Fund the Pain Away (named after the iconic Peaches song) is a collective of friends of Sophia, who in collaboration with her organize cultural events to fundraise Sophia’s tuition and visa. As a non-EU student originally from India she has to pay almost five times the tuition fee of EU-students. She has one year left of her studies, but due to the financial struggles of her family and having no access to governmental support, she can no longer pay for university. If she does not pay her tuition fees in time, she will lose her visa and be forced to leave the country -without a degree. We find this situation horrible and unacceptable, so we created this collective to financially support Sophia and foster a community of collective care through fun and accessible cultural events.

The Films
Fund The Pain Away has curated some films by friends and filmmakers whose work they’ve accidentally stumbled upon, who all have a very DIY approach to film in common. These short films don’t have big budgets and therefore speak more to the imagination of both the makers as well as the audience. They are quirky, queer, experimental, sometimes even kitschy and culty, and don’t take themselves too seriously -which is what we love about them.

POPPETS (16 min) by Maz Murray, is a surreal soap opera about an Essex girl investigating malpractice in a local housing development and 2 women who meet and fall in love on a night out at a suburban entertainment multiplex: Bar Vegas. Oh, and their boyfriends. They are psychically linked to the story of 2 Plotlands women (as overshared by an old man in the smoking area) who visit their local witch to make a poppet. A journey through 4 generations of capitalist town planning, from the smallholdings of the 1800s to the luxury flats built on floodplains of the future.

VERBODEN VRUCHT (8 min) is a queer costume drama about a dinner where schemes, intrigue and romance are served. The hosts, a theatre couple (a writer and a director) and an actress all seem to have a different incentive to sit through the courses. Is it a casting? Is it an affair? Is it a date? By Imre Korpadi, Rumeysa Sekin, An Smid and Puck Vriens.

LITTLE SPOON (15 min) by Imre Korpadi follows young Finnish woman Lilou, who recently moved to Amsterdam and has developed a rather childlike fear of being alone at night, causing her to spend most of her nights looking for bed partners to sleep with.

THE FISH PRINCE (6 min) by Shifra Osorio Whewell is a musical and visual experiment about a fish prince trapped in a Lidle haring package, based on an old fairy tale.

MISTAKEN FABRICS (2 min) was shot for IGC Fashion, an Ugandan fashion collective whose designs take a necessary stand against the ramifications of the fast fashion industry; integrating elements of afro-futurism and traditional Ugandan kitenge patterns.

The fashion industry is one that is fast paced, engineered to produce and consume a lot of clothing quickly in order to adhere to the newest whims of what's considered to be in fashion. The downsides to this are disastrous; the whole industry is far from sustainable for our planet, and the capitalistic model sustains poor working conditions all throughout the global labor chain. A lot of the discarded clothes from western consumers end up being shipped to african countries such as Uganda, where then, a large portion of these fabrics are resold to local consumers. However, another vast amount of those fabrics end up being burned or disposed of on landfills. By An Smid and IGC Fashion collective.

UNTITLED (9 min) is about Cleo, a young woman waiting for her meeting with a psychologist, and her sensual fantasies about the other people in the waiting room. When she speaks to her psychologist, it becomes more and more clear that he has some fantasies of his own, or rather some projections. Directed by Imre Korpadi from a concept by her, Elise Ballais (DoP) and Helena Warms.