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Opening Lecture Kevin B. Lee

Happiness

Night after night, an activist in Amsterdam cannot sleep, kept awake by sixteen hours of screen time and an endless barrage of violent images from around the world.

Firat Yücel
Netherlands, Turkey 2025 18' Opening Lecture Kevin B. Lee leff 2026
Shot from movie Happiness by Firat Yücel

A Phone Trip in Dublin

Peer into the lives of tech workers, and their perspectives on big tech and data, through a personal tour of their phones.

Ariane Papillon
France 2025 22' Opening Lecture Kevin B. Lee leff 2026
Shot from movie A Phone Trip in Dublin by Ariane Papillon

Seeing Without Seeing: The Essay Film in the Age of the Invisual

leff's opening lecture asks how the essay film can respond to the invisual — the hidden systems of data, algorithms, and labour that shape how images are produced, processed, seen, and unseen.

Kevin B. Lee
2026 Opening Lecture Kevin B. Lee leff 2026
Shot from movie Seeing Without Seeing: The Essay Film in the Age of the Invisual by Kevin B. Lee

Screening with Live Scoring

Thread Classics

Häxan

The evolution of witchcraft through the ages is traced in this proto-essay film made over 100 years ago. Stunning monotone vignettes form a visionary blend of fictionalised documentary and horror film. This silent film will have live sound performed by members of Sticky Buttons Records.

Benjamin Christensen
Sweden, Denmark 1922 105' Screening with Live Scoring leff 2026
Shot from movie Häxan by Benjamin Christensen

Performance Screening

Misinterpretations of an Outbreak

Expanded cinema work, utilising several filmmaking techniques and narrative tropes to understand Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI) as a strategy of disruption in the factories of Singapore.

3133 (Eric Lee)
Netherlands 2025 70' Performance Screening leff 2026
Shot from movie Misinterpretations of an Outbreak by 3133 (Eric Lee)

Sara Rajaei: In Focus

City of Poets

A collage of personal archival footage reveals the history of a semi-utopian, metaphorical city, where all the streets are named after poets. When war begins, upheaval leads to confusion and residents find themselves lost amid the memories of the forgotten poets.

Sara Rajaei
Netherlands 2024 21' Sara Rajaei: In Focus leff 2026
Shot from movie City of Poets by Sara Rajaei

Yet Another Leap Year

A visual and psychological investigation regarding the shooting down of an airplane in which digital artefacts sourced online by the artist are combined with audio recordings from the control tower and a poignant voice-over.

Sara Rajaei
Netherlands 2022 16' Sara Rajaei: In Focus leff 2026
Shot from movie Yet Another Leap Year by Sara Rajaei

A Composition in Blue, Red & Other Colours

An image unfurls slowly and enigmatically. So too do childhood memories of women, loss and disappearance, narrated meditatively like a meandering river.

Sara Rajaei
Netherlands 2017 16' Sara Rajaei: In Focus leff 2026
Shot from movie A Composition in Blue, Red & Other Colours by Sara Rajaei

Conversation with Screening: On Filming Love

Thread Next of Kin

Love-22-Love

Driven by the desire to defeat his demons, artist Jeroen Kooijmans pays tribute in Love-22-Love to art, his love for his wife, and the dark corners of his psyche. At the lowest point of his life, love serves as a remedy.

Jeroen Kooijmans
Netherlands 2025 84' Conversation with Screening: On Filming Love leff 2026
Shot from movie Love-22-Love by Jeroen Kooijmans

Listening to the Archive

Expedition Content

An imageless film, sounds from a repatriated colonial archive are interrogated to construct an emancipatory relistening to sounds collected through colonial violence.

Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati
United States 2020 78' Listening to the Archive leff 2026
Shot from movie Expedition Content by Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati

Temporary Stored

A relistening and reinterpretation of colonial recordings of New Guinea made in 1961 by Michael Rockefeller, heir to the Standard Oil family.

Joseph Kamaru
Belgium, Germany 2025 50' Listening to the Archive leff 2026
Shot from movie Temporary Stored by Joseph Kamaru

Performance

Before Falling Seek the Assistance of Your Cane

A reproduction of an American leaflet is mistakenly taken for a bomb threat at an exhibition by Rabih Mroué. In his lecture-performance, he reflects on the unstable relationship between images, politics and reality.

Rabih Mroué
Germany, Lebanon 2022 50' Performance leff 2026
Shot from movie Before Falling Seek the Assistance of Your Cane by Rabih Mroué

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