It is known that the term solidarity emerged in connection to the labor struggles in the 19th century, and marked the 20th century with its infiltration of the political and diplomatic spheres¹. It is fact, personal is political and vice versa, but how can one take back the solidarity that has been co-opted by the imposed diplomatic ties? How to make politics personal outside of geopolitics? 

In the region that I come from, known as Eastern Europe, or otherwise Baltics, international solidarity in the 20th century was largely associated with the state imposed authority. Albeit international ties were created and solidarity attempts materialized, it has seldom resulted in genuine efforts from the people themselves. It is fair to say that this was largely due to the mediator being the state. The connections, conversations and encounters were strictly monitored, creating merely a facade of unity. An empty, mandatory task turned into a word that didn’t quite reach the hearts and the minds of those involved. For example, during the internationalist diplomacy era of the Cold War, in the state sponsored film festivals of the USSR such as Moscow International or All-Union Film Festival, albeit international films, which reflected acute issues of their worlds, were screened, international and local participants and guests were separated, their encounters were strictly monitored. A solidarity in fog, where people blindly grasp to connect on a personal and not only political plane. 

And yet there exists another example, which resulted in a rich tapestry of chaotic connections amongst the local and international participants. This festival was firstly known as Afro Asian Film Festival in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and later – simply as Tashkent film festival. Of course, the festival had to fulfill its duty as a state sponsored official event to increase the soviet influence on the newly post-colonial world, but Tashkent film festival was largely left to evolve on its own and outside of the watchful authoritarian eye. It existed in its periphery. The true solidarity efforts happened organically, during the coming together after hours, where Uzbek hospitality took the main stage. People were mingling, talking, discussing, eating, drinking and dancing. The true solidarity efforts also happened during the mistranslations and miscommunications, as in the works of simultaneous translators, and their ability and sometimes inability to grasp words and their interpretation from images. Perhaps poetically, if not comically, those mistranslated pieces often served as the coming together of contrary cultures, and resulted in something quite unique at that particular moment. An amalgam of meanings, often cheered or booed by an active participation of the audience. 

To many western guests, who came to see what was then referred to as ‘the third world cinema’, such scenes of chaos, mistranslation and miscommunication, additionally clamored by the excited audiences, were utterly foreign, outside of the respectable approach and behavior in other film festivals². But I would dare to say that, while state sponsored international or official events had the body – the facade, it didn’t have the soul, as the soul emerged there, where the ends didn’t quite meet. The audiences at Tashkent film festival managed to create the space of living the differences, instead of observing them. This soul of multiple tensions has appeared in other cinemas across the world too, for example in the late 60s in Egypt or in Lebanon (Tripoli to be more exact), where young audience members were known to engage with the films by whistling or attempting to fight the main hero on screen. A cinema in Egypt, where Soviet propaganda films were screened, became a renowned spot for lovers to go to. Under the light of didactic messages of brighter tomorrow, couples were making-out, making their own versions of the day to come. Perhaps it is far from the results intended by the authoritarian state, but nevertheless, an engaging way of histories to come together³. 

These moments of mistranslation, conflicting actions and unintended outcomes, is not a result of a neglect, but rather of an eagerness to find their own ways to engage with the material often foreign, in the word’s many senses, to them. To meet somewhere in the middle and relate to the message and the world portrayed. To actively engage with it, grapple with the meaning or a situation that is hard to grasp, and not to remain passive observers in an ivory tower. And possibly, soundtracking someone’s dates is not so bad afterall. Afterall, the stagnant propaganda was transformed into a much more personal experience that will remain.

The word in question derives from Latin solidus, which refers to being a whole – a whole sum and this is where the fallacy of this ‘word as action’ hides. It promises us unattainable, but most of all, presents a homogenous definition of what solidarity is. A monolithic facade – impenetrable, opaque. Akin to diplomatic handshakes – solemn, possibly with a constrained joke or two. Maria Berios in her definition of solidarity for the “Glossary for common knowledge” alludes to splicing up the whole and releasing the multiple stories held inside⁴. She argues that only then the relationships come not in a closed off circle, bordered up by geopolitical walls, but by criss-crossing left and right, and revealing all kinds of complex encounters. Solidarity is not meant to be easy, and it is not meant to be comfortable. But most of all, it is not meant to be homogenous. The act of ‘splicing up the whole’ was meant to release the multiple relationships as well as the multiple ways of solidarizing, away from the state initiated facades of diplomatic care. 

