By Rizky Rahadianto, Artist, Qamerad

01 July 2025 - 09:37

Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD and Sweatmother/Otherness Archive with other colleagues during their residency and workshop in May 2024.
Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD and Sweatmother/Otherness Archive with other colleagues during their residency and workshop in May 2024.   ©

© Doc. by Gloria Stephanie.

Recognising the importance of open film archiving and distribution as a form of queer solidarity, QAMERAD and Otherness Archive have launched a project focusing on queer and trans film and communities, titled SHARED CAMERA/DERIE: Queer Memories, Resources, and Transnational Solidarity.”

For those who are not familiar with these two initiatives, QAMERAD is co-founded and co-run by Rizky Rahad, a filmmaker, ethnographer, programmer, and author of the essay collection QUEERS SHOOT BACK!: Essays on Radical Queer Cinema (2023). Rahad’s personal works explore various methods of filmmaking and alternative queer film aesthetics, and QAMERAD acts as a queer film collective that often organises guerilla screenings in Bali, as well as sharing resources. 

While Otherness Archive was initiated by Sweatmother, a London-based artist and filmmaker whose personal works often combine performance, documentation, and archival and internet footage to explore and make visible queer lived experiences. Otherness Archive is a visual archive platform that documents queer films and their pioneers. It also aims to challenge the historical censorship of queer, trans, and racial themes that have been an otherness, but deserve equal recognition.

It is on the basis of this shared vision and strong background that QAMERAD and Otherness Archive were able to collaborate.

Digging into Film Archives and Queer Lives through Residencies and Workshops

In SHARED CAMERA/DERIE, QAMERAD and Otherness Archive aim to foster a long-term collaboration by exploring alternative modes of filmmaking and distribution to sustain transnational solidarity, especially within queer film communities. 

The name of this collaboration also has a connection to the vision of the project. The phrase ‘CAMERA/DERIE’ is a play on words that combines “camera” and “camaraderie,” or a sense of mutual trust among a group of people who share a common experience or working environment, which is relevant when linked to tied to non-mainstream, collective-based filmmaking initiatives.

Spanning April-September 2024, SHARED CAMERA/DERIE led to a cross-residency programme in Bali and London. These cross-residencies resulted in workshops, programming, and film archiving as key components of collective film practice. 

Sweatmother Hosted a Workshop on Film Archives as Art and Action

In the initial phase of the project, which ran in May 2024, Sweatmother first spent two weeks in Bali and conducted three workshop programmes on critical topics. 

In the first session of the workshop, Living Archives, Sweatmother explored the use of archives as an art form, as well as an act of resistance, by queer and trans+ communities.

Then in the second session, Trans Feminism in the Digital Age, Sweatmother outlined ways to run an inclusive and sustainable queer collective space, and how to practice the idea of trans feminism in a world of surveillance, censorship and disregard for trans communities and ideas.

Closing the series with the third session, Collective Curations with Otherness Archive, Sweatmother introduced her initiative, Otherness Archive, as an archival resource for queer and trans+ communities on a global scale. The workshop culminated in a film screening.

Dozens of participants attended the programme, with almost half of the participants identified as trans or non-binary. To ensure a more inclusive and accessible event, the programme also provided ramps for wheelchair users and sign language interpreters in Indonesian and English.

“I learned so much beyond my Western education and perspectives while at my residency in Indonesia,” said Sweatmother. “QAMERAD offered insight into their lived experiences, culture and community that no book or form of tourism could ever teach me.”

Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD (right) attending and screening films at Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest 2024.
Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD (right) attending and screening films at Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest 2024. ©

© Doc. by Jonah Garrett-Bannister

Workshop session in London led by Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD.
Workshop session in London led by Rizky Rahad/QAMERAD.  ©

© Doc. by Yacob Wilfred

Scene from a workshop in Bali led by Sweatmother/Otherness Archive. Participants are conversing in groups of three.
Scene from a workshop in Bali led by Sweatmother/Otherness Archive. Participants are conversing in groups of three.  ©

© Doc. by Gloria Stephanie

Rizky Rahad Shared about Alternative Queer Aesthetics

In the second phase of the cross-residency in September 2024, Rizky Rahad took turns to spend two weeks in London. 

Similar to Sweatmother’s activity in Bali, Rizky led three workshop sessions that explored the politics of representation in queer communities, and sought ways towards a more radical collective liberation. 

Starting the workshop with The Queer Aesthetics of Escape session, Rahad shared about utilising various text and film materials to discuss queer aesthetics as an effort to escape from regimes of control, state-level violence, and political co-optation of neoliberalism with the aim of finding alternative possibilities in living everyday life.

Continuing in the second session, Restaging Queer Archives as Collective Care, Rahad elaborated on several alternative praxis and methodologies that foster collective care, accompanied by a screening of Rahad’s film, House of R3ncong (2022) and a discussion about QAMERAD as a collective that uniquely grew in Bali.

The third session, Folklore as Speculative Queer Future(s), was also very important and actually relevant to Indonesian audiences. In this session, Rahad explored the theme of folklore and myth as speculative queer futures, discussed moving image works from Indonesia that resist the identity stamp of neoliberalism politics, and imagined the idea of queer liberation by re-reading narratives of gender nonconformity in pre-colonial Indonesia.

What did Rahad learn from his residency? “Through this project, I realised the value of collaborating with queer people from other parts of the world as a way to close the gap of opportunities and resources in each country and move together towards collective liberation,” he opined. For Rahad, connecting with independent film communities in London was special as he was able to experience a DIY community spirit that he had never experienced in other regions.

Towards New Collaborations for Queer Solidarity

This collaborative project not only established a broader representative platform for queer communities, but also built a stronger foundation of cross-border solidarity between queer communities through the distribution and redistribution of resources and archives. 

The outcomes of this residency are in line with the objectives of Connections Through Culture, which aims to develop new networks and collaborations between creative practitioners in the Asia Pacific region and the UK with a focus on diversity and inclusion. 

In the process, this project also involves a number of other initiatives in Bali and London, such as Cahyati Press (Bali), Queer Indonesia Archive (Bali), and Atlas Cinema (London).

As the project opens up many opportunities for future collaborations, QAMERAD and Otherness Archive are developing a new category within Otherness Archive, namely “QUEER AS FOLK/LORE,” which will feature moving image works from Indonesia. This category is a new step in acquiring works not only from the region, but also Southeast Asia, that imagine and speculate the future of queer lives through folklore and mythology. 

Through the networks built by QAMERAD and Otherness Archive in their respective regions, this project can engage more initiatives, communities and collectives, screen more film or other moving image works, and archive them in an open platform.