When the Lumière brothers reproduced reality through photographic images, a sense of ‘faith in the image’ was established, as Bazin noted in `What is Cinema.´ This leaves us with several questions: what lies beyond recording or reproducing reality, or even piecing it together? Where does the filmmaker fit in the process of making a film in a certain social reality? How do they utilize the medium and its tools? What is their experiential journey or worldview? Can the medium of cinema offer us possibilities for a creative interpretation of reality—an interpretation that stems from an individual’s personal, social, and historical context?

Keeping these core questions as our guide, docustan´s ´idea to screen´ program creates a space for critical and self-reflective dialogue on image-making and the history of the medium within the context of a changing social landscape. We encourage participants to develop a point of view that is uniquely their own, following the concept of ‘to each their own cinema’—an interpretation that doesn’t just need to be only informational but evocative as well.