To meet someone in their difference or to live the difference is what is required in international solidarity. Our pain will never be the same, nor will the circumstances causing it. This leads to the question – what is solidarity and how to make it? So much that separates us. Different worlds, realities, gaps in the land, and gaps in thinking. My mind drifts to this summer, when, in a small town in Italy, 12 participants gathered for a residency under the premise of Moasherat (مُعاشِرات) meaning cohabitation in arabic. The residency was run by Fehras Publishing Practices (Sami Rustom, Nancy Naser Al Deen and Sina Ahmadi) who were invited to Italy by an Italian curator Chiara Cartuccia. For 12 hours a day we inhabited the space from cooking to dancing, to sharing our pain. An exercise of splitting open the facade of ‘holding it all together’ was truly cathartic. But it also felt deeply uncomfortable, vulnerable, embarrassing….

Most of the pain seemed and still seems irrelevant in the darkness of the genocide in Gaza bulging daily from our phones. However, It nevertheless felt important to reveal the pain, however big or small, in order to sit, not only with the uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability, but also of releasing the pain for it to exist in the entanglement of all the different ones. Looking at the relationships of pain criss-crossing, mutating, I found it very hard to unpack what was really happening. It took me even longer to process the results. To start with – fear, anger and guilt were overly present. Sitting in this discomfort led to the process of long term results. At present, I hold those people with whom we shared ‘the moment of splicing up the whole’ and moasherat   very dear, because, through sharing the uncomfortable, I learned a great deal. Solidarity, it seems, is not what is straightforward, and it does not come in ideal, defined shape.

Perhaps that’s why state or other power based solidarities fail – they are based on simplification and unification rather than on holding the difference. Going back in time, back when the USSR initiated international solidarity efforts, the global south saw the USSR as a positive force, given their stance against US imperialism. This is certainly contradictory to the perspectives from occupied territories such as the Baltic states. The idea of solidarity in the territories under the soviet occupation was imposed from top to bottom, feeling more like a quota than a grass-roots initiative of care. However, what if we approached these once established relationships anew,  away from authoritarian power dynamics? Could this past solidarity or relationship between the Global South and Eastern Europe could be revived? All while standing in different points of departure to the old solidarity ties?

Away from diplomacy efforts, from solidarity as an equalizing, a rounding up ‘whole’, dotted small grass-root initiatives emerge from the past – maybe they are those bones that refused to burn. Perhaps they are small and forgotten, but they signal something important – a historical constellation or solidarity in time. They constitute dotted initiatives away from state imposed norms that came together to form a greater sense of justice for a world liberated from oppression and exploitation. To take two self-initiated examples that happened during the Cold War era in the 60’s and 70’s, outside, or at least, at the periphery of the state regulated diplomacy efforts. In France, an association under the name of Jeune Peinture – a figurative artist union in the time of French abstract art – became known as a politically motivated artist organization. Its members worked in solidarity with Vietnamese, Cuban and Palestinian people, and themselves strived for active collaborations with them. Amidst the aesthetic abstraction craze, they worked against art that “exists outside of the real world and can remain unaffected by the logic of society”. 

In former Yugoslavia, students at Students Cultural Center (SKC) in Belgrade organised multiple events in solidarity with liberation causes across the globe. One important event was The Week of Latin America, where students invited various guerilla group members across Latin America to address their struggle against neo-colonialism. It is important to note that the event took place when non-aligned-movement (NAM) took a step back in revolutionary politics and engaged in balancing global powers. As a result, SKC’s activity became not in-line with official state positions. Despite this, the event managed to bring people from Latin America dotted away in exile, and not only to present their cause to the local public, but also an opportunity for otherwise separated diaspora dissidents to come together. In the events throughout the week, film played a very important part – a Third cinema was presented and discussed as an alternative to non-political, neo-colonial, entertainment based Hollywood cinema, far away from the realities in the Latin world. Often experimental in nature these films searched for local languages to connect with the wider world – not through assimilating, but through portraying their difference.

Likewise, at present, in the time of conflicts and governmental mapping of new allies, it becomes important to search for and even more – to become – such dotted initiatives outside of the state imposed norms. Not all of them will be the same, not all of them will present matters one can equate too, but by being there in pain (and joy), will most likely offer us something outside of homogeneity of international geopolitics. Videogramos’24 video art and moving image festival’s program hopes to readdress these charred bones of solidarity from socialist state(s) initiated international solidarities outside of the western hegemony, and reassemble them anew. 

1. Rasha Salti y Kristine Khouri (ed.), Past Disquiet ; artists, international solidarity, and museums-in-exile Varsovia, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej, 2018. ↩︎
2. Masha Salazkina, World Socialist Cinema. Alliances, Affinities, and Solidarities in the Global Cold War, California, University of California Press, 2023. ↩︎
3. Ifdal Elsaket,, Daniël Biltereyst, Philippe Meers, Lúcia Nagib, Julian Ross (eds.), Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. ↩︎
4. María Berríos, “Solidarity and storytelling. Rumours against enclosure” en Glossary of Common Knowledge, L’Internationale, 2019, accessible en línea en: https://glossary.mg-lj.si/referential-fields/solidarity-2/solidarity-2  ↩︎