Turning film into community

From budget surplus to shared idea

Several members volunteered to lead the film series. With support in place, a practical question followed: Should these films be screened privately for staff and students, or opened to the public? “We could rent a room and screen a movie,” recalls Lauren Wagner, Associate Professor in Diasporic Mobilities, “or we could turn it into open, public screenings, where people buy tickets – but we also purchase a block for students and the research group.”

Lauren already had experience organising a film series with Lumière Cinema, Maastricht’s independent cinema known for its art-house programming and strong civic mission. She reached out with the proposal, and Wouter Greven, Head of Programme at Lumière, was immediately enthusiastic.

“We get a lot of requests for co-programming,” he explains. “But we’re the only cinema of this kind in Maastricht. That means it’s our responsibility to consider who to work with to create an interesting programme.”

Opening the doors: research goes public

“Lauren and Elsje came to me with the idea to screen three films, each followed by a Q&A with the director or a roundtable discussion with GTD researchers,” Wouter says. “Every ticket included a voucher for a free drink, so conversations could continue afterward. It’s great how, through film – a popular medium – a broad audience gets in touch with research. It became a place where academics and non-academics met,” Wouter adds.

The screenings opened research to the city. Themes reflected the group’s research interests but required simple labels that researchers are normally careful with, such as poverty, activism, and migration. “We can be quite precious about how we communicate research identities in academic papers,” Elsje explains. “Here, you’re forced to make labels explicit. It’s challenging – how others understand them versus how we see them.”

As an example, migration – often reduced in public debate to images of boats – became intimate and complicated on screen. “We wanted to show that migration isn’t just boats full of people,” Elsje explains, “but something more personal, and less negative.” For example, one film explored transnational families: a son far from his mother; another layered activism alongside everyday life. 

What film can do that papers can’t

The team learned that researchers and filmmakers are faced with similar dilemmas: Which stories are told? Which lives become representative? Whose truth becomes the truth? “The questions I ask in research are similar to the ones directors ask,” Lauren says. “They investigate through film; we investigate through a different machine.”

The research group bought around 30 tickets per screening for students and group members and let the rest flow to the city. What emerged was not a closed academic event, but something social and accessible. The first screening, about workers in a Chinese-owned factory in rural Ethiopia, drew 148 people. Roughly half were UM staff or students; the rest came from the wider community, including members of Maastricht’s Chinese community. Others were locals simply curious about another country. The audience was diverse without effort, generated by curiosity rather than targeted outreach. “My neighbours came to the film about Ethiopia because they had just returned from a trip there,” Lauren says. “They just wanted to understand more.”

Films quickly proved to be powerful teaching tools – sometimes more accessible than journal articles, sometimes more unsettling. “You can describe a structure,” Wouter notes, “but it’s difficult to describe the look on someone’s face. Film shows that.”

Where stories start talking back

Lauren laughs at her own affection for the format: “I’m a failed filmmaker” (Elsje interjects that she in turn is a failed novelist). “I think in visuals. When you have something that pulls out images and gives people something to chew on, discussion becomes easier. It’s different from giving a lecture.”

The atmosphere confirmed the choice. Students who were quiet in classrooms spoke eagerly after the films. Conversations ranged from politics to aesthetics to ethics: representation, authenticity, choosing protagonists, working conditions, protest, and solidarity. A recurring question emerged – how much power a single story wields (and should wield), when it is framed as “lived experience.” Elsje reflects: “We’re compelled to believe individual perspectives. When someone says, ‘I’m Chinese, my mother worked in a factory, so I know how hard it is,’ it becomes powerful. We do tend to take lived experience at face value.”

A partnership, not a rental

Lumière was not just a venue but an example of what good partnership looks like: approachable, collaborative, and focused on meaning rather than headcounts. “They were interested in thinking beyond how many people were coming,” Elsje says. “It was about more than that.”

The collaboration also unravelled differences in speed. Elsje felt time was slipping away. “A week or two before the first movie screening, I panicked because I felt like so much still had to be done.” Wouter, in contrast, wasn’t worried at all and felt that it was still early to settle the nitty-gritty details. That contrast was productive rather than frustrating – two professional tempos, two industries. “That’s just the difference in timelines,” Elsje reflects. The crisis passed in a way that felt almost theatrical. “In the end it all came together on the night,” Lauren laughs. “Like Shakespeare in Love.”

Curating the programme also meant giving up a little control. Lauren describes sending Lumière a shortlist and theme, but trusting their expertise. “It was nice not to be precious about ‘we need to show this film.’ Lumière knows how to connect to the public.” 

“When I don’t think a film fits, I say so,” Wouter adds. That honesty, they all agree, is what turned the project into a collaboration – not just a rental agreement.

When outreach doesn’t count, but still matters

Conversations spilled into hallways. Visibility increased in ways that are difficult to measure but easy to feel. And yet, the work remains precarious: outreach rarely “counts” in academic metrics. “It was fun to do,” Elsje says, “but it’s always a juggling act. Outreach happens after what gets counted, so it’s easy to forget.”

What began as unspent money became something else entirely: a shared cultural space where research moved out of the university without being diluted, where complexity was not simplified but made visible. 

Text by: Eva Durlinger

Picture by: Claire Gilissen