The Cinema of Ideas, in conversation with Jemma Desai

A few weeks ago, my dear friend Jemma Desai invited me to join her in conversation about her programme for the Independent Cinema Office’s Cinema of Ideas. She didn’t tell me much, except that she’d created a performance/lecture - something she couldn’t quite define - in relation to the short film Latifah and Himli’s Nomadic Uncle. She wanted to explore themes of repetition and differentiation

When she sent me a recording of the piece, I felt like I’d entered into something entirely new. And from there, our conversation unfolded in many directions. We talked about abolitionist practice in curation - how activist thinking is consumed neutralised in many formal settings. We talked about knowing and unknowing, about amateurism and learning for our future selves.

Jemma’s work is accessible via the ICO’s Cinema of Ideas website.

The conversation that Jemma and I had will be recorded and added to the ICO’s youtube page, and we will also be publishing the Google Doc in which we shared thoughts, ideas, references and questions before our recorded conversation.