For Whom Am I Watching?: Viewership Culture and Archiving the Ephemeral

One of my most memorable cinema experiences at the 12^th Duhok International Film Festival was unexpectedly quiet: watching a late morning screening of Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude (Tardes de Soledad) in a small Iraqi Kurdish mall theatre, with just one other person sitting a few rows ahead of me. How so completely different this was, I imagined, from a packed Kursaal at the early morning screening in San Sebastián that I somehow missed despite being present at that festival in 2024, where the film later won the Golden Shell. Granted, this viewing context did not necessarily diminish the way in which Serra films his subjects of matador and bull to generate a palpable anxiety. Through tight framing and an unflinching gaze, he transmogrifies the energy of the live performance—and brutality, as many reviews have said—of Spanish bullfighting for filmic audiences while not capturing the act from, specifically, the spectator’s point of view.

Much has been said about the gaze of the camera, the spectator, or something even more intertextual, but Duhok drew my attention more to a gaze on the gaze—a meta-gaze, perhaps. In Afternoons of Solitude, viewers themselves partake in a secondary level of the gaze when Serra sporadically cuts to or reveals the look on audience faces in the bullfighting arena. (I scrutinized them: would they flinch in horror or awe, or were they numb to the violence and taken in by the fantasy of dominance?) But unlike my experience at the Marrakech International Film Festival in Morocco, which similarly stimulated my curiosity about viewership culture (where cinemagoers would walk out of a film as soon as they felt bored rather than take out their phones and stay through the film, a combined sign of boredom more familiar to me), film viewers in Duhok appeared more likely to document their experience by taking photos of the film playing.

Cinemagoers would periodically take a quick photo or recording of the screen—almost exclusively within Snapchat—and then resume viewing, presumably attentively or semi-attentively. Minds clearly wandered to the act of documenting viewership and not necessarily the content itself, a trend certainly not isolated to this sociocultural context. Writ large, it has become increasingly common for viewers to record a clip of a video to post on social media or, in a festival context, videos of film festival trailers to show that they were at the event. The viewership of a film thus becomes not merely for oneself but also for the consumption of others. Watching a film is not enough; others are encouraged to watch you watch a film, even if it is unclear what film it is. For me, it begs the question: for whom am I watching?

Apps like Letterboxd, seen here as a social media platform, also feed indirectly into this phenomenon—of viewership that is perhaps partly performative, with the term intended as a non-normative phrase. But what was genuinely surprising to me as a foreigner to Duhok was the immense popularity of Snapchat as the social media platform of choice in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, both for use in the aforementioned context as well as more generally. According to a quick Google search, Iraq as a country apparently has upwards of 18 or 19 million registered users, or nearly 40% of the population, purportedly on par with the number of Instagram and Facebook users. In Duhok, I learned that the app is used not just by younger generations but also widely by those I typically do not associate with having an account, including middle-aged viewers (with account exchanges complete with curated in-app avatars making for an amusing sight). Meanwhile, from my own Euro-American sociocultural context, my Snapchat account has been defunct for nearly ten years, although some peers around me still use it on occasion.

Every social media platform distorts time in a different way, and Snapchat’s temporal distortion is unique in several directions. The app was initially released such that photos and videos were, in theory, meant to be fully ephemeral: that is, seen once when opened and never to be seen again (challenged by the existence of the phone screenshot). The “disappearing photos” feature on platforms such as WhatsApp and “stories” feature on many social media platforms, such as Instagram, has made this concept ubiquitous, available within a certain window of time. However, media posted as stories are typically archived within one’s own account, and viewers can select what is publicly archived for viewing on one’s page. Users can customize the level of ephemerality they wish from an instant captured in time. Is this moment fleeting and to be disposed of upon viewing, or is it worth remembering forever (or, maybe more accurately, archived for the possibility of future viewership)? Nevertheless, attempting to capture the transitory or the uncapturable isn’t solely a product of social media: Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude, too, could be seen as archiving the ephemerality of bullfights for later consumption.

I even began to catch myself, with great fascination, watching viewers recording—thereby adding a third level of spectatorship. Of what would the man sitting two rows in front of me choose to take a photo or video? To how many friends would he send it? Would he save it to Memories or let it pass by? Was he engaged with the film, or would he open any other Snaps before he chose to record the screen? Voyeuristic in more ways than one, it also felt, in some manner, reminiscent to the strange allure of the airplane seatback screen, where one finds themselves drawn to watch the soundless movie of their neighbor—and their neighbor’s reaction to the film. Duhok residents with whom I briefly spoke at the festival told me that, as in many parts of the world, going to the movies simply isn’t as popular as watching the newest film or series on a personal device. As such, the novelty of going to the theatre is heightened, and attendees are able to show off to one’s friends. Maybe it’s the case that these processes are actually making filmgoing cool, in a seemingly unconventional cycle.

The omnipresence of other forms of viewership culture further drew my attention, such as the presence of media playing at the festival’s restaurant of choice. During at least one meal a day, a nearly floor-to-ceiling screen plus smaller television monitors scattered around the large room played sports of all kind, from FIFA Arab Cup football matches to padel championship games. Far beyond scrolling on one’s phone while watching Netflix at home or watching sports at a bar, this sort of multitasking-style viewership was clearly very familiar: families could eat a meal, drink tea, or smoke shisha—known locally as nargile—while fixated on sports in 4K.This restaurant brought the cinema to viewer, but nobody eating there was documenting it—except, in a fitting twist, me. This time, to the amusement of those around me, I was the one taking photos to send to my friends (a professional padel game playing during dinner—amazing, I thought). Like many of the cinemagoers at the festival, I was excitedly documenting the sheer existence of the screens playing this media, and, by proxy, my presence there. In 2025, the spectacle of cinema remains alive and well.

Olivia Popp

© FIPRESCI 2026