Focus: Common Land

Studied theatre, film and television as well as Romance and German literature (gaining an MA) at the Ruhr University Bochum, the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Glasgow. Since 1996, she has worked as a freelance film curator. She devises programmes, workshops, talks and ideas for various festivals and symposia in film and theatre, since 1996 mainly for femme totale / Internationales Frauen Film Fest Dortmund+Köln.
She works in film and theatre as dramaturge, researcher, production manager and organiser. She hosts events, does press relations work, manages projects for the Nacht der Jugenkultur (youth culture event in North Rhine-Westphalia), and publishes work on radio and in print media. She also sits on international jury panels, including in Tel Aviv, Yerivan, Innsbruck, Prishtina, Seoul, Bozen, Taipei, Lessinia. As a regular member of the Transnationales Ensemble labsa in Dortmund, she has spent recent years looking more closely at the issue of attributions of identity. She has completed collaborative film projects and workshops, including I speak so you don’t speak for me. In 2018, she curated the film programme About Germany in order to reflect on how certain forms of exclusion and racism have built up in the realms of politics and media. This also includes looking into the past in order to frame the phenomenon of migration historically. In this context, a new perspective of East-West German history also emerged. Selected current programmes: Kultur@Gefängnis since 2015 in Germany’s Ruhr region | About Germany (IFFF 2018) | Wahnsinn. Widerstand.Wut – Ein fiebrig-feministisches Filmprogramm in drei Akten (Schillertage Mannheim2019 film festival) | In This Together (Women Make Waves Film Festival, Taipei)

Barbara Marcel is a visual artist, filmmaker, curator, and since 2025 Visiting Professor of Time-Based Media at HBK Braunschweig. Based in Berlin, she works across film and installation, investigating colonial infrastructures, extractivist imaginaries, and socio-environmental justice from decolonial feminist perspectives. She studied Film Theory and Practice in Rio de Janeiro and holds an MA from the Art in Context Institute at Universität der Künste Berlin. Marcel pursued a PhD in Artistic Research at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as a fellow of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (2017–2021). She is the director and producer of more than fifteen audiovisual works, including Marlene (Visions du Réel, 2022) and Suraras (CineBH, 2024). In 2023, she co-curated Beyond Equality: Feminisms Reclaiming Life at HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Her work has been presented at venues including HKW Berlin, SAVVY Contemporary, ZKM Karlsruhe, Cinemateca Brasileira, Berlinische Galerie, and the Athens Biennale.