Midnight's Third Child takes its name from Naeem Mohaiemen's 2020 book, published by Nokta in Dhaka. In it, Mohaiemen describes Bangladesh's cultural identity as occupying a third space inside the larger postcolonial stories of South Asia.

Developed with the initial support of a Connections Through Culture grant from British Council Bangladesh Midnight’s Third Child is research and commissioning project concerned with artists' moving image in Bangladesh. By that we mean work made along the edges of film culture and gallery culture, Some of it screens in cinemas and at festivals. Some of it shows in installations, single-channel pieces, or online and one of the project’s aims to start a conversation about what the past, present and future of artists’ moving image work looks like in Bangladesh.

The project borrows its themes from the sections of Mohaiemen's book, and works through three connected concerns. Guardians of memory looks at moving image as a way of holding on to stories and histories that might otherwise go missing. Visual territories follow how artists map a changing country in film, its rivers and cities and coastline. Acts of resistance gathers work that challenges power and talks back to dominant narratives.

The project began with collaborative research in Bangladesh and the Bangladeshi diaspora and an open call for artists’ moving image works which respond to the themes of the project. In March 2026, the project launched in the UK with a special presentation of works in dialogue by two Bangladeshi artists, Naeem Mohaiemen and Molla Sagar culminating in a presentation of their films reflecting on key figures from the history of Bangladeshi independent film, Mohaiemen’s A Missing Can of Film (2025) on Zahir Raihan and Molla Sagar’s Bhabar Bhita (2025) on Ritwik Kumar Ghatak. As well as gathering works and artists’ information the project has staged a number of discussions reflecting on artists’ moving image and the conditions of its production and circulation in Bangladesh.

This website is where the research will be gathered: a series of new commissioned works and texts, streaming exhibition programmes, a growing artists' database, a historical timeline, and a library of other resources. It is meant as a working tool, not a finished monument, and it is incomplete by design. The field it documents is little recorded particularly in English, so the site will keep changing as we learn more.

Midnight's Third Child is organised by Kehkasha Sabah and Benjamin Cook and is supported by the British Council Connections Through Culture and the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, and made with collaborators in Bangladesh who have contributed their knowledge and expertise to the project.