Restitution and the Moving Image

Global Film Heritage Between Return, Access and Archival Reparation
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-90-485-5808-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 346 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 662 g

Reihe: Film Culture in Transition

As global demands grow for the restitution of looted artifacts from Western museums and ethnological collections, what about the displaced and sequestered moving-image heritage of the Global Majority? This book examines restitutive practices in audiovisual archives worldwide, addressing pressing practical questions with immediate policy implications. It explores legal frameworks, codes of conduct, and institutional governance while offering a groundbreaking theoretical contribution to film and heritage studies.

If calls for restitution challenge traditional film archival practices, film itself—used as an archival medium—complicates conventional notions of restitution. Moving beyond a limited view of restitution as simply “giving back,” the contributors to this volume envision a broader, decolonial horizon. They reassert historical demands for decolonial worldmaking that remain unfulfilled, proposing new political and ethical relationships between the unequal stakeholders of global film heritage.

This book is an essential resource for scholars in film and media history, feminist and decolonial theory, critical geography, and archival studies, as well as for curators, archivists, cultural practitioners, and general readers. It offers a vital perspective for anyone engaged in the ongoing work of decolonizing audiovisual archives.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perneczky, Nikolaus

Valenti, Cecilia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contributors

Preface

Introduction

1. Film/Restitution: Contesting Displacement, Enclosure, and Uneven Relations of Care in Global Audiovisual Archiving

Nikolaus Perneczky and Cecilia Valenti

I. With and Against the Colonial Archive

2. Footage Lost and Found: A Roundtable on Africa’s Displaced and Silenced Film Heritage

Ali Essafi, Nii-Kwate Owoo, Jihan El-Tahri, and Jean-Marie Téno in Conversation with Nikolaus Perneczky

3. Six Scenes of (Dis)engagement: Creating Friction in the Italian Fascist and Colonial Archives

Alessandra Ferrini

4. Decolonizing the Colonial Film Archive: Access to Ghana’s Shared Cinematic Heritage

Rebecca Ohene-Asah

5. Scenes from the Archive

Onyeka Igwe

6. Burning to Give Access: Mapping, Repatriating, and Sustaining Audiovisual Archives of the South African Liberation Struggle Through the Visual History Explorer

Janneke van Dalen

7. Reactivating Ethnographic Image Collections: Toward a Decolonial Archivology

Petra Löffler

II. Institutions & Practices

8. A View from the North: A Conversation on Global Audiovisual Archiving, Shared Heritage, and Archival Cooperation

Giovanna Fossati, Nikolaus Perneczky, and Cecilia Valenti

9. Restoring Ray: On the Geo-Cultural Politics of “Saving Cinema”

Amrita Biswas

10. Caring for Indigenous Audiovisual Heritage in Australia: On Shared Archival Authority, Culturally Appropriate Protocols, and Digital Returns

Tasha James

11. Institutional Memory and Archival Returns: History of a Negotiated Transport of Films from the BFI to the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago

Xavier Alexandre Pillai

12. African Cinema Returns: Tracing Guinean Film Heritage in Eastern European Archives

Gabrielle Chomentowski

III. Rethinking Restitution, Widening the Circle

13. Questioning Return: A Conversation on Decolonial Approaches Toward Restitution, Repair, and Care in Authoritarian (Post)colonial and Imperial Film Heritage and Cinema Cultures

Ali Hussein Al-Adawy and Brigitta Kuster

14. Films That Don’t Exist Do Exist: Restituting a Missing Cinema

Léa Morin

15. Restoration, Restitution, and Potential History: A Dialogue with Abdoul War on Med Hondo’s Archive

Annabelle Aventurin

16. Noli Me Tangere: Contextualizing Moving Image Restitution in the Community-Based Archival Practice of Forum Lenteng and Otty Widasari

Luthfan Nur Rochman

17. To Oralize or to Digitize? Re-Membering Nigeria’s Contested Archives

Didi Cheeka

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Nikolaus Perneczky is a researcher, educator, and curator based in London.

Cecilia Valenti is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.