You are working on a moving image project—a short film, a feature in development, a documentary, an essay, an installation, a piece you cannot yet name. You have less money than you would like. You may also have less crew, less time, less access, less equipment, and fewer permissions.

You suspect the constraint is shaping the work, but you are not sure whether to fight it or follow it.

This workshop is for you.

It is not a production class. We will not spend three hours discussing camera bodies or grant applications. We will spend three hours on the harder question: how to think, see, and edit in a way that turns scarcity from a wound into a method.

Over the three hours of the workshop, we will move through four movements:

• Frame: A short, structured introduction to the ideas that anchor the workshop: Hito Steyerl’s “poor image,” Chantal Akerman’s cinema of duration and proximity, and the long tradition of filmmakers who chose less when they could have had more.

• Encounter: Close viewing of four carefully chosen excerpts—Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Harun Farocki—each demonstrating a transferable principle you can carry directly into your own work. Not film history, but working tools.

• Application: A guided session through the most common problems low-budget filmmakers face: the location you cannot afford, the crew your subject will not accept, the footage you are embarrassed by, the scene you cannot ethically show—and the strategies that answer them, drawn from the films we have just watched.

• Individual feedback on your project: Every participant brings a project, at any stage and in any form, and receives direct, structured feedback: one reference matched to your work, one ethical question you have not yet asked yourself, one concrete next move you can take this week, and one thing already working that you should protect.

You will leave this workshop with a vocabulary, a small library of references, and a clearer sense of the next decision for your own film.

• A working understanding of the poverty-of-means tradition in moving image practice, and where your own project sits within it.

• Four transferable formal strategies, each tied to a specific film and a specific kind of problem.

• A set of ethical questions to ask yourself before you shoot, edit, or publish.

• Personal feedback on your project from outside its usual circle of readers.

• A practical next step you can attempt within the week.

What this workshop is not: it is not a lecture. It is not a screening. It is not a pep talk about doing more with less.

The economy of independent cinema has never been harder. Funding is shrinking, distribution is fragmented, and the pressure to compete with the production values of streaming-platform content has never been greater. The temptation is to scale up—to chase the look of money—and to lose, in the process, the very things small-scale work can do that large-scale work cannot: intimacy, access to vulnerable spaces, formal precision, ethical responsibility, and sustainability over a working life.

(For your personalised workshop package)

Please send the following at least a week before the workshop.

1. Project overview (max. 200 words)
A short description of the project you are currently working on.

Please include:

• What type of project you’re working on (film, installation, essay, etc.)

• What it is about

• Its current stage (idea, shooting, editing, stuck, etc.)

2. The constraint you are facing (or choosing)
Describe one key limitation shaping your project.

This could be:

• Lack of access (location, people, permissions)

• Minimal budget or equipment

• Time constraints

• Ethical restrictions (what you cannot or do not want to show)

• Personal or practical limitations

3. Your working conditions
A short list of what you actually have access to (if any):

• Locations

• People

• Equipment (keep it simple)

• Time available

Send your materials before the 17th of May at contact@noumenia.nl together with a proof of payment of your ticket for the workshop.