Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque
Director and programmer across repertory and contemporary international cinema, guest conversations, interdisciplinary partnerships, institutional writing, membership, and audience initiatives.
BilgesuSisman
Film programmer · writer · researcher · educator
Across programmes, essays, courses, and public conversations, she asks how films reach people—and what cultural institutions are for.
Selected work, current questions, and provisional ways to work together. A homepage study for review—not a public site.
↓A working proposition
Films do not arrive alone. They carry histories, arguments, institutions—and the possibility of a public.
The body of work comes first. Everything offered grows from it.
Established work
Selected programmes & institutions
Curatorial leadership, public programmes, partnerships, audience work, and the institutional conditions that let cinema matter.
Film Streams
Community programming that connected local proposals, filmmakers, partners, outreach, and presentation—including the Local Filmmakers Showcase and adult education.
Maryland Hall
Programming leadership across cultural programmes, exhibitions, workshops, education, and free community work—extending the practice beyond the cinema.
Writing & research
Criticism as close attention. Institutional writing as a way to think in public.
01 / 26
Cinema Talk: Bleak Week
Catharsis, violence, evil, and art’s capacity to make meaning · Cleveland Cinematheque · 2026
02 / 24
The Nonprofit Arts Industry and Its Discontents
An essay grounded in work across educational and nonprofit arts institutions · Amplify Arts · 2024
03 / 22
Yorgos Lanthimos’un İlk Dönem Filmleri
Film criticism across Turkish and English publication contexts · Punctum · 2022
04 / 19
Deconstruction, at the Level of Praxis?
Peer-reviewed philosophy · Philosophy Today 63(1) · 2019
05 / —
Darkness Spills
Creative writing and thematically curated film lists · independent publication
One practice
The work crosses forms.
A programme may become an essay, a seminar, a public conversation, or a question for an institution. The crossings are the point.
A
Philosophy & research
Cinema, affect, deconstruction, necropolitics, and the public questions that outlive a single screening.
B
Teaching & conversation
Film & Philosophy, affect, adult education, filmmaker conversations, radio, moderation, and public pedagogy.
C
Translation
Ideas moving between languages, including the French-to-Turkish translation of Charles Ramond’s Spinoza Sözlüğü.
D
Creative work
Creative writing, thematic film lists, and forms still being gathered into a durable home.
Ways to work together · provisional
Three working shapes for Bilgesu to judge. They are not a fixed menu, a promise of availability, or the whole story of the practice.
01
Signature Season
A distinct film season for a particular institution, place, and public.A curatorial thesis joined to selection, context, partnerships, audience framing, and a practical route to presentation.
02
Curatorial & Audience Renewal
A bounded review for institutions reconsidering programme and public.Diagnosis and direction across programming, audiences, communications, access, partnerships, and one useful test.
03
Embedded Programme & Audience Strategy Support
Senior curatorial thinking inside a team for a defined period.Ongoing counsel, programme development, audience framing, editorial thinking, and decision support without pretending to be permanent staff.
Emerging formats
More than one way for knowledge to travel.
Research briefs
Workshops
Editorial commissions
Courses & seminars
Reading and film-list editions
Creative publications
Exploratory question · Istanbul
What would make repertory and independently exhibited cinema easier to find, understand, and sustain?
A question, not a launch
No project, partner search, directory, or fundraising campaign is being announced here. The form—and what it might need—remains to be discovered.