Held on 16 Dec 2021
Intervals is a regular programme which premieres film work that lies beyond the Museo Reina Sofía’s mainstream circuit. This fresh edition centres on the first screening in Spain of Mapping Lessons, a film made by Cairo-based film-maker and artist Philip Rizk, who will also be present at the event. The film is a montage of archives on the history of mass uprisings, spanning the Paris Commune in 1871 and more recent examples of self-organisation in Syria.
A sharp observation by Jean-Luc Godard on Israeli and Palestinian film is also applicable to our European vision of socially committed Arab cinema: the resource of fable and fiction is the “property” of Israeli film-makers, whereas there is insistence upon Palestinians for the factual immediacy of the documentary image; put another way, reality in its most precarious and miserable state. Mapping Lessons monumentally breaks this division and is striking as a sophisticated and intelligent film about social utopia in the contemporary Arab world, whereby a montage of historical archives is mixed with an experimental exercise in narrative fiction. Thus, it forms a constellation of radical movements, from the Soviets of the Russian Revolution to present-day communes in Syria, assembled through travel diaries and memories of Arab subjects who have lived through these times of change and expectation.
In the words of Philip Rizk: “After the crushing of our revolution in Egypt in 2013, Mapping Lessons began as a daydream. The film is a visual conversation between political struggles across time and space, from anti-colonial battles against the French and British in the 1920s, to the Syrian Revolution in 2011, 1936 Spain, a revisionist memory of Russian Soviets and the Paris Commune, among others. Mapping Lessons was my way of relating our neo-colonial relationship with the past, all with an eye on what to do the next time”.
Philip Rizk (Limassol, Cyprus, 1982) is a film-maker and activist. He is a member of Mosireen, a collective that broadcast and composed a real-time archive of the 2011 Egyptian revolution (858: An Archive of Resistance). After studying philosophy and anthropology, he has worked in the field of video since 2008. His productions have been screened at international festivals such as Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. In 2015, he participated in the German pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia with Out on the Street, a film made with Jasmina Metwaly the same year. His essay on images and the Egyptian Revolution “2011 is not 1968: An Open Letter to an Onlooker” was published in the anthology Uncommon Grounds. New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East (compiled by Antony Downey, I.B. Tauris, 2014).
Javier H. Estrada is a critic, lecturer and cinema programmer. He holds an MA in the History of Film and Visual Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, and is head of programming at the Seville Film Festival and the FILMADRID International Film Festival. He is also a member of the editorial board for the magazines Caimán. Cuadernos de cine and Secuencias. Revista de historia del cine.
Programme
Thursday, 16 December – 6pm
Philip Rizk. Mapping Lessons
—Presentation and talk by Philip Rizk
Saturday, 18 November – 6pm
Philip Rizk. Mapping Lessons
—Presentation and talk by Philip Rizk and Javier H. Estrada
Credits
Mapping Lessons
Egypt, 2020, colour and b/w, original version in Arabic, French, German, English and Ukrainian with Spanish subtitles, DA, 61’
Director, editor and producer:Philip Rizk Editing advisor:Mohamed Hassan ShawkyDesign, supervision and sound editing:Max SchneiderSound editing:Nadah El ShazlyTranslations:Farah Barqawi, Katharine Halls y Ma Hoogla-Kalfat (MaYo)With interventions by:Farah Barqawi, Walid, Aylin Çankaya, Saeed al-Wakeel, Matthieu Rey, Ahmed, Z, M. and Osama al-HosseinWith the support of:Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FFAI) and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin ProgramProduced in:AFAC Unspoken Series at Volksbühne Roter Salon
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Collaboration
illycaffèParticipants
Participants
Más actividades
Institutional Decentralisation
Thursday, 21 May 2026 – 5:30pm
This series is organised by equipoMotor, a group of teenagers, young people and older people who have participated in the Museo Reina Sofía’s previous community education projects, and is structured around four themed blocks that pivot on the monstrous.
