Off The Record

“Thank you for your solidarity.” An Indonesian garment worker directly addresses the cinema audience, at once performing the homogenizing syntax of English while casting it into meaninglessness. This program presents a series of works that trouble the notion of bearing witness. Moving across forms of testimony—archival, performance, interview—the cinema is reconfigured here as a space for anger, protest, and close listening. As the agency of using one’s own words to address structures of power is repeatedly thrown into question, the program ends beyond language and voice – in an optical trance, with a single eye staring back at us. “Diffusion 1: Off the Record” was originally presented in Toronto on August 7 as part of Diffusion 2025.

Following the screening, a public conversation will bring together Faraz Anoushahpour (Re:assemblage collective), Mira Adoumir and Nour Ouayda (The Camelia Committee), Philip Rizk (On Strike), co-moderated by Johanna Markert (anorak / The Social Life of Film), and Kris Woods (Mis-Shapes / The Social Life of Film) to reflect on questions of address, spectatorship, and curatorial strategies that challenge dominant cinematic languages and structures.

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Since 2016, the Re:assemblage Collective has been committed to championing underrepresented voices and perspectives through public film and video screenings. It operates with an itinerant and intentional approach, “reassembling” assumptions about artist film/video practices—who is shown and the forms of work celebrated. The collective is currently composed of Faraz Anoushahpour and Scott Miller Berry, and is based in Tkaronto/Toronto.

In 2020, re:assemblage launched Diffusion, a four-day summer festival dedicated to experimental non-fiction and artist moving image practices. The 2025 edition of Diffusion was programmed collaboratively with Ryan Ferko and Almudena Escobar López.

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THE SOCIAL LIFE OF FILM is an annual congress which brings together independent screening initiatives to further the communal potential of the moving image.