Darkness Reframed - Sonsbeek 2026 x Focus film programme
Sonsbeek 2026 Wheelchair accessible
Focus Filmtheater, Arnhem
5 August –
30 September 2026
Filmvertoning
Inleiding
Throughout August and September, Focus Film Theater and Sonsbeek 2026 present Darkness Reframed - eight screening programs featuring cinema classics and artist shorts at the roof top cinema and in the cinema room. With introductions and Q&As afterwards, the film program opens up the space to reflect on how Western imperialisation and its inherited forms of representation have impacted memory. Departure point for the film program is the Heart of Darkness exhibition curated by Marianne Brouwer at the Kröller-Muller museum in 1994-95, which has been a touchstone for Sonsbeek 2026. Part of the exhibition was Citizen X, a video programme curated by Corinne Diserens, which will be revisited in Darkness Reframed.
Darkness Reframed is curated by Berber Meindertsma, in conversation with Christina Li, Amira Gad and Kim van der Werff
Programme
– August 5, Citizen X Revisited
– August 7, West Beirut (outdoor cinema)
– August 14, Persepolis: Animating Resistance (outdoor cinema)
– September 9, Excavating Darkness: a sensorial (dis)orientation in four parts - ArtEZ (outdoor cinema)
– September 18, Good Bye, Lenin! (outdoor cinema)
– August 26, Memories talking back
– September 23, Propaganda in reverse
– September 30, Migratory movements and cultural myths
You can get your tickets for each event via Focus filmtheater
About the programme
Sonsbeek 2026 reimagines memory as a vibrant site shaped by forms we choose, inherit, or need to share with each other especially when memory is fragile, contested, or deteriorating. This edition is presented in a time of ongoing conflict and global crisis, a marked difference from its founding in a post-World War II moment of reflection and reconstruction. Memory is seen as alive, entangled with the urgencies of the present that include war and living in exile.
A key touchstone for Sonsbeek 2026 is the landmark exhibition Heart of Darkness curated by Marianne Brouwer at the Kröller-Muller museum in 1994-95. Taking its name and provocation from Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, the exhibition held up a mirror to the Western world, its Enlightenment ideals and inherited forms of representation. Extending the exhibition’s reach was Citizen X, a video programme curated by Corinne Diserens, positioning artist films and videos as urgent alternatives to the relentless circulation of indifferent images that flatten thought and commercialise everyday life. These films offered windows into experiences of exile, exploring notions of identity, and the struggles against the erasure of memory.
Thirty-two years after Citizen X, Sonsbeek 2026 returns to its questions - and asks what has changed, and what has not. In partnership with Focus Filmtheater, Sonsbeek 2026 brings films from the Citizen X -programme together with cinema classics and artist films from new generations.
Introduced by filmmakers themselves, curators from Sonsbeek 2026 and Focus’ Head of Programmes & Education, Kim van der Werff, the film programme opens up the space to reflect on how Western imperialisation and Enlightenment ideals have impacted memory - how and who remembers and forgets, and which memories go on to haunt us.