International Conference „Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past“, kulturquartier Silent Green, Berlin 9-10 June 2023
Organized by CEDITRAA in the framework of the Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst Berlin e.V. festival „Archival Assembly #2“, the international conference „Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past“ brought together scholars, archivists and curators from across the world to discuss one of the key concerns of CEDITRAA: How do the multiple pasts of cinema inform its futures? How can artists, programmers and curators draw on archives to shape new ways of creating films, showing films and teaching cinema? The symposium brought together CEDITRAA researchers with international specialists and connected the project’s ongoing research on the role of film heritage in the creative process with Arsenal’s long-standing research and curatorial initiatives in the field of marginal and precarious archives. The festival „Archival Assembly #2“ created an important interface between our research and the international archivist/activist community, even as the symposium moved CEDITRAA’s research forward in important ways. A publication documenting CEDITRAA’s research and the project’s interaction with Arsenal’s work in this field has since been published in open access with meson press: https://meson.press/books/accidental-archivism/
Panel discussion with Erica Carter (King’s College London), Filipa Cesar (Merz Akademie), Michael Zryd (York University Toronto, archives/counterarchives project), Catarina Simao (Lisbon)
Screening of Anthony McCall’s „Light Describing a Cone“
Girish Shambu (Canisius College)
The Original accidental Archivist: Didi Cheeka (Lagos Film Society, Nigeria)
Tamer el Said, professor of cinema at American University Cairo, director, Cimatek Cairo