The call for films for our upcoming EASA2026 conference in Poznań received 98 film proposals. Our Film Programme convenors will be diligently working over the next months to evaluate the proposals. All filmmakers will be notified of the results in April. We are grateful to all members who submitted their proposals!
Anthropological Visual Research: Possibilities in a Polarised World
For questions about Film at EASA2026, please write to films(at)easaonline.org
Theme
The main theme for the Film Programme of EASA2026 is Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World. The conference invites anthropologists, filmmakers, and visual researchers to reflect on how visual anthropology can respond to, challenge, or reimagine the polarising forces shaping our contemporary world.
We live in a moment marked by intensifying divisions. Political leaders and corporate interests continue to fracture communities, break apart solidarities, and impose authoritarian alignments. These trends, strengthening a world of stark oppositions, eroding possibilities for coexistence and mutual understanding. In contrast, anthropology has long worked to uncover entangled realities and foster relations grounded in equality, participation, and collaboration.
In this spirit, the EASA2026 Film Programme welcomes ethnographic films of the length up to 90 minutes (although we recommend the submission of short films), which engage critically, ethically, and reflexively with the theme of the conference. We are particularly interested in films that experiment with form while contributing meaningfully to discussions around anthropological knowledge-making in and through the moving image.
We invited submissions that interrogate, disrupt, or reimagine anthropology’s role in a polarised world. How can visual methods open up new spaces of dialogue, resistance, or care? What cinematic strategies might help us reveal or rebuild forms of interconnectedness? How do questions of representation, authorship, and collaboration shape the politics and ethics of ethnographic filmmaking today?
We encouraged filmmakers to reflect, either implicitly or explicitly, on the aesthetic, ethical, methodological, and theoretical choices that guide their work. We are especially interested in films that consider the cinematic process itself (including filming, editing, and dissemination) as part of a broader anthropological inquiry or intervention.
Selected films will be screened during the EASA2026 conference, and the presence of the filmmaker(s) for the Q&A sessions following the screenings is expected. These sessions are intended to create a space for engaged dialogue, critical reflection, and exchange on the potentials and responsibilities of anthropological filmmaking.
Film Programme Convenors
- Zuzanna Nalepa (Adam Mickiewicz University), Chair
- Jan Lorenz (Adam Mickiewicz University)
- Christine Moderbacher (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
- Sławomir Sikora (University of Warsaw)
- Sophie Wagner (University of Bern)
- Franciszek Drąg (Adam Mickiewicz University/Curator of the Short Film Section at the Ale Kino! International Young Audience Film Festival in Poznań)
- Vlad Naumescu (Central European University)
