Collectif Faire-Part is a collective of Belgian and Congolese artists. Together, they aim to tell new stories about Kinshasa, Brussels, and the complex relationships between them. The group was founded by filmmakers Anne Reijniers, Paul Shemisi, Nizar Saleh, and Rob Jacobs when they first collaborated in 2016. Today, Collectif Faire-Part consists of a slightly larger group of regular collaborators between Belgium and the DRC. In addition to filmmaking, they also work with photography, curate programs, lead workshops, and organize a biennial performance festival called SOKL.

Stephanie Collingwoode Williams, who co-curated and co-organized the last two editions of SOKL, joined the group in 2021.

Collectif Faire-Part supports the principles of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from Palestine and urges every cultural organization to formally and publicly adopt these principles. Institutional statements are hollow without the concrete actions proposed by BDS. If the field does not collectively embrace these practices, it signifies a failure of meaningful solidarity with the Palestinian people.

For more information, visit the website: Collectif Faire-Part (collectif-fairepart.com)

More about the members:

• Anne Reijniers (BE, she/her) is a filmmaker and farmer. She co-founded the Belgian-Congolese film collective ‘Collectif Faire-Part’ alongside Rob Jacobs, Paul Shemisi, and Nizar Saleh. Besides her collective film practice with Collectif Faire-Part, Anne focuses on ecological filmmaking, ecofeminism, and the potential of collective ecological gardening as anti-capitalist resistance.
• Paul Shemisi Betutua studied film at Les Ateliers Action, a film program by INSAS in Kinshasa, DR Congo. He has worked on various films as a director, co-director, screenwriter, producer, and DOP, including Bayindo, Faire-Part, and System K. He co-founded the Belgian-Congolese film ensemble ‘Collectif Faire-Part’ with Rob Jacobs, Anne Reijniers, and Nizar Saleh. Paul films with patience and great care for the people in front of his camera. In addition to filmmaking, Paul Shemisi is also a photographer and rapper.
• Rob Jacobs (BE, he/they) is a filmmaker and organizer. As a member of Collectif Faire-Part, he makes documentaries and curates a nomadic performance festival. Rob also leads workshops on masculinity and relational violence for young people.
• Nizar Saleh is a photographer, video artist, and music producer working between Kinshasa and Antwerp. He is a member of Collectif Faire-Part, a group of Belgian and Congolese filmmakers. After studying visual communication and photography at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, Saleh created several short documentaries about Kinshasa’s art scene. His fiction and documentary work reflect on the relationship between people and their environment. He is deeply influenced by the colonial and post-colonial narratives between Belgium and DR Congo, the people who live there, and the many complex relationships between them.
• Stephanie Collingwoode Williams (BE, she/they) is a former social worker, anthropologist, trainer, and curator. Raised in Ghana, she studied in the Netherlands and Belgium, where she has been involved with various climate justice and anti-racist movements.

In the context of the exhibition Joy Boy, a tribute to Julius Eastman at NW, Collectif Faire-Part collaborates with artists Victoire Karera Kampire, Fallon Mayanja, and Mawena Yehouessi:

• Fallon Mayanja is a composer, artist, and performer who explores alternatives to perception. Creating listening environments is the primary gesture that defines Fallon’s practice and research. With a broad understanding of listening that includes the porosity of touch, the tangibility of sound, and the elusiveness of sight, Fallon mobilizes different relationships with our environment and social, interrelational, and self-reflective ideas.
• Mawena Yehouessi (also known as M.Y or M/Y) is an art curator, writer, researcher, and artist born in 1990. Her practice is rooted in collage, Afrofuturism, and Black poetics; she mostly works collaboratively. Educated in (PhD) philosophy, literature, project management, and contemporary dance, M.Y traverses alternative realities: she uses each project as an opportunity to conjure prospective imaginaries and liberatory methodologies (rather than merely exploring them).
• Victoire Karera Kampire is a Belgian-Rwandan filmmaker and sound designer. Central to her artistic exploration is the notion of absence, which fills her films — places of hallucinatory archives and experiments at the boundary of documentary and fiction — with a haunting presence.