This special edition of IDFA Meets as part of the I'm curious. Period. program, pairs one of acclaimed director Agnès Varda’s transformative short films, Black Panthers (1968), with a sonic lecture that builds a resonant portrait of resistance movements across South Africa, curated by the Amsterdam-based collective Motormond. Examined back-to-back, the works meditate on the long term effects of revolutionary activist efforts across continents.

Filmed during the Free Huey rally in Oakland, Black Panthers intersects with a wave of global turbulent events set in 1968; mass student protests, growing anti-war sentiment, and a deepening shift in the struggle for racial justice. Varda’s unique way of filming lets the members of the Panthers define who they are rather than to settle for the definition given to them, displaying how they claim public and domestic spaces as arenas of political struggle.

Set to a backdrop of rare posters and imagery pulled from the Johannesburg archives, Motormond’s sonic lecture navigates through the landscape of the South African resistance and its legacy, creating a history lesson through fifty years of uprising against settler colonialism using voices from within the movement. Drawing a connection between two histories shaped by radical re-imagination, this evening builds a bridge from Oakland to Johannesburg and from their resistance to that of their contemporaries.

IDFA Meets at Motormond
The evening continues at Motormond's Art Space with their new exhibition Flight is Organizing Towards Flight. Displaying protest art posters sourced from various archival institutions, the exhibition offers a deeper dive into the visual and archival history of the South African resistance movements and liberation heroes.