Moving Reels

Background Moving Reels: A Social Dialogue is a quarterly screening and workshop series of contemporary South Asian documentary that investigates functions of cinema in the construction of socially engaged public cultures. The programme utilises Rastegar's (2012) critique of "nationalistic cinema" to study "Asia in Asia through Asian inter-references", a project of decolonising Eurocentric epistemology (Chen 2010). Curation mobilises relational thinking about socio-cultural processes of globalisation, modernisation, urbanisation and media circulation. Consistent with Rosenberg (2009), foregrounding criticality in film culture, curation creates engaged spectatorship through production of discursive materials and challenges dichotomous categories of film as either art or commerce to open up diverse questions and relations. Contribution My curatorial method draws on three questions: identification of socio-culturally relevant themes and films; locating a conceptual framework to promote audience dialogue with Vietnamese subject-experts and; production of critical material (web catalogue, curator statement, workshop) to provoke discussion around cinema as text, practice and cultural form. In a culturally regulated Vietnamese context, the event re-thinks the historical relationship between curator and cinema publics and the influential role of intermediaries (institutions and technologies) in cultural circulation. Significance The programme is commissioned by Vietnam's first international, purpose-built space for contemporary art, the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre. It nurtures pedagogic encounters with cinema mediated by subject experts (Moving Reels #1, architectural historian Mel Schenk) and (Moving Reels #2 architect and urban planner Hoanh Tran). A long form report in Vietnam's premier English language publication The Saigoneer underscores its significance to Saigon's creative, academic and professional communities.