowed the women who were the subjects of her research to take an active and creative role in her films. Monti founded the experimental film school Lanboratorio di Cinematografia – Albedo, where she taught and managed while she was finishing Scuola Senza Fine in 1983. She also taught film history and film production at the Women’s Free University and the Film and Television School in Milan. Monti moved to Canada in 1996, where she worked for fifteen years as a reporter and story producer at OMNI Television Rogers Media and started her own company A&Z Media Ltd.

Soft Fiction Projects is an initiative run by artists Alessia Cargnelli and Emily McFarland. Based in PS2 Studios in Belfast, Soft Fiction Projects is dedicated to producing digital and printed matter on film and artist moving image culture. The printed project acts as a forum for presenting new collaborations, artworks, research, and writing from invited artists and contributors. Revisiting recent history in moving image practices, Soft Fiction Projects’ research focus is an exploration of underrepresented voices, oppositional histories, and geopolitical narratives underpinned by intersectional feminist perspectives that challenge and reframe dominant hegemonic power structures.

Charlotte Procter is an archivist, programmer and Collection & Archive Director at LUX, the UK’s most significant collection of artists’ moving image. In 2013 she joined the Cinenova Working Group, a collective formed to preserve and distribute the feminist film collection Cinenova. From 2018 to 2021, she co-directed the research project Their Past is Always Present at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastián, Spain), and she is co-editor of Living on air: the films and words of Sandra Lahire (2021). Recent programmes have taken place at Institut français (UK), British Film Institute (UK), CINEMATEK (BE), Grazer Kunstverein (AT) and Oberhausen Short Film Festival (DE). She continues to work on collaborative projects foregrounding and questioning the historicisation and distribution of feminist & radical media.

Cinenova is a volunteer-run organisation preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. Cinenova was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary and educational videos made from the 1910’s to the early 2000’s. The thematics in these titles include oppositional histories, post and de-colonial struggles, representation of gender, race, sexuality, and other questions of difference and importantly the relations and alliances between these different struggles.

Cinenova offers access to an extensive archive and advice relating to moving image work directed by makers who identify as womxn, transgender, gender non-conforming and gender non–binary. Cinenova is informed by its history as a key resource in the UK independent film distribution sector and internationally.

Alice Butler is a Dublin-based film programmer, curator, lecturer and writer. She is co-director with Daniel Fitzpatrick of aemi, an Arts Council-funded organisation that supports and regularly exhibits moving image work by artists and experimental filmmakers. Alice worked at the Irish Film Institute for six years where she curated film seasons and held responsibility for artist moving image programming. Solo curatorial ventures have included ‘The L-Shape’ at The Dock, ‘As We May Think’ at IFI and ‘New Spaces’ with VAI Northern Ireland. Alice has written on the moving image for Sight and Sound, Vdrome, Paper Visual Art and Enclave Review and she has lectured or participated in panels on the moving image at Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, IMMA and PLASTIK Festival of Artists’ Moving Image.

Project Arts Centre is proudly supported by The Arts Council and Dublin City Council.