More Countries than Shoes

Microbudget Refugee Filmmaking in the Era of the “Death of Cinema”

​

An event with Dr. Kaveh Abbasian

 

Tuesday, May 27th, 2025

6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

​​

Displaced people have long been a favored subject of commercial cinema. Yet throughout the history of cinema, and increasingly in recent years, refugees themselves have asserted agency by making their own films. Whether addressing the experience of displacement or exploring wider universal themes, this exilic cinema has become a vital force in the revolutionary redefinition of the moving image. As proclamations of the "death of cinema" echoed from above, refugees on the ground found ways to produce their own forms—sometimes rendered “non-cinema”—with limited resources.

In what critics now describe as a post-cinematic era marked by rapid technological change, refugee filmmakers have emerged as powerful agents of social commentary and audiovisual resistance, challenging norms and amplifying marginalized voices. Drawing on a variety of geographic examples and film clips, this interactive talk examines the resilience and innovation of microbudget refugee filmmaking and its critical role in reshaping cinematic language and practice today.

​

Dr. Kaveh Abbasian is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and scholar whose work focuses on archive-based audiovisual research, refugee filmmaking, Kurdish cinema, and the film culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He received his PhD in Film and Television Studies, with a dissertation titled Chronicle of Triumph: Iranian National Identity and Revolutionary Shi'ism in Morteza Avini's Sacred Defence Documentaries. He is a Lecturer in Film and Media Practice at the University of Kent. In 2025, he joined the faculty network of the Institute.