Over two days at De Appel, ‘Collective Study in Times of Emergency’ brought together texts, voices, music, films, artworks, digital images, and printed materials – creating a space where individual and collective research and archives came into dialogue. This video reflects on moments when international solidarity with the Palestinian resistance intersected with solidarity against South African apartheid. These encounters revealed the archive not just as a site of preservation, but as a living network – crossing borders of geography, time, and form. What futures do these archives hold? What kinds of solidarity will we imagine and practice in a distant future, once these materials have decomposed and become part of us? As Matter Speaks moves across different traces of the 'Collective Study' programme, summoning a space between permanence and fragility, where archives circulate endlessly.
Herself (voice)
Herself (voice)
Herself (voice)
'About a Human' singer (voice)

Over two days at De Appel, ‘Collective Study in Times of Emergency’ brought together texts, voices, music, films, artworks, digital images, and printed materials – creating a space where individual and collective research and archives came into dialogue. This video reflects on moments when international solidarity with the Palestinian resistance intersected with solidarity against South African apartheid. These encounters revealed the archive not just as a site of preservation, but as a living network – crossing borders of geography, time, and form. What futures do these archives hold? What kinds of solidarity will we imagine and practice in a distant future, once these materials have decomposed and become part of us? As Matter Speaks moves across different traces of the 'Collective Study' programme, summoning a space between permanence and fragility, where archives circulate endlessly.
2025-06-09
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6.52020: A year so [insert adjective of choice here], even the creators of Black Mirror couldn't make it up… but that doesn't mean they don't have a little something to add. This comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? The documentary-style special weaves together some of the world's most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage.
7.3This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
7.5In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
6.6Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
7.9Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
8.2A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
6.3The true story of anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and particularly the life of Patrick Chamusso, a timid foreman at Secunda CTL, the largest synthetic fuel plant in the world. Patrick is wrongly accused, imprisoned and tortured for an attempt to bomb the plant, with the injustice transforming the apolitical worker into a radicalised insurgent, who then carries out his own successful sabotage mission.
6.7A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse
6.6In the early to mid '90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers - Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva - bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela's African National Congress.
8.0Long-lost footage from Elvis Presley's legendary Las Vegas residency in the 1970s woven together with rare 16mm footage from Elvis on Tour, and 8mm from the Graceland archive, plus recordings of Elvis telling "his side of the story" rediscovered during Baz Luhrmann's research for his 2022 film, Elvis.
5.9Sarah Barcant, a lawyer in New York City who grew up in South Africa, returns to her childhood dwelling place to intercede for Alex Mpondo, a Black South African politician who was tortured during apartheid.
6.2Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.
6.7While caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, a teenager strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time.
8.4The second "visual album" (a collection of short films) by Beyoncé, this time around she takes a piercing look at racial issues and feminist concepts through a sexualized, satirical, and solemn tone.
6.1A man with partial blindness and a young pregnant police officer must work together to escape a deadly virus that has spread across Grey County.
7.9Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.
7.4This documentary follows oceanographer Sylvia Earle's campaign to save the world's oceans from threats such as overfishing and toxic waste.
6.1After the discovery of a mysterious VHS tape, a brutish police SWAT team launches a high-intensity raid on a remote warehouse, only to discover a sinister cult compound whose collection of pre-recorded material uncovers a nightmarish conspiracy.