An evening celebrating the fifteen years that have passed since the inception of the Master of Film ‘Artistic Research In and Through Cinema’ at the Netherlands Film Academy. Over time, it has become not just a program, but a moving body—a living archive of those who refuse to define cinema by what it is, but rather by what it dreams of becoming. Cinema is not a product but a process, a fragile space that grows and shifts as the works are shared, encountered, altered.

Over the course of three days alumni share their practice through performance, cinema, poetry and conversations. Tonight filmmaker, designer, and visual artist Malaz Usta will present excerpts from his project why don't the numbers go down?. The project explores the poetics and politics of belonging. Through live performance by the filmmaker alongside the filmed images, the work invites the audience into a liminal space—a corridor suspended between moments, a place of waiting. In the live presentation of As Long As These Rocks Don't Talk, Juan Palacios explores a geological formation along the Basque Coast called Flysch. Between a lecture and a spoken sci-fi film, Palacios examines the paradoxes posed by the geological timescale, the agency of non-organic entities such as rocks, and the timelessness of the human experience. If one day "our current time" is also turned into stone, how will it be remembered?