Independent Screenings and Conversations Around Women's Cinema
This curatorial platform was created to explore cinema through the work of women filmmakers, bringing together films from different countries, and artistic approaches. By placing these works in dialogue, Watching & Touching invites viewers to discover connections between films, directors, and ways of viewing.
Women have been making films since the beginning of cinema, yet their work remains underrepresented in distribution, exhibition, and public film culture. Watching & Touching helps to a broader visibility of women-directed cinema.
Why Watching & Touching?
We watch films, and they touch us. But we also, in a way, touch them: their surfaces, textures, rhythms and visual language. Through attentive viewing, we begin to sense the connections between films, filmmakers, our own experiences, and the images on screen. Cinema leaves its mark on us, just as we leave our own interpretations on cinema.
Watching & Touching is inspired by the idea that cinema is never purely visual. We experience films not only with our eyes, but also through memory, emotion and the body.
The name partly refers by the work of film scholars such as Laura U. Marks and Giuliana Bruno, whose writings explore the tactile, embodied experience of cinema. More importantly, however, it reflects our belief that film is a sensory and emotional encounter—one that transcends the identity of its makers. While our programmes and texts are more often dedicated to women filmmakers, Watching & Touching is ultimately about the experience of cinema itself: its ability to move us, connect us, and invite us into conversation through its unique visual language.
What we do exactly?
We discover, watch and curate films directed by women, creating space for thoughtful viewing and conversation. What began as an Instagram page has grown into an independent curatorial platform exploring hidden, overlooked, or forgotten voices in cinema from around the world.
Today, Watching & Touching organises and curates short film screenings in the heart of Lisbon. Each programme brings together films that speak to one another across different countries, generations and cinematic traditions, inviting viewers to experience cinema through shared reflection.
Who created it?
Watching & Touching was started in 2023 by Alina Kuzo, a film critic, researcher, and independent curator based in Lisbon.
The project began with a simple question: do we watch films differently when we know they were directed by women?
Rather than approaching this question solely through the lens of gender studies, Alina is interested in spectatorship, film reception and the ways knowledge, expectations and cultural context shape the experience of cinema.
The initial question did not lead to an interest in gender alone. Instead, it opened a broader investigation into how we experience films, how our assumptions influence interpretation, and how cinema creates meaning through its visual language and emotional power.
Collaborate & Contact
We welcome collaborations with cultural institutions, film festivals, cinemas, galleries, educational organisations, independent venues, and, of course, women who work in cinema.
For partnerships, press requests, or for any question about cinema please send a message:
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