Foyer Conversations will feature conversations with curators, film practitioners, academics and organizations engaged in alternative cinema culture and practices of commoning around the world.

Every cinema lover knows that the best conversations take place in the foyer!

With our new podcast series Foyer Conversations, we hope to capture the spirit of those probing, freewheeling and inspiring discussions that we have immediately before and after a film screening.

Each podcast episode will take on a different idea related to the past, present and future of alternative cinema exhibition. We will speak to film practitioners, curators, academics and organizations from around the world who are engaging with these questions everyday in their work. We’ll also include speakers working across urban planning, architecture, history, sociology and visual art, to expand the conversation about how cinema fits into and shapes the wider lived realities of our lives. 

Our first episode, Foyer Conversations: What Is the Commons? offers an introduction to the history and practice of commoning. Our guest, Stavros Stavrides, is an architect and academic who has written extensively on this subject, with a particular focus on the connection between urban space, commoning and political organizing, in both Europe and Latin America. 

Episode One is now available to listen and download worldwide on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts and Podcast Index.

If you enjoy this conversation, it’s worth noting that Stavros Stavrides will be joining us as a keynote speaker at the Cinema of Commoning Symposium in Berlin on 5 July 2024.

Stavros Stavrides is an architect and activist, and Professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he teaches graduate courses on housing design (social housing included) and urban design, as well as a postgraduate course on the metropolitan experience. He is currently the head of NTUA Lab for Architectural Design and Communication. He has done extensive research fieldwork in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico focused on housing-as-commons and on urban struggles for self-management. He has lectured in European, North and South American Universities on urban struggles and practices of urban commoning.

Foyer Conversations is a new podcast series from Cinema of Commoning.

Episode One was initiated and presented by Eirini Fountedaki and Rachel Pronger.
It was produced by Eirini Fountedaki, Rachel Pronger and Gülsen Namıduru.