This fourth and final session centres on films that take the museum away from its axis and make it gaze from the edges. Pieces that work with that which is normally left out: peripheral territories, unpolished aesthetics, clumsy gestures full of intent. Instead of possessing an institutional lustre, here they are rough, precarious and strange in appearance, legitimate forms of making and showing culture. The idea is to think about what happens when central authority is displaced, when the ugly and the uncomfortable are not hidden, when they are recognised as part of the commons. Film that does not seek to be to one’s liking, but to open space and allow other ways of seeing and inhabiting the museum to enter stage.
Ordinary, Common and Public. Common Fixes for Ordinary Communities
Tuesday, 26, and Wednesday, 27 May 2026 – Check programme
Ordinary, Common and Public. Common Fixes for Ordinary Communities is the title of the fourteenth encounter run by Sociología Ordinaria, a transdisciplinary research group that explores daily knowledge deemed ordinary, superficial or frivolous from a traditional academic and intellectual viewpoint.
This latest edition seeks to approach and map connections between concepts of the commons and the public realm — remembering that the ordinary is also the commons — and to ensure affects and moods of discontent are mobilised towards hope.
By way of its multiple declinations — community, community-based practices, the commons, the communal — the encounter seeks to reflect on different ways of creating, (re)configuring, maintaining, fixing, arranging, caring for and defending the public realm and the commons. Furthermore, it explores forms of invocation and experimentation as tools opposite the helplessness of an uncertain present, in addition to resistance against attempts of expropriation, distortion, privatisation and touristification.
International Museum Day 2026 with Radio 3
22 MAY 2026
On Friday, 22 May 2026 the Museo Reina Sofía celebrates International Museum Day by way of a vibrant music programme conducted by Radio 3.
From 9am to 11pm, the Museo’s Nouvel Courtyard will host the live broadcast of Radio 3’s day-long programme —also available on a video streaming on the Radio3 website and app, on RTVEPlay and on the Museo’s social media accounts. The programme comprises more than twenty live acts, including artists such as Carlangas, Shego, Soleá Morente, Kokoshca, La Tania, La Pegatina, Pipiolas, Ángel Stanich, Triángulo de Amor Bizarro and Zahara, and many others.
With this programme the Museo Reina Sofía concludes its celebration of International Museum Day, which takes place on Monday, 18 May. Both on 18 May, from 10am to 9pm, and 22 May admission to the Museo will be free of charge.
Gerardo Mosquera: Island Thinker, Global Curator
19 MAY 2026
This encounter pays homage to Gerardo Mosquera (Havana, 1945), a pre-eminent curator, an essayist who has been part of key debates on decolonisation and the drifts of globalisation, a communicator and, primarily, an art critic who has managed to radically situate discourses and practices, while still taking on risks and perpetually upholding committed ethical positions.
Mosquera is one of the foremost curators internationally and was involved with the Havana Biennial from its foundation in 1984 to 1989, as well as curating pivotal shows in museums and art centres around the globe. Notable among his curatorial work is as adjunct curator at the New Museum in New York (1995–2009), the Liverpool Biennial (2006) and the exhibition It’s Not Just What You See. Perverting Minimalism (Museo Reina Sofía, 2000).
This round-table discussion, which features the participation of Gerardo Mosquerahimself and an ensemble of art critics, thinkers and artists, for instance Fernando Castro Flórez, Diana Cuéllar, Lillebit Fadraga and René Francisco Rodríguez, will approach the multifaceted and extremely fertile work of Mosquera as a renowned master curator.
Miguel Falomir, Director of the Museo Nacional del Prado, in Conversation with Museo Reina Sofía Director Manuel Segade
18 MAY 2026
Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía directors, Miguel Falomir and Manuel Segade, respectively,engage in conversation on Monday, 18 May in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Auditorium 400, in conjunction with International Museum Day 2026, the theme of which is “Museums Uniting a Dividing World”. The discussion, moderated by journalist and poet Antonio Lucas, will see the two heads of these major cultural institutions share their reflections on the role they play in today’s society.
In addition to addressing the management of art, the conversation seeks to explore in greater depth museums’ potential as meeting points to face today’s social tensions, thereby fulfilling the international mandate of this year’s edition.
The activity will be live-streamed and is available at this link.