Thursday, 12 February 2026 at 6 pm
On Thursday, 12 February at 6 pm, curator and researcher Léa Morin will present a performative lecture titled “BASTA. Films That Don’t Do Exist”, in which she assembles a constellation of absent images and marginalized film narratives. These include the unrealized film Basta by Moroccan revolutionary politician Mehdi Ben Barka, the Algerian Cinematheque, the Łódź Film School, the lost films of Madeleine Beauséjour from Réunion Island, and manifestos for decolonial cinema in the post-independence period.
From these interwoven fragments, Morin constructs a narrative that opens up a series of questions: How can we archive films that do not exist? What place can desires, aspirations, and wounds occupy within film history? How can we care for damaged or absent works without erasing or denying the struggles from which they emerged? Through the sharing of movements and materials, including films, images, documents, and photographs, this lecture attempts to trace historical contours and rethink our practices: moving toward collectivity, connection, and composition, rather than division.
Léa Morin is a film curator and researcher whose work focuses on the circulation of ideas, forms, aesthetics, and political and artistic struggles. She is committed to preserving the film archives of fragile cinematographies that resist authoritarian narratives. She is active in several associations and collectives, including Bouanani Archives: A History of Cinema in Morocco (Rabat); Talitha, an organization dedicated to recirculating sound and film works through editing and restoration (Rennes); the editorial project Intilak (with May Ouabadi and Toud Bouanani); and the research department of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastián). Her curatorial and research work includes the restoration and recirculation of Mostafa Derkaoui’s first film De quelques événements sans signification, as well as the creation of the archival platform cinima3.com, dedicated to the history of Moroccan filmmakers in Poland during the 1960s and 1970s.
The second part of the program features a performative lecture titled The Role of the Archive in Working-Class and Anti-Colonial Struggles by curator Dina Pokrajac, presented as part of the Criticism and Society project organized by the Croatian Film Critics Association (HDFK).
This event also marks the first public program following the scholarship workshop on militant cinema Slika pripada onima koji s njom rade (The Image Belongs to Those Who Work with It), led by Karla Crnčević and Dina Pokrajac in 2026. The program is organized in collaboration with Unseen Cinema, SPID, and Restart.
https://dokukino.net/film/kritika-i-drustvo-lea-morin-basta-filmovi-koji-ne-postoje-postoje/