This cinema screening of Harun Farucki's video installation Serious Games I-IV (2009–2010) is presented in collaboration with the Leiden Essay Film Festival (LEFF) and interdisciplinary research centre ReCNTR. Paired with Cyan Bae’s recent short film Welcome to Set (2025), the evening will reflect on the relevance of Farocki’s approach as a source of inspiration for contemporary research practices. 

Alongside Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda, Harun Farocki may be situated within the tradition of the essay film, in which filmmakers mobilise both documentary and fictional strategies to interrogate complex socio-political realities. He was an artist whose work critically examined social phenomena and the operative logics of images and image production. For Farocki, film functioned not merely as a medium of expression, but as a methodological tool of inquiry.

LEFF programmer Thijs Witty will introduce the evening and moderate a conversation between filmmakers and researchers Cyan Bae and Francesco Ragazzi.

Francesco Ragazzi is associate professor at the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. Filmmaker Cyan Bae is PhD candidate on Ragazzi’s research team. Thijs Witty is assistant professor at ACPA, the Academy of Creative and Performing Art at Leiden University.

This evening is part of Systems for Agitation: A Harun Farocki Retrospective bringing together a selection of Farocki’s films and installations, alongside a series of collaborative events. From 17 April to 24 May.