Other Cinemas is an artist-led project that uses film to bring people together to imagine and build just futures for Black and non-white communities. By combining community screenings, a film school and film production, Other Cinemas seeks to think expansively about the potential of film as a tool for social change.
What we do
Community Screenings
Free, regular community screenings and events which showcase the work of Black and non-white artists and filmmakers who explore the lives of their communities and imagine possibilities for liberation. These events also encourage communities to reflect on these films together, to talk and debate, and draw out ways we can create solidarities and connect struggles.
Film School
This practice of community building extends to our free year-long film school, which creates a space for collective imagining and creation for Black and non-white artists. Through a pedagogical approach that centres justice, ethics and community building, the cohort produces a portfolio of films which helps to nurture their own creative practice.
Production
To resource this work more sustainably, we also produce high-quality films to a defined brief for artists, international arts institutions and museums. This work helps us to offer filmmaking opportunities to our students and other Black and non-white artists, whilst building a more resilient and autonomous Other Cinemas.
Other Cinemas runs its own community cinema which is an intimate, informal and comfortable space - designed to be familiar and similar to our own living rooms. Other Cinemas is currently based at Metroland Studios in Kilburn, London.
Other Cinemas was founded in 2019 by Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa, a filmmaking duo focused on gathering people together to talk, to learn and to create films. Their films reflect on the forces which shape the communities they belong to such as environmental harm and legacies of colonialism. They are also guided by questions of justice and how those in the margins create vital spaces for resistance, knowledge production, and alternative ways of being. Their films have been screened at festivals such as CPH:DOX, Dokufest, London Short Film Festival (awarded Best Short Documentary ’25) and BlackStar Film Festival (Best Short Documentary 2024). In 2025, they were shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award and were also selected as Flaherty Fellows.