-
Wednesday, 12 April 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Wednesday, 19 April 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Xhanfise Keko. Tomka dhe shokët e tij (Tomka and His Friends)
Albania, 1977, b/w, original version in Albanian with Spanish subtitles, DA, 79’
Tickets― With a presentation in the first session by Chema González, head of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Cultural and Audiovisual Activities, and Denise Keko Andoni, the granddaughter of Xhanfise Keko and an active promoter of the film-maker’s legacy
Tomka and his friends play on a football pitch until, one day, the Nazis invade their town and use the field to store ammunition. The spectacle of war erases childhood play, but Tomka and his cohorts are unwilling to accept the situation and plot to recover this Nazi-occupied playing field. Keko uses the adventure to speak of partisan resistance in the Second World War on a historical level, as well as resilience in contemporary Albania under the hard-line Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha. On the surface, a film, shot in black and white, that appears simple and naturalistic but possesses great poetic power.
-
Friday, 14 April 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Thursday, 27 April 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Xhanfise Keko. Mimoza llastica (Fanciful Mimoza)
Albania, 1973, b/w, original version in Albanian with Spanish subtitles, DA, 42’
Tickets― With a presentation in both sessions by Ilir Keko, Xhanfise Keko’s son and a journalist on Albanian Radio and Television
Mimoza llastica (Fanciful Mimoza), part of a diptych with Kryengritje në pallat (Revolt in the Palace, 1972), is a surreal fable in which broken toys come to life and carry out a summary judgement on the two children who have destroyed them. Mimoza is a girl who doesn’t want to share her toys, ruins playground games and is known as the “spoiled brat”. However, she starts to feel lonely and notices that she misses the joy that comes with playing in a group. Regretful, Mimoza begins a transformation until she re-joins the group of friends and they all play together in the playground. This depiction of bad manners sits alongside desolate visions of the contemporary city and features powerful portraits through the masterly editing Keko learned in Moscow between 1950 and 1952.
-
Saturday, 15 April 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Friday, 28 April 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Xhanfise Keko. Beni ecën vetë (Beni Walks on His Own)
Albania, 1975, b/w, original version in Albanian with Spanish subtitles, DA, 78’
Tickets— With a video presentation in both sessions by Thomas Logoreci, editor, producer and writer, and a co-founder of The Albanian Cinema Project, a platform for the conservation and dissemination of Albanian cinema
Beni’s overprotective parents don’t let him play in the street and he loses touch with daily life. His uncle comes from his village to rescue him and take him back there to spend the summer holidays. Beni subsequently connects with nature and gradually returns to real life in this tale of personal growth and transformation. Beni is played by Herion Spiro Mustafaraj, a boy selected out of more than 4,000 seven- to eight-year-olds from state schools, making him a mythical figure in Albanian cinema. The film is also one of the most sensitive explorations of the need to protect childhood from the obligations and dependencies of the adult world.
-
Monday, 17 April 2023 – 7pm / Second session: Saturday, 29 April 2023 – 7pm Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Xhanfise Keko. Taulanti kërkon një motër (Taulant Wants a Sister)
Albania, 1984, colour, original version in Albanian with Spanish subtitles, DA, 75’
Tickets— With a video presentation in both sessions by Regina Longo, film historian, programmer and lecturer at Brown University, and a co-founder of The Albanian Cinema Project, a platform for the conservation and dissemination of Albanian cinema
Along with Kur po xhirohej një film (While Shooting a Film, 1981), which deals with divorce, Taulanti kërkon një motër (Taulant Wants a Sister) is another film in which Keko addresses controversial and taboo issues in Albanian society. In this instance, she shines a light on the large number of one-child families, particularly among the upper class. Taulant tries to convince his parents, two intellectuals, of his solitude. But with both unaware and unresponsive to his fixation, the boy decides to take charge of the situation, saving up and going to a maternity ward to buy a little sister. After producing this sensitive and satirical work, Keko was forced to stop making films due to health issues, leaving behind a film corpus aptly summed up in her own words: “The deeper you go into the world of children, the more you learn, regardless of previous experience. In their world, I always believe we are all apprentices”.
![Xhanfise Keko en el set de Beni ecën vetë [Beni camina solo], ca. 1975. Cortesía de Skandal Production](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/keko-general-snippet.png.webp)
Held on 12, 19, 26 abr 2023
A number of pre-eminent film-makers like Jean Vigo, François Truffaut and Abbas Kiarostami have made films about childhood, but few have forged such a coherent body of work as Xhanfise Keko (Albania, 1929–2007). Keko, a peerless film-maker who made eleven fictional features between 1972 and 1984 in Albania, explored the challenges, frustrations and aspirations of children. This retrospective, the first in Spain and one of the few organised internationally, includes four of her — recently restored — films, screened in double sessions.
With an extraordinary sensibility, Keko depicted the world and point of view of children by giving their desires and psychology prominence. This means understanding childhood not as a transitional phase to another age but as a period in itself, respecting children’s independence exactly as René Schérer defined the philosophy of pedagogy. The film-maker worked with child non-actors, boys and girls selected expressly for her films who build relationships with professional actors. At the same time, her practice contributed to transforming the methodical work of the actor into a playful and spontaneous activity, in line with Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning through play: scripts were always read by the child participants, without the supervision of adult tutors, and could later be re-written on the basis of their comments. Her film sets were an open space of play involving the whole crew; the filming, always swift, looked to adapt to children’s short attention spans; the camera, always placed at their height, respected the way they perceived the world. In short, a whole series of measures to ensure that childhood was not only a theme in the films, but also a creator.
Keko’s filmography, shaped by her status as a working woman in 1970s and 1980s communist Albania, had to navigate censorship and underwent strict regulations. Nevertheless, through the grammar of her film-making she was able to explore taboos and hugely controversial themes during those years, for example divorce in Kur po Xhirohej një film (While Shooting a Film, 1981); a society of only children in Taulanti kërkon një motër (Taulant Wants a Sister, 1984); or bad manners in the Albanian upper class in Mimoza llastica (Fanciful Mimoza, 1973) and Kryengritje në pallat (Revolt in the Palace, 1972). The fables and metaphors of a child’s world allowed her not only to overcome this censorship but also to represent, on-screen, the dreams of a different world for a new generation. Despite her achievements, Xhanfise Keko remains an obscure figure in the history of film — the reason behind this series taking place.
Curator
Chema González
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía and NUMAX
Acknowledgements
Denise Keko Andoni
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.