Midnight’s Third Child: Screening and Discussion
August 31 | Bengal Foundation
Dhaka, Bangladesh — Midnight’s Third Child presents a screening and discussion featuring a selection of newly commissioned artists’ moving-image works from Bangladesh and its diaspora. Curated by Kehkasha Sabah and Benjamin Cook, the project is a year-long research and commissioning initiative reflecting on the past, present, and future of moving-image practice in Bangladesh.
The project takes its name from Naeem Mohaiemen’s 2020 book Midnight’s Third Child, which considers Bangladesh’s cultural identity as occupying a “third space” within the larger postcolonial narratives of South Asia. Building on this idea, the project examines how artists use moving image to negotiate questions of history, identity, displacement, political change, gender, ecology, and belonging.
Since its inception, Midnight’s Third Child has developed through layered research and activities, starting with supporting Naeem Mohaiemen and Molla Sagar’s talk at the Berwick Film Festival, doing workshops and monthly online discussions with Bangladeshi moving image artists, and since August 1 2026, launched a new dedicated website withresearch outcomes, resources, artist database and monthly online exhibition, and a series of newly commissioned short films. These films bring together diverse perspectives on contemporary Bangladesh and its diasporic experiences and premiered at this event.
The commissioned works move across intimate and political territories: a fire in a Korail settlement amid the power vacuum following the fall of a regime; a couple “stranded” in a small studio outside Bangladesh, confronting a home reduced to the paperwork of belonging; a recitation voiced by someone shot in the street and left uncounted in the state’s ledger; the gradual construction of gendered definitions mistaken for nature; and the Sundarbans approached not as scenery, but as an archive of proverbs, weather, memory, and loss.
Screening Programme
- After the Fire — Anusha Alamgir
- 30.78m² — Sounak Das
- Cage Beyond the Reality — Sajib Sen
- The Measure of Distance — Tamina Hafiz Lisa & Mehedi Masud
- Golkanon’s Conversation — Shohrab Jahan
The screening will be followed by a discussion with participating artists, exploring their individual works alongside broader questions surrounding contemporary moving-image practice in Bangladesh. The discussion will be moderated by curator Benjamin Cook.
Midnight’s Third Child creates a space for artists, researchers, curators, and audiences to encounter moving-image practices that remain underrepresented in existing histories and archives. Rather than presenting a definitive account, the project approaches the field as an evolving landscape, through a constantly expanding, unique web portal with possibilities of new connections, research, and outreach - that shaped by fragmented histories, unstable infrastructures, and the urgent ways artists respond to their surroundings.
The project is supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture Grant, with sponsorship from the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation.
About the curators: Benjamin Cook is an arts manager, curator, teacher, and producer with over 25 years of experience across the visual arts and independent film. He was the founding director of LUX and LUX Scotland, UK agencies supporting and promoting artists’ moving-image practices. Kehkasha Sabah is an independent curator, writer, and researcher from Bangladesh with a decade of experience working across visual arts, cultural research, and archival practices. Her work lies at the intersection of art, culture, pedagogy, technology, and narratives of care in posthuman societies.
More information:
www.midnightsthirdchild.org
Event Details
Midnight’s Third Child: Screening and Discussion
Date: Monday, 31 August 2026
Time: 5:00–7:00 PM
Venue: Bengal Shilpalay, House 42, Road No. 16, Dhaka 1209, Bangladesh
Media Contact:
Add: Bengal Representative
Or, Kehkasha Sabah and Benjamin Cook
Project Curators of Midnight’s Third Child