Through experiments with storytelling, documentary forms, and installation, this project fabricates a memory of the first Third World Filmmakers Meeting, held in Algiers in 1973. The event, coorganized by an Argentine filmmaker and an architect, and sponsored by the Algerian Office National pour le Commerce et l'Industrie Cinématographique, served as a hub where “third-world” filmmakers discussed the role of cinema in anticolonial struggles and made agreements to support each other’s work. A second iteration of the meeting was held in Buenos Aires, in 1974. Supported by the short-lived Third World (research) Institute “Manuel Ugarte” at the University of Buenos Aires, the organizers—together with another Argentine architect working in Algiers, the artist’s mother—planned the making of a documentary about the anticolonial movements in Africa to inform and inspire a Latin American audience. Based on an archive the artist inherited from her mother, the film installation of A Non-Coincidental Mirror explores the role of architecture and cinema in this decolonial project, considering what productive frictions can be traced between architecture and filmmaking within the critique of social “commitment” and its relevance to our contemporary times.

Carmen Amengual is an interdisciplinary artist, independent researcher, and filmmaker from Argentina, living between Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. Her practice engages archives, literature, myths, and oral histories to examine the intersections of memory, biography, and political history. Working across film, installation, sound, text, and sculpture, she investigates how collective imaginaries and identity formations shape political imagination and how historical experience is transmitted across generations. Her projects rearticulate narratives of resistance while excavating their emancipatory potential. Amengual’s work has been presented nationally and internationally at Smack Mellon (Brooklyn), Artists Space (New York), Human Resources and 2220 Arts & Archives (Los Angeles), Table (Chicago), Cité internationale des arts (Paris), Biquini Wax EPS (Mexico City), and Museo Centenario (Buenos Aires). She has also participated in conferences and screenings across the US and abroad. She is a Whitney ISP fellow, Vera List Center fellow, Graham Foundation grantee, and Creative Capital awardee.