The Academy is self-organised. Structured in a horizontal way, it encourages students to participate in every aspect of its organisation. Exchange networks have also been set up with other academies, media and news platforms, and civil society organisations to engage in a broad discussion and create screening possibilities. Regarding the large influx of foreign filmmakers and journalists to Rojava, it is important that we reclaim the representation and imagination of the revolution, as this is a revolution that will be televised.
After decades of oppression of Kurdish language and culture, the Rojava Film Academy aims to revitalise local film culture, reclaiming the power to narrate and imagine one’s dreams and realities. After the Syrian Civil War started, the predominantly Kurdish populated north–Rojava–declared autonomy and created self-governing structures based on grassroots democracy, women’s liberation, and cultural diversity. Part of a revolution is the reconstruction of meaning. The Rojava Film Academy believes that that is exactly the sphere of cinema.
The Academy bases its methodology on what we call ‘revolutionary realism’: a realism that not merely reveals the current reality in a new way, but rather restructures the reality of the possible. It not only finds form for the existing but creates the possibility to imagine the not yet present–the continuous becoming that is the revolution itself.
Rojava Film Commune
YouTube channel Rojava Film Commune