CONTESTED SPACES & ROADS TO RUINS – Remarks about the AFFR: Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam 2023

CONTESTED SPACES & ROADS TO RUINS – Remarks about the AFFR: Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam 2023

*A screening of Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” in AFFR 2023 – Photo published in the festival’s website*

The <A FF R> film festival 2023 – which took place in Rotterdam (NL) from October 4th until 8th – was quite a feast for this cinephile and researcher. It fed me so much food for thought that I’m still trying to digest it. Some dozens of pages of notes in my manuscripts still await to be typed and posted, but I felt like writing some general remarks about this event while it’s still fresh in my memory.

My PhD thesis – a work-in-progress – deals with philosophy and film with a focus on utopia and dystopia on the conditions of the so-called Anthropocene. During the screenings and debates at that marvellous venue <LantarenVenster>, I had access to several mind-blowing aesthetic experiences which furnished me a lot of thought provoking material – for which I’m intensely grateful.

Instead of being a festival only for the niche of architects and urban planners, the AFFR was very wide-ranging. It dealt a lot with the matters of ecology and the global environmental crisis, also adressing the themes of garbage disposal, fossil fuel burning, contested spaces and the <“right to the city”> (salut, monsieur Lefebvre!).

*Rotterdam seen from above – photographer: unknown*

This was my first ever visit to the jaw-dropping city of Rotterdam and I have many warm thanks to adress my Brazilian comrades Thaís Akina and Hugo Lopez (also a musician and singer-songwriter at Oceans Like Arms) for their kind welcoming in their home. They came to the Nederlands through the <Science Without Borders (Ciência Sem Fronteiras)> program, during <Dilma Rousseff‘s presidency in Brazil>, and have been living and working in Rotterdam ever since.

I mention this because president Dilma was ousted from the position she was (re)elected by 2016’s coup d’état which opened all the gates of hell and helped the upsurge of far-right neo-fascist and completely illegitimate regime of Bolsonaro (2018-2022) – put the seeds sown by “Dilmãe” (un-translatable neologism which fuses the portuguese word for mother, “mãe”, with Dilma’s name) are still blossoming here and there, and Thaís and Hugo are living proof of how fruitful and live-changing that program (interrupted by the coup) really was.

They’ve guided this newcomer in the cityscape and we talked a lot about themes such as housing crisis and squatting movements, which is a theme I’m planning a short documentary about. I could also get acquainted with cool, socially relevant social projects such as the <Centre For Just City>, in Delft, where Hugo has been working. If it wasn’t for them, I would have missed the AFFR completely – both because I would not have come if I had to pay for accomodation due to my insufficient funds (rs) and because it was Akina who informed about the upcoming festival when we attended <UvA’s Philosophy and Film Seminar: Aesthetics of Clarity>. Bedankt, friends!

My writings about individual films can be read in the list below by clicking the link <READ FULL REVIEW HERE>; and the film’s title link leads to AFFR’s website where you can read the synopsis and see the basic technical credits. I’ve seen 7 films and attended to 2 debates that have definitely changed me for the better by catalysing several intellectual and aesthetic processes in my inner labyrinths; it certainly helped a lot pushing me to write under the impact of this filmic experiences, leading me to ponder on and reflect upon several major themes – here synthesized under the axis contested spaces and roads to ruin.

It has been certainly worthwhile to go through these marathons of cinephilia and civic-debate – interspersed with walking and cyclings around town – while trying to give birth to a PhD thesis in the field of philsophy of art. For this gift I must express my gratitude to AFFR’s wonderfully curated and impecably realized feast of a festival.