UPCOMING KONTEKST EVENTS:
The Outsider's Perspective by New Alterations
Curated by Goke
Curated programme of short films that examine how foreign viewpoints reframe the “elsewhere,” turning acts of looking into acts of meaning.
PAUSE: PART 1 — Caribbean Film Screening + hurricane Melissa fundraiser
Curated by Ishy Pryce-Parchment
An evening of film, conversation and collective witnessing, honouring Caribbean stories of resilience. Proceeds will go toward supporting Solidarity Yaad International in Jamaica.
Affirming Carnival as Embodied Memory of Social Struggles — KONTEKST & CVA PUBLIC PROGRAMME: NOV25
Film screening & conversation with Atabey fka Carlos Maria Romero.
Colombian artist-filmmaker presents film La Nave (2021) and discusses affect and collective liberation focused visual anthropology.
(Un)borderings at Finch Community Cinema
A collectively curated film screening and conversation organised by KONTEKST Collective member Aria Danaparamita
Join us for short films that untangle borders, followed by a conversation on how to cultivate more care and justice for migrants and refugees.
Voices Across Borders: Stories of Nepali Identity, Resistance, and Reclaimed Narratives — KONTEKST & CVA PUBLIC PROGRAMME: OCT25
Film screening and conversation with Anusha Thulung Rai, Sabhyata Garbuja Pun, Aditya Pokharel and Sapana Sanjeevani
An intimate exploration of how marginalized Nepali communities, both home and abroad, resist erasure and fight for recognition, using visual media to record their struggle.
NEW ALTERATIONS CRIT CLUB x KONTEKST OPEN DAY
Peer-to-peer feedback group for work-in-progress multimedia projects.
BLOOM. THEN BLOOM AGAIN — KONTEKST PRIDE MONTH 2025 SPECIAL SCREENING
BLOOM. THEN BLOOM AGAIN — KONTEKST PRIDE MONTH 2025
An exploration of queer grief, joy and second adolescence through the works of up-and-coming LGBTQIA+ filmmakers and a cult classic.
Organised by Sana Nurlan, co-facilitated by Jo Watters, Huiqi He and Arti Siudem.
For queer people, time isn’t linear. We bloom, explore, then bloom again. Just like summer flowers, we celebrate our lives together in Pride Month. On 18 June, join KONTEKST to celebrate our queer existence that’s just like summer flowers.
Those who are in the LGBTQIA+ community often experience what’s called a queer adolescence, where we embody our queer selves after the struggles of the first adolescence. During the first adolescence, many of us face homophobia, transphobia and prejudice. We might also feel isolated because of our gender nonconformity. We live by our own timelines, instead of going by societal expectations set by straight, cisgender standards. Not all flowers have to bloom at the same time, some bloom, then bloom again.
KONTEKST aims to not only celebrate queer joy, but also queer grief. The grief of feeling alone, or the grief of finally feeling right in our skins, or the grief of not catching up to the expectations of the outside world placed upon us. Find us at Atlas Cinema this Pride Month, let both joy and grief bind us together in a flower bouquet we gift ourselves.
FREE ENTRY!!! Donations on the day welcome though so that we can use the money raised for future events.
PROGRAMME:
Golden Voice
by Mars Verrone
2022
In Golden Voice a transgender man returns to the village forty years after the Cambodian genocide, where he not only survived but miraculously found queer and transgender community, including the love of his life.
Becoming a Man
by Oliver Lyric
2025
In Becoming a Man, director Oliver Lyric documented the unseen parts of the story during process of using testosterone and becoming a man. With Oliver’s voice and visual language, we enter a zone where the audience sees the soul beyond the body.
CONTENT WARNING: blood, needles
Lust Envy
by Aisha Boudjillouli
2024
In Lust Envy, director and animator Aisha Boudjillouli used animation to explore the moment where one can experience two emotions striking at once.
