No terra nullius

The concept of territory extends beyond mere physical space, stretching to encompass material and immaterial networks of power, control and belonging. The geographical power configuration of "global north and south" that we today inherit was created by imperialist and colonial assaults across Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The post-Reformation enclosure of common lands for private sale, the globalism that was set into motion with the explosion of maritime trade, and the conquest of space through virtual means: All these things have historically been wielded as weapons of epistemological violence, tools to occupy, repress, categorise, erase, and severe the connections between indigenous communities and the land. Land only holds value when it is associated with certain rights: How can the rightful owners reclaim their lands and territories?

Today, the histories, realities, and future abysses of territorial occupation must be addressed, yet to say something substantial about the everyday realities of communities resisting occupation requires an effort to understand the "other" as self.

From grassroots workers’ movements in Brazil to indigenous communities in Amazonia and Australia and independence movements in Kurdistan and Okinawa: No terra nullius is a collectively curated film program that brings together multiple viewpoints on land stewardship, self-determination, and colonial resistance. Through a selection of fiction and documentary films that draw a line between different occupied territories across the world and the struggles that unite them, we ask: How can transnational networks of solidarity support and amplify the voices of communities resisting territorial occupation? ––The curators

Afsun Moshiry is a film curator and cultural activist working and living in Berlin.

Thaís Omine (she/her) is a queer Okinawan-Brazilian visual anthropologist based in Berlin.

Galo E. Rivera (they/he) is an immunologist (Dr. rer. nat), audiovisual artist, and web developer born in Ecuador.

Viviane Tabach is a Brazilian curator and art mediator based in Berlin.

Funded by the North-South Bridges Foundation with financial support from the BMZ and by LEZ with funds from the Federal Foreign Office.