20/20 Vision is our monthly micro-cinema night at argos: a shifting line-up of moving images and video works, from shorts to features, from the archive and beyond. With only 20 chairs for 20 spectators, we gather around for a programme shaped around a topic or a filmmaker. We open the bar, ladle out hot soup, and invite you to sink into a collective viewing experience. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes provocative, always a little unexpected. The programme is designed to spark conversations or maybe even disagreements.

Seats are limited, so come early; spots and soup are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. The bar and ticket office open at 18:00, poet Zaïneb Hamdi starts off the evening with a performance at 19:00, the screenings start at 19:30.

In collaboration with kortfilm.be, an essay will be published on each of the subjects of the 20/20 Vision screenings this fall and winter. You can find the essay for this specific edition here.

Pricing (includes a bowl of soup)
€ 6 - € 8 - € 10 depending on your financial capacity.

This September’s 20/20 Vision takes its title from one of the works in the programme, and invites us to confront the images that document, question, and reframe police violence.

Sourour, Fabian, Mawda, Semira, Mehdi, Adil… The list of people killed or harmed by police violence is far too long, both in Belgium and beyond. These are not isolated events. They reveal a deeper, structural problem of state violence, one that targets racialised people first and most.

More and more, people are speaking out. They organise, push back, and - above all - refuse to forget. Between anger and grief, slow justice systems and evaded responsibilities, images become tools: to expose, to resist, to remember.

1 by Shelly Silver
USA, 2001, 3 min, EN spoken - EN subtitles
A group of cops laugh and talk, while scanning the street for suspicious activity. Extreme close-ups reveal an inquisitive hostility.

Trigger Warning by Scott Fitzpatrick
CA, 2017, 5 min, no dialogue - no subtitles
An examination of everyday household objects based on a list published in the December, 2016 issue of Harper's Magazine, shot on a camera shaped like a gun.

Plot Point by Nicolas Provost
BE, 2007, 15 min, no dialogue - no subtitles
Crowded streets and blaring sirens turn New York City into a fictive, filmic scenery. Plot Point questions the boundaries of reality and fiction by playing with our collective memory, cinematic codes and narrative language.

Giverny I (Négresse Impériale) by Ja’Tovia Gary
USA, 2017, 6 min, EN spoken - no subtitles
A young black woman sits in the green gardens of Giverny while another woman broadcasts the death of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, in a police shooting in Minneapolis using Facebook's live-streaming feature.
Trigger warning: features live images of police violence

Why don’t the cops fight each other? by Grayson Earle
USA, 2021, 10 min, EN spoken - EN subtitles
An attempt to modify the relationships between police officers in Grand Theft Auto V illustrates the extent to which the cultural imaginary concerning the real world police is projected into the game space.

Contraindre by Fleuryfontaine
FR, 2020, 11 min, FR spoken - EN subtitles
The humiliating procedures of police arrests (knees on the ground, hands behind the head, handcuffed wrists, … ) are reproduced through the use of sensor suits and 3D mapping software, resulting in a choreography of reverberating violence.

Zaïneb Hamdi (1989) is a Belgian poet, author and performer. Her second collection of poems, Où mon amour sera ḥoub, was published in April 2024 and won the literary prize Les Grenades earlier this year.