Archiving By Other Means: An Ethical Deconstruction of Filipa César's Spell Reel

Winner of a José Saramago Foundation Award at Doclisboa International Film Festival, and screened at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival, César's film transports us to Guinea-Bissau through a post-colonial lens to revisit and reconstruct the revolutions of the country's War of Independence (1963 – 1974) and engage with its societal legacy today. In documenting the process of archiving historical film footage, Spell Reel asks: how are postcolonial strategies of exploitation maintained in present day Guinea-Bissau? How might this be reflected in how Guinea-Bissau's media archives are encountered?

Adopting a multifaceted approach in its visuals and interrogation of what it means to archive, Spell Reel documents the intricate process of restoring film footage captured by the revolutionary figures of Guinea Bissau's fight for independence by the Arsenal Institute of Film and Video Art of Berlin. What results is a film which questions the complex relationship between the archivist and the archive itself: What is the nature of ethics when we archive non-western histories?

The film's screening will be followed by a panel discussion with opportunities for the audience to share their thoughts on the ethical questions that César's film raises.

The CERA PROJECT founded by the curator Inês Valle, is a non-profit contemporary art organisation which started in East London (UK) and is now based in Lisbon (PT), with the aim of promoting and exhibiting contemporary art that falls outside of Eurocentric and Western narratives. Over the years, the CERA PROJECT has curated programmes encouraging critical engagement with contemporary global issues, inviting spectators to think a bit differently and participate in dialogues with artists, curators, writers, scientists and collectors.

Katy Stewart is a researcher specialising in Lusophone and Francophone African film. Her research interests include the ethics and politics of film archiving, intermediality, and cinematic engagement of the body and senses. Recent publications include works on memory in Angolan cinema, and gender and violence in Iberian and Latin American cinema.

Ana Temudo has collaborated in several museum research-based projects that promote interdisciplinarity among the humanities, arts and social sciences, including the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her doctoral thesis “Representational Politics of Guinean Heritage in Portuguese Museums in the Transition from Colonial to Postcolonial Period: Histories, Transits and Discourses” is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
 

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Category: Arts | Visual Arts | Film / Cinema