ONGOING FILM RESEARCH
A Non-coincidental Mirror is a film research that fabricates a memory of a forgotten event: the Third World Filmmakers Meeting. Held in Algiers in 1973, the conference served as a hub where “third-world” filmmakers discussed the role of filmmaking in anti-colonial struggles, made agreements to support each other’s works, and strategized about how to produce films under dire political conditions. Out of these meetings, the conference organizers planned to film an educational documentary about anti-colonial movements in Africa to share with and inspire a Latin American audience. A Non-Coincidental Mirror imaginatively reconstructs their venture and the documentary film that never materialized by experimenting with storytelling, documentary forms, and modes of installation.
Carmen Amengual, A Non-coincidental Mirror, 2023. Research Material
From December 2024 to February 2025, the first iteration of this prokect was featured in an solo exhibition at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY. MORE EXHIBITION IMAGES HERE
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Carmen Amengual, A Non-Coincidental Mirror. Exhibition view, Smack Mellon, 2025.
Hybridizing the traditions of experimental and political filmmaking, this project explores a forgotten event in the history of Global South solidarities: the first Third World Filmmakers Meeting (Algiers, 1973) and its second iteration (Buenos Aires, 1974). The event served as a hub where “third-world” filmmakers discussed the role of filmmaking in anti-colonial struggles, made agreements, and strategized about how to produce films under dire political conditions. Based on an archive Amengual inherited from her mother --who collaborated with the organizers of the Filmmakers Meeting in the making of a documentary about the anti-colonial struggles in Africa for a Latin American audience-- this project explores the networks of solidarity threaded throughout this story, and the historical forces that determined its outcome. Through historical research, compilation of oral histories and a critical examination of Third Cinema films and manifestos, A Non Coincidental Mirror recontextualizes this event and it reimagines the 1974 documentary project that did not come to fruition.
This project readdresses the history of Third Cinema, focusing not only in singular actors, but also on the collaborative nature of this cultural endavour. Based on the artist’s family archive, it tells a larger story from a micro-historical perspective, highlighting the role of women and of marginal voices, challenging traditional views on revolutionary cinema— a history often centered on heroic male subjects. Anchored in the ethos of radical filmmaking, this project is experimental, combining cinematic elements and installation strategies to interrogate the ghostly voices of the past and rehabilitate their value for present and future generations.
Examining the extent and limits of an optimism at the core of third-world internationalism – the possibility of finding a mirror in the emancipatory experiences of others— it offers an embodied history of ideas that gives density and historicizes contemporary debates in the field of culture writ large. This story considers the revolutionary potential of friendship and the relationships that these cultural agents sought to weave, based on the trust that through cinema oppressed peoples could not only recognize each other, but work together towards emancipation.
