argos is proudly taking part in Artists’ Film International (AFI’24) - a touring film programme that is collectively curated and presented by fifteen international arts organisations and convened by Forma. AFI’24 introduces the work of talented moving image artists to worldwide audiences, and runs over 300 days, with exhibitions, screenings and public programmes hosted across four continents.

argos hosts AFI’24 from 5 December to 22 December. This year, the AFI partners have commissioned or selected recent artists’ films, which respond to the theme ‘solidarity’. Considering solidarity as a collective form of resistance, togetherness and interdependence, the fifteen films in AFI’24 address the ways in which solidarity is needed, sought and enacted on micro and macro scales. As a body of films, the AFI’24 programme provokes and cultivates radical imaginaries that have the potential to transform our wider, collective experience.

For this edition, argos selected the film L’Escale / The Stopover by Collectif Faire-Part, an ensemble of Belgian and Congolese artists. Together, they aim to reveal new stories about Kinshasa, Brussels, and the many complex relations that lay in between. In this film, filmmakers Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh travel from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Germany for the screening of their new film. During a layover in Angola, they are stopped at the airport because the airline doesn’t trust their documents to be authentic. While Paul and Nizar think they are being led to a hotel, where they would stay until their flight back home, they are being taken to a detention centre. The filmmakers’ testimony – which offers an eye-opening insight into the impossibility of safe and carefree travel for Congolese artists – stands in stark contrast with the seemingly peaceful images of cloud formations passing by the airplane window.

Faire-Part was founded in 2016 by filmmakers Anne Reijniers, Paul Shemisi, Nizar Saleh, and Rob Jacobs. Over recent years, the collective of four has shape-shifted into a larger group of regular collaborators between Belgium and DR Congo, in which team composition changes with each project. Next to filmmaking, they take pictures, curate programs, give workshops, and organise a biennial performance festival called SOKL.

Selected Films

L'Escale / The Stopover (2022) Collectif Faire-Part
Selected by argos centre for audiovisual arts, Belgium

From Guantanamo Prison Until August 15 (2023) Bahar Arfan
Selected by Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan in eXiLe e.V., Afghanistan

The Fine Line (2022) Mary Sullivan
Selected by Crawford Art Gallery, Ireland

Red if you did not exist we would have to invent you (2021) Milica Rakić
Selected by Cultural Center of Belgrade, Serbia

Mass (2020) Nadeem Din-Gabisi
Selected by Forma, UK

Etched in Light (2024) Cassils
Selected by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), USA

we would be freer (2023) Rana Nazzal Hamadeh
Selected by MMAG Foundation, Jordan

Ghost Cut - Some Clear Pixels Amongst Many Black Boxes (2023) Aarti Sunder
Selected by Project 88, India

filled up, torn open (2022/2024) Deividas Vytautas Aukščiūnas
Selected by Sapieha Palace, branch of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania

No Oxbridge Spires (after 1989), Maud Sulter
Selected by Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland

Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass (2023) Ingrid Bjørnaali, Maria Simmons & Fabian Lanzmaier
Selected by Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway

Inventory 2021 (2021) Pinar Öğrenci
Selected by Video-Forum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Germany