Introduction to the Manifesto of “Kino-ship” (Social Cinephilia)
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
Within the framework of the gathering, participants were divided into groups. Our group included the names listed below on the manifesto page. As a group of friends brought together by a shared fascination with cinema and work in film and cine-culture, we decided to name ourselves “Kino-ship”, following a creative suggestion by our late friend Yuki Aditya—filmmaker, cinephile, and member of “Forum Lenteng” The name blends Kino (cinema) with Kinship, evoking bonds of affinity and shared lineage. We also decided to write a manifesto in a language we all shared—English—and to produce it as a small printed publication, which we indeed did.
The manifesto and the publication were written, prepared, and produced collectively. From the outset, the process drew on a long history of cooperation, collectivity, and participatory practices in Indonesia, a history that has been particularly visible since 1998. What is often described as the history of contemporary art and informal cultural production in Indonesian art and cinema is, in fact, a history of artistic collectives, film cooperatives, and shared cultural practices. This is evident on a large scale in long-term projects such as Documenta 15, the practice of “Forum Lenteng” and on a micro scale in the collective writing of this manifesto and the making of its printed form.
Here, collectivity does not mean a liberal, vote-based model centered on competitive performance, where opinions are surveyed, proposals are voted on, and the majority decision is implemented while others are merely invited to express their views. On the contrary, collectivity begins with a discussion that seeks collective agreement rather than majority representation. Whether it takes a short or a long time, reaching such an agreement is essential.
What follows is a mode of working akin to agricultural field labor: harvesting, gathering, and storing. It is a practice based on complementarity and cooperation among diverse, partial activities, carried out in a visible and shared manner that exceeds conventional divisions of labor. From the sum of these practices emerges the desired collective outcome. I had believed in this concept theoretically before the gathering, but in Indonesia, with the Kino-ship group, I lived it, practiced it, and produced through it. This experience became a formative lesson and a significant turning point in my theoretical, practical, and curatorial work.
Through collective discussion, we arrived at the proposition of social cinephilia—understood as a theoretical and practical engagement with the world and its social context, rather than a withdrawal or escape from it, as is often the case with dominant forms of traditional cinephilia. We propose social cinephilia as a rupture with that tradition, at the level of practice and historical knowledge alike.
Roles were then distributed according to our different skills: some worked on writing, others copied drafts by hand, others prepared the paper, designed the small publication, or printed the manifesto in limited copies, ready to be shared and circulated among participants by the end of the gathering.
I returned to Alexandria, and one day later came the Al-Aqsa Flood, a decisive act of disobedience and a political and epistemic rupture, followed by the prolonged steadfastness of our people in Gaza, and later in southern Lebanon, against the Israeli machinery of annihilation. Bashar al-Assad fell, al-Julani came to power in Syria , Sudan was destroyed and its people displaced in a colonial civil war, and the world around us in the Arab region was overturned.
Months later, I returned to the manifesto and wondered whether it might still be a meaningful attempt to think cinephilia in relation to all of this. I shared it with my dear friend and companion in cinephilia, the translator, writer, and film curator Mahammad Hoogla-Kalfat, asking for his opinion and hoping that, if he found it worthwhile, he might devote some of his time and energy to translating it. He immediately embraced the task and did not delay; for this, he has my deep gratitude, as well as that of the Kino-ship group.
Kalfat produced a first Arabic draft of the manifesto. A few days ago, following the sudden and devastating passing of our friend Yuki Aditya, a member of Kino-ship, I felt it was necessary to publish the manifesto in both its English and Arabic versions. I asked Kalfat to prepare the translation for publication. He revised the Arabic draft and suggested editorial changes to the original English text. We discussed these revisions, and based on them I rewrote several points of the manifesto with greater precision while preserving their meaning. Kalfat then finalized the translation, making it ready for publication.
This is the story of the Social Cinephilia manifesto in its English and Arabic versions, as I see it.
To conclude, I hope that the call for social cinephilia will find readers, provoke discussion, invite agreement and disagreement, and inspire creative practices and ideas—and that it will be breathed into life by Cinephiles in spaces and times we do not yet know.
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
Alexandria,2 February, 2026
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
Ali Hussein AlAdawy is a curator of film and artistic research projects, as well as a critic and researcher whose work spans cinema, moving images, urban contemporary art practices, global critical theory, and modern and contemporary cultural history. His curatorial projects include the ongoing film program Labor Images (since 2019), Serge Daney: A Homage and Retrospective (2017), and Harun Farocki: Dialectics of Images…Images that cover/uncover other images (2018).
He has also co-curated several exhibitions and public programs, including, with Paul Cata, The Art of Getting Lost in Cities: Barcelona & Alexandria (2017) and the seminar Benjamin and the City (2015). Beyond curatorial work, he has been active as a writer and editor, co-founding Tripod (2015–2017), an online magazine dedicated to film and moving image critique, and contributing to the editorial team of TarAlbahr (2015–2018), an online platform and publication focused on urban and artistic practices in Alexandria.
He holds an MA in the intersections of human rights and contemporary art from Bard College, New York, and continues to teach, write, and edit while developing curatorial projects that critically engage with the politics and poetics of images.