Movement Song + Q&A • SUMMER OF STUDIO/QUEER
Movement Song is a queer speculative documentary about a young Caribbean researcher who is processing grief and heartbreak. She navigates this through the writings of James Baldwin and finds herself in St. Paul-de-vence, a small village where Baldwin spent the last 16 years of his life, driven by unprocessed grief. Here, she meets the woman who holds Baldwin’s archive. They develop a special bond.
Movement Song explores (diasporic) grief and heartbreak, movement through and with archives, and the recognition of oneself in the writings of another. It also navigates the meaning of exile and home-making; who is allowed to put down roots, how do we protect these roots, and what roots do we find in relation?
After the screening, there will be a Q&A with filmmakers Mayis Rukel and Victoria McKenzie, in which we will further dive into these questions of archiving, Black and queer legacies, and the poetics of diaspora, exile and relation.
Movement Song debuted at Mondriaan Fonds’ Prospects in Rotterdam, March 2025. This intimate screening at Studio/K includes a Q&A session with filmmakers Mayis Rukel and Victoria McKenzie.
About the panelists:
Mayis Rukel (director)
Mayis Rukel is a Turkish artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Rotterdam. His work explores magical research, liberatory remembering, radical pedagogies, child-woven futures, and befriending ghosts.
He received the GRA Award for Autonomous Arts 2020 and Mondriaan Fonds Kunstenaar Start (2023). His short fiction The Pendant was featured at the Nederlands Film Festival (2020), and his feature-length fiction-documentary Movement Song was part of Mondriaan Fonds Prospects 2025. He holds a BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute’s Ecologies of Transformation, where he explored the role of art and artists in social change.
Rukel is the co-facilitator of Radical Roots, a community-building art project based on stories of food and migration in the refugee centers across the Netherlands. His collaborations include KABK, TENT Rotterdam, and IMPAKT, and his work has been reviewed in De Volkskrant, Het Parool, Metropolis M, (A)WAKE and Filmkrant. His debut novel is set for release in fall 2025.
Victoria McKenzie (filmmaker & actor)
Victoria McKenzie is a Jamaican-Trinidadian academic-activist, research architect and movement artist. Her work focuses on the interconnections between the built environment; socio-politics and climate change through a decolonial lens.
She is the founder and director of an architectural research agency ‘RRA’ Radical Research & Re-storying Agency (2022) which asks the question: “how can the pre-colonial past inform a decolonial future?” and has worked on a variety of architectural projects in the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Alongside RRA, Victoria is a proponent of radical pedagogy and has taught at various institutions in the Netherlands including the Sandberg Institute, Rietveld Academie; St. Joost School of Art & Design and currently at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) MA Non-Linear Narratives.
As a radical dreamer and believer that a new and just future can exist, Victoria has worked with a variety of architectural practices and arts institutions such as ICE Institute for Creative Exchange, Cittadellarte, Triennale di Milano, SOCA – Studio of Contemporary Architecture, Amisacho Restoracíon, Somerset House, Forensic Architecture, Adjaye Associates and Het Nieuwe Instituut—to connect art, design, politics and ecology. She sits on the board of directors for African Design Matters and her most recent joy has been hosting the podcast Kitchen Flex, which opens the space for a dialogue on decolonizing spaces, places and life on Earth.
