Friday 10 April 2026
19:00 Cinema (doors open: 18:30)
Introduction
Welcome and introduction to the programme of the Research Weekend by Mieke Bernink, lector, and Stanislaw Liguzinski, research coordinator lectoraat.
Eliane Esther Bots KennisKring
Narrative justice: Unfolding The Daughters, The Interpreters and The Family
During her interactive presentation Eliane Bots will introduce the concept of “narrative justice” and reflect on its significance for nonfiction filmmaking today. She will connect this to her recently published non-fiction artist’s book The Daughters, The Interpreters and The Family. The book emerges from Eliane’s exploration of (narrative) listening within her documentary film practice.
The Daughters, The Interpreters and The Family combines transcripts, poems, dreams, and drawings to share conflict-related experiences. Three perspectives are central: second-generation Dutch-Bosnian women, interpreters at the Yugoslavia Tribunal, and a family that fled the war in Chechnya. Accompanying audio tracks offer gentle instructions that guide the reader through this layered constellation of voices. The presentation includes a collective listening session in the cinema.
Please bring your headphones and mobile phone to the presentation!
Faye Bezemer Greenhouse for Students ‘24/’25
Passion is Blind
In the short documentary Passion is Blind, three people with no passion for filmmaking or experience in the industry are invited to spend a day working on set. During the shoot, they are presented with real-life cases from the field related to safety and well-being, and are asked how they would respond to these situations.
-- Followed by a short break --
Still: Passion is Blind
Eliane Esther Bots is a Dutch filmmaker and visual artist based in The Hague, working primarily in documentary film while expanding into installation, performance, audio works, and publications. Her films have screened at numerous national and international festivals. Her film In Flow of Words won several awards, including Best Director at Locarno Film Festival, VIDEONALE19, the Fluentum Collection Award, and a Golden Calf for Best Short Documentary in the Netherlands, and was nominated for the European Film Awards. Eliane has worked as an educator for over a decade and is part of the core team of the Master’s programme at the Netherlands Film Academy.
Faye Bezemer graduated as a producer at the Netherlands Film Academy in 2025. She regards wellbeing, safety, and sustainability —both social and ecological— as essentials for a good collaboration. She prefers to work on intimate stories that offer recognition and reassurance, with room for a little bit of magic. Faye currently works at Rinkel Film and Docs, and is taking on several own projects in the roles of producer, line producer, and eco manager.
20:30 Cinema
Nduka Mntambo KennisKring
Requiem: A Tableau Vivant of Gamakhulu Diniso (working title)
Requiem is an experimental work in progress emerging from a larger artistic research project on the oeuvre of South African artist and activist Gamakhulu Diniso. Reimagining four of his seminal plays, Ikasi, Igazi, Kuyanuka, and Koropa, the work stages a meta-theatrical encounter in which Diniso confronts his own characters. Blending cinema, performance, and ritual, it explores the body as archive, satire as survival, and the unfinished promises of the post-apartheid present. Through a single-take composite structure, the work attempts to stage an ongoing reckoning with memory, authorship, and political disillusionment.
Juan Palacios Fellow 2025
Sedimenta – a science non-fiction fairytale about rocks
Juan Palacios’s fellowship project explores experimental filmmaking techniques to investigate more-than-human perspectives through a deeply philosophical approach. Across his reflections on image and sound, he unravels a fragmented narrative revolving around time, sustainability, and our responsibility for the planet. By examining different timescales – from hundreds of years to the longer temporalities of geological time – his work reveals our imprint on reality in ways that might escape us when we look from a human perspective.
In his (pre-recorded) lecture-performance Juan takes us along on his journey through time, landscape and cinema.
– Followed by drinks in the Foyer (until 22:00) --
Nduka Mntambo is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher working across experimental cinema, installation, and theatrical praxis. His practice explores image making as a critical and sensorial engagement with memory, spatial histories, and political life from the perspective of the global souths. Moving between gallery, screen, and stage, his work challenges conventional cinematic spectatorship through experimental and spatial forms. Nduka is Head of the Master’s programme ‘Artistic Research in and through Cinema’ at the Netherlands Film Academy.
Juan Palacios is a film director, researcher, and cinematographer with a background in Environmental Studies. He graduated cum laude from the NFA Master and has received Denmark’s Statens Kunstfond Working Grant three times. His debut documentary Pedaló was awarded at San Sebastián International Film Festival. His second film, Meseta (Inland), won awards at CPH:DOX, L’Alternativa, and Pesaro. His third feature, As the Tide Comes In, premiered in IDFA’s International Competition, screened at over 50 festivals, and won Best Film and Best Director of Spanish Cinema at Gijón. He is currently finishing his hybrid sci-fi film Permanent Being, first conceived of during the Master. The research for and around that film was the focus of his fellowship at the NFA Lectoraat, leading to Sedimenta.