Passaggio
by Amiko Li
2023
Passaggio is an experimental film depicting a queer teenager's journey of self-discovery and voice-finding odyssey in China. Going through the unsettling phase of voice transition and subsequently losing his voice, the protagonist must plunge into the world's myriad sounds, observing, absorbing, and imitating them.
Shinjuku boys
by Kim Longinotto & Jano Williams
1995
In Shinjuku Boys we time travel back to the 90s in Japan, exploring the lives of three non-binary and transgender men who work at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. The three protagonists discuss their romantic relationships, their relationships with their parents, their gender presentations, how they understand their own genders, and their different outlooks on life.
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PAST EVENTS:
Organising events with KONTEKST:
Apart from the annual film festivals that we organise as KONTEKST Collective, our open platform is here to support, boost and archive independent events organised by early career event programmers, artists and thinkers.
We recognise the glass ceiling that many people face when trying to get their critical perspectives out - particularly when coming from groups which are already marginalised, such as LGBTQIA+, Global Majority, people with disabilities, people with migratory experiences, neurodivergent people, +. We also recognise that the monopolised infrastructures of mass communication actively silence voices of activists, community organisers and grassroots unions, whilst the boosting the rhetoric of the far-right. The frustration with the top-down system of representation and discourse-making was what pushed us towards starting this collective.
Our aim has always been to create a grassroots, open and horizontal platform, which would grow thanks to this collective input, and which would support those with something meaningful to say with greater reach and opportunities. We were not interested in becoming a top-down organisation as that would limit us to our own bias, our own context. Instead, we want to share this platform with you. We hope that providing you with support and access to our resources and platform can open up new possibilities for something exciting and powerful.
There are two ways we can help you out — we can organise an event collab or just help you with promo:
Event collab - your event will be run in an official collaboration with / under patronage of KONTEKST (whilst crediting you as the organiser). Join our collective and the stage is yours! What this means in practice is that:
Your event will be included in our official events programme. You will be able to use our logos and patronage and promote the event as such.
We will actively post about it on our social media promo, and include it in the monthly newsletter.
We will give you an option to archive it permanently in our website’s archive (in a format of your choice and upon your permission which you can revoke anytime).
You will be given access to our email inbox for event communications.
Help with promo - we are always happy to promote your event so it can reach wider audiences, for example through:
our Instagram - Mention @kontekst.collective on any stories you’d like us to repost. If you are a KONTEKST member, we will are happy for you to send us collab requests for posts, or for you to temporarily take over our profile page.
our monthly newsletter - we send it out on the 1st day of each month. To be featured, message us between 20-27 for details and send a copy that we can paste.
our WhatsApp community chat - contact us to join - this is by far the most direct way to exchange resources and info about events with our collective’s members.
KONTEKST members:
What event proposals do we accept?
We are open to supporting all kinds of projects that are have a social justice focus, that take ethics into account, that are self-reflective and take accessibility into account. We are particularly keen to support grassroots projects with little no to former presence, and ones organised by individuals or groups who come from marginalised perspectives, but everyone is welcome to work with us as they want to work with us towards a truly fair and just society. In other words, as long as what you do relates to the values in vision that we stated in our MANIFESTO, the platform is here for you to make use of it. Get in touch us if you have any questions or would like to pitch your idea.
Once you send the event proposal idea, it will be reviewed by the volunteers currently active in the collective’s admin team.
Where can the event take place?
Our community is primarily based in or around London (UK) but we are open to supporting critical events all around the world. Drop us a message.
Will I get credit for an event run in collaboration with KONTEKST?
We don’t claim ownership of what’s run together with us so all credit will fully go to you as the event organiser. The platform is intended to serve as a directory of creatives and an accessible database of critical projects.
Do we charge for event collaborations?
No, we will support you for free, in accordance with our grassroots ethos. You are always welcome to give back later on, either by volunteering, joining our admin team or leaving a donation.