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SCRATCH COLLECTION #4 : SOWING TROUBLE

A BIENNIAL FILM SERIES
Light Cone presents Scratch Collection's fourth edition, a biennial series that proposes a journey through its catalog of over 7000 films, with the goal of establishing an atlas of experimental cinema from around the world while rediscovering a collection that aims to stay open and vibrant.

Light Cone entrusts each edition of this series to an invited guest (a film historian, curator, programmer or filmmaker) who, over the course of the residency, revisits the history of experimental cinema through the prism of this exceptional archive. Eschewing any encyclopedic ambition – since the aim is not to compile another anthology of classics –, the guest curator is invited to take a fresh and unique look at Light Cone’s collection, shaped by their own sensibility. Each edition thus becomes a rediscovery of a catalog that is in perpetual evolution.

GUEST CURATORS: TERESA CASTRO AND ALICE LEROY
The program of this fourth edition of Scratch Collection has been entrusted to the researchers, film curators and critics Teresa Castro and Alice Leroy. They have decided to explore Light Cone’s collection under the guidance of philosopher Donna Haraway and her book, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016).

SOWING TROUBLE
Ecocritical crossings through experimental cinema

Experimental cinema has consistently challenged the history of forms, unsettling perceptions of space and time and blurring the boundaries between matter and beings – in other words, cultivating trouble. One could even argue that experimental cinema is trouble, in the strong and creative sense that American philosopher Donna Haraway gives to this word. In her book Staying with the Trouble, she offers a radical ecological analysis, affirming the need to invent new conceptual and political tools in order to rethink the relationships that we forge with all terrestrial critters, among which technical, artificial and virtual critters. Nurtured for a long time by her writings, but also by the turbulent and joyful forms of experimental film, we have imagined a program fermented by Haraway’s ideas and drawing a number of inventive connecting lines through the history of experimental cinema. Her invitation to sow trouble served as our compass in navigating Light Cone’s vast collection. We have charted a path in the shape of a string figure, echoing the tangles and patterns crucial for staying with the trouble and understanding our enmeshments with all kinds of critters and companion species.

Our string figure has six threads, each associated with an action verb: reseed, terraform, become-with, compost, entangle, unravel. These proposals argue that filmmaking must remain bound to multispecies eco-justice. After all, filmic forms are also shaped by the matter that constitutes them and the environmental histories in which they are inscribed. But these threads also invite us to change scales and perspectives: those of Anthropos and all its -cenes are both "too big and too small" for the kinds of films that we need. Rather than offering alternative narratives – in order to spare ourselves from the self-fulfilling myths of the apocalypse or, worse, from those of providential techno-messiahs –, we have chosen another path. We wish to restore imaginative and active powers to film –i.e. the alliance between images, movement and sometimes sound. To put it differently, these six screenings do not simply outline subjective histories of experimental cinema: they chart a community of shared perspectives and sensibilities. These are situated rather than alternative histories. Tentacular rather than linear histories. Compostist rather than progressive histories. Since there is no stable order, we must learn to live with the trouble – if not to cultivate it.

– Teresa Castro and Alice Leroy

FILM PROGRAMS
Screenings begin at 8.30pm

Thursday, October 9th, 2025
RESEED: SOWING TROUBLE
Opening screening followed by an informal reception

Tuesday, October 14th, 2025
TERRAFORM: LIFE OF FORMS

Tuesday, October 21st, 2025
BECOME-WITH: FORMS OF LIFE

Tuesday, November 4th, 2025
COMPOST: COSMIC GARDENS AND POLLUTED EDENS

Tuesday, November 18th, 2025
ENTANGLE: STRING FIGURES

Tuesday, November 25th, 2025
UNRAVEL: SCIENCE-FICTIONS AND SPECULATIVE FABULATIONS
Closing event with a performance by Mika Taanila

The screenings will be presented by Teresa Castro and Alice Leroy and followed by discussions with the filmmakers in attendance

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