You can now watch the recording of our important and insightful panel discussion »Framing the Archive« at the 74th Berlinale in February 2024 on Youtube. Gaby Babić (Head of the Asta Nielsen Cinematheque), Jihan El-Tahri (filmmaker, visual artist, producer), Elisa Jochum (Head of the Film Heritage Department, Deutsche Kinemathek) and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Curator Silent Film, Eye Filmmuseum) discussed questions and parameters of a critical approach to archives together with Maxa Zoller:

Women have been working in front of and behind the camera since 1896, many have disappeared from film history. The film archive is essential for film festivals – it has the power to change the past, present and future of women’s cinema. However, a critical approach to the feminist archive is absolutely vital. How to deal with absence in the archive: with women, LGBTIQ+, People of Color? How do we frame historical films with sexist and racist images, scripts, ideologies? And in what way do we take responsibility for our own entanglements in unbalanced power relations, in particular when working in institutional and national archives? What role do accidental archivism and private collections play? How do we narrate the archive so that the past leads to us? More info.

The topic is so central that we are continuing to pursue it with the festival and it will play an important role in the thematic focus of our upcoming festival.