Last June, filmmakers, programmers, and researchers gathered at Zawya Cinema in Cairo for three days of conversations on programming practices and the role of cinema in shaping shared cultural memory.

The meeting was generative, rich in diverse perspectives and riveting discussions that refused to end. Conversations spilled over, friendships began, and the need to extend the room beyond June, beyond Cairo, became its own call.

And so, Dossier 5 was brought to life – as an afterword, a continuation, and an opening all at once. 

It opens with notes from the editors, Alia Ayman—who also curated the meeting—and Nour El Safoury. They reflect on what brought us together: a shared recognition that South-South programming cannot happen without South-South infrastructures, relationships, and friendships. They write about the tension between revisiting the Bandung legacy and moving beyond it. About the need for spaces where we do not have to begin by justifying or translating ourselves. And they end with a speculative prompt:
if a future historian researching film practices in this region stumbles upon this programmers' meeting, what would she write? What would she have to work with?

Then, Nour Ouayda poses the question:  “Is there still a world to be won?”

She traces how the certainties of the Bandung era have given way to uncertainty today, reflecting on what it means to organize under late capitalism, where alternatives are often reabsorbed as commodities. She invites us to think about terminology (Black, Arab, Lebanese, Global South) as tools that can both congregate and exclude. And she wonders whether the real value of gatherings like this one lies not in measurable outcomes, but in simply being in a room together, without the pressure to produce.

As if in response, Bunga Siagian offers a reframe: “The world, is not just ours to win – it is ours to build.”

She pulls us back to the third Afro-Asian Film Festival, held in Jakarta in 1964, reminding us that world-building is slow, patient work. That boycotts are not just moral positions but organizational tactics. And that decolonization, when it is more than a metaphor, addresses concrete conditions and enables material transformation.

Ifdal Elsaket then takes a longer view. Her contribution traces histories of South-South film circulation that anticipated our gathering by decades, routes traveled before by other filmmakers and programmers. She asks why these routes were paved over, and what it would take to keep the road open this time.

Finally, Greg de Cuir Jr. offers a tool. His “Programmers’ Index” is not an essay but an archive-in-progress: a living map of programmers based in the Global South, compiled through a survey sent to those we wished we could have invited but could not. It is partial, deliberate, and deliberately unfinished – an invitation to add, correct, and expand. 

Read the full dossier and explore more thoughtful content on cinema culture on Malaffat.