Itinerant Film Exhibition and the Promise of a Fugitive Cinema Practice
2023, MA thesis, Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, University of Amsterdam
Reflecting on the contemporary status of alternative and independent cinema exhibition, I consider itinerant cinema as a mode of fugitive itinerancy that constitutes a still burgeoning fugitive cinema practice. Drawing from Black, Queer and Indigenous Studies’ notions of fugitivity, fugitive aesthetics, fugitive indigeneity, and fugitive sanctuary, I read and write fugitivity into historical and contemporary examples of itinerant cinema to theorise a practice of film exhibition and distribution that is able to contend with global refugeeism in an anti-black world.
A digital illustration of the “floating wall” of the Rio Grande, presented by Governor Abbott to the Texas state legislature in 2023 during the signing of new security measures at the southern border.
(Image: Armando Garcia, “Texas to Deploy Buoys in Rio Grande in Attempt to Curb Migrants from Crossing River,” ABC News, June 12, 2023.)