Committed images

Plural and alternative citizenships,
between (re)creation and performances

Series of 3 meetings - Autumn 2025

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The aim of the "Images engagées" meetings is to examine the dual role of images as a means of visualising citizens' expressions and as a means of political (self)representation (asserting, bearing witness, making claims). As visual representations and counter-representations of conflict, and as part of militant struggles, images literally allow us to see and think about the political visions and divisions of the social world. As such, they are an inexhaustible source of material for social science research.

Cycle organised as part of the
IPPI-Med - Images of the political and the politics of the image in the Mediterranean
Scientific directors :
Philippe Aldrin (MESOPOLHIS), Pascal Cesaro (Prism),
Pierre Fournier (MESOPOLHIS) & Vincent Geisser (IREMAM)

MESOPOLHIS: "Images and Social Sciences" cross-cutting theme
MMSH: "SHS de site", "Science-society-art" scientific policy areas

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Day 3 - «Creating society: imag(in)ing migration, representing plural citizenships».»

Friday 5 December 2025 | 9am - 5pm | Cinéma Le Miroir, projection room, Vieille Charité (Marseille)

Day co-organised with the MiMed seminar (Places and territories of migration in the Mediterranean).

This day is designed around 2 films directed by Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello which, 7 years apart, make up a diptych on the small town of Riace in Calabria where migration has had a particular impact.

The first film « Un paese di Calabria» shows the reception of Kurdish migrants in Riace and tells the story of a community whose upper town was dying and was thus reborn, giving it a new future and becoming a showcase against the conservative authorities. 

The second film « Un paese di resistenza» (A country of resistance)»  reports on the reactions of the populists in power, who have made the example of Riace their target by using the Italian justice system to prosecute the village's mayor.

The two films are a particularly interesting way of reflecting on the various challenges posed by migration phenomena for citizens, and on the conditions for using cinema to portray them in an environment where the issues are politically crystallised, between the defence of humanitarian migration and the hardening of perceptions of otherness and political pressure.

Programme :

• Morning (9am - 12pm)

Screening: Un paese di Calabria (a film by Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello, 2016, 1h36)
Discussion with the directors : Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello
Round table Shu Aiello, Mélissa Blanchard, Catherine Catella, Andrea Gallinal Arias, Lama Kabbanji, Séverine Mathieu, Sylvie Mazzella, Anna Proto Pisani

• Afternoon (2pm - 5pm)

Screening: A country of resistance (a film by Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello, 2023, 1h30)
Discussion with the directors : Catherine Catella and Shu Aiello
Round table Shu Aiello, Philippe Aldrin, Catherine Catella, Cesare Mattina, Julien O'Miel, Caroline Renard

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Previous meetings :

Day 1 "Making traces: mobilising images and visual memories of the struggle".

Day 2 «Colonisations, decolonisations. Looking at commitments through images».»