Over two days at De Appel, ‘Collective Study in Times of Emergency’ brought together texts, voices, music, films, artworks, digital images, and printed materials – creating a space where individual and collective research and archives came into dialogue. This video reflects on moments when international solidarity with the Palestinian resistance intersected with solidarity against South African apartheid. These encounters revealed the archive not just as a site of preservation, but as a living network – crossing borders of geography, time, and form. What futures do these archives hold? What kinds of solidarity will we imagine and practice in a distant future, once these materials have decomposed and become part of us? As Matter Speaks moves across different traces of the 'Collective Study' programme, summoning a space between permanence and fragility, where archives circulate endlessly.
Tap a face for their filmography
Tap a face for their filmography
2020
2020: A year so [insert adjective of choice here], even the creators of Black Mirror couldn't make it up… but that doesn't mean they don't have a little something to add. This comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? The documentary-style special weaves together some of the world's most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage.
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2019
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
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2012
When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire one rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they had bargained for.
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2021
Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.
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2006
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
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2011
In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
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2024
While caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, a teenager strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time.
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2013
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
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1995
Summer 1936: young unemployed communist David Carr leaves Liverpool to join the fight against fascism in Spain. He joins an international group of Militia-men and women, the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista). After being wounded, he goes to Barcelona, where he joins another group of fighters.
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2006
The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.
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2025
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
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2022
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
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2022
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
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2014
Described as being a film about determination, danger and the ocean’s greatest depths, James Cameron's "Deepsea Challenge 3D" tells the story of Cameron’s journey to fulfill his boyhood dream of becoming an explorer. The movie offers a unique insight into Cameron's world as he makes that dream reality – and makes history – by becoming the first person to travel solo to the deepest point on the planet.
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2021
After the discovery of a mysterious VHS tape, a brutish police SWAT team launches a high-intensity raid on a remote warehouse, only to discover a sinister cult compound whose collection of pre-recorded material uncovers a nightmarish conspiracy.
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2013
Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.
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2025
Marine conservationist and social media activist Ocean Ramsey fearlessly swims with sharks in this documentary about her risky mission to protect them.
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2020
Here's a little story they're about to tell... Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz share the story of their band and 40 years of friendship in a live documentary experience directed by friend, collaborator, and their former grandfather, Spike Jonze.
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2007
A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse
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2014
In the near future, society collapses and water becomes scarce. When a greedy water baron starts violently clearing out survivors, Kendal, a 17-year-old teenager, fights the baron's henchman to keep a well open.
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