GAMeC in collaboration with Lab 80 film and the The Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bergamo, presents A Practice of Freedom, the Film Program dedicated to the themes of Pedagogy of Hope, GAMeC’s interdisciplinary initiative that explores education as a practice of freedom and transformation.

Throughout 2026, on a monthly basis, the film series will bring together great classics, auteur cinema, and artists’ videos, offering new opportunities for discussion and in-depth exploration.

Inspired by the thought of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and American activist and writer bell hooks, A Practice of Freedom will explore alternative narratives and critical perspectives on three main themes: the marginalization of certain subjectivities and social groups, capable of challenging traditional paradigms and imagining a culture of resistance; pedagogical experimentation within artistic and creative practices, aimed at building shared knowledge capable of producing effects on social reality; and the exploration of issues related to new technologies and the implications of algorithmic thinking, envisioning a more conscious, ethical, and responsible use of them.

For the screening on Friday, September 11, six artists share stories of resistance, freedom, and imagination, exploring the ways in which individuals and communities confront the rules, institutions, and power systems that claim to define who they can be. Blending archives, memory, and fiction, the selected films show how marginal histories and experiences can create vital, creative alternatives to rigid and oppressive hierarchies, while the imagination becomes a space of freedom even within the tightest boundaries.

Karimah Ashadu
MUSCLE, 2025
22’20”
HD digital film, colour with stereo sound
© Karimah Ashadu. Courtesy the artist, Camden Art Centre, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Sadie Coles HQ, and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago

MUSCLE is an intimate portrait of bodybuilders training in an outdoor gym in the slums of Lagos. Through close-ups of muscles, veins, and sweaty skin, the film captures the men’s daily ritual of shaping and disciplining their bodies amidst the clanging of barbells and the guttural sounds of exertion. Details like the plastic water sachets consumed between sets allude to the class dynamics and capitalist structures running through these spaces. The film reflects on the construction of masculinity in a patriarchal society like Nigeria’s, where physical strength becomes a public performance that requires the gaze of others to be validated.

Jonathas de Andrade
Sorelle senza nome, 2025
20’
Single-channel HD film, sound (5.1)
Produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film and commissioned by the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See. Courtesy Galleria Continua

In the 1960s, amidst social unrest in Brazil, a group of missionary nuns chose a faith based on action: popular education, social justice, and closeness to marginalized classes. When the military dictatorship became a concrete threat, the women made a radical choice: they renounced their vows and moved to Rome, carrying the same spirit forward in a secular form. Paulo Freire’s pedagogy intertwines with political commitment and a free spirituality, embodied in the figure of Linda Bimbi. A cornerstone of the community featured in the film, upon her return to Italy she would find, together with Lelio Basso, the Russell Tribunal II to judge the crimes of Latin American dictatorships. Through archives and direct testimonies, Jonathas de Andrade reconstructs the journey of this nameless community and its commitment to freedom and social transformation.

Ane Hjort Guttu
Freedom Requires Free People, 2011
33’ HD video

Jens is eight years old and has a problem with the rules of his school in Oslo and the uncritical way they are followed by others. He complains that one of these rules is precisely to follow the rules, that another is “don’t get angry,” and that no one listens to his objections, leaving little room for dialogue. Blending interviews and moments of school life, the film follows Jens’s daily struggle against an educational system that demands obedience at the expense of developing a critical mind and a desire for freedom and participation.

Driant Zeneli
How deep can a dragonfly swim under the ocean?, 2021
11’23”
4K video
Courtesy Giorgio Persano Gallery, Turin

A dragonfly flutters its wings but cannot take flight and move away from the brutalist architecture of the Pyramid of Tirana—once a memorial dedicated to the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, now transformed into one of the most important tech hubs in the Balkans. The story of the trapped dragonfly mirrors the experience of Rilond Risto, who spent 21 years in solitary confinement in an Albanian prison, using makeshift materials to build mechanical insects capable of flying. A narrative suspended between reality and metaphor, reflecting on humanity’s eternal struggle to break free from a destiny imposed by history and society.

Pauline Curnier Jardin
Adoration, 2022
8’56”
Color film, stereo sound

On the island of Giudecca, in Venice, within the walls of a women’s prison that was once the Convent of the Convertite, sixty female inmates rediscover a buried history: that of the nuns—many of them former prostitutes—who every Carnival, starting from the 16th century, cast off their religious habits for one night to perform in theatrical plays. Together with artist Pauline Curnier Jardin, the inmates collectively rewrite that forgotten history, transforming their self-portraits and drawings into an animation that fuses past and present. The result is Adoration, a brief, collective film in which the suspension and inversion of rules span the centuries, mirroring two communities of women distant in time but united by the same desire: to stop being, if only for an instant, what the walls force them to be.

Harun Farocki
Bedtime Stories: Bridges, Ships, Cats, 1976/77
3’10” (each episode)
Original 16 mm, restored and digitized as color HD film

Twin sisters Anna and Lara play at inventing bedtime stories: they imagine ships with teeth capable of sailing down streets; bridges that spin on themselves like carousels; and cats that become new fashion icons. To each conjured image, Harun Farocki responds with real-life footage—ships, architecture, animals—creating a playful dialogue between what is told and what is seen. The three videos close with the girls asleep; the game ends, but the images seem to keep thinking on their own.