Uses of colonial film archives: Five ways of rethinking colonial histories

The special issue "Transnational Encounters With/In Colonial Archives: Agency, Artistry and Ethics" contextualizes, theorizes and challenges the uses of colonial archives by archivists, filmmakers, scholars and citizens. In this introductory essay, we discuss different approaches to colonial film archives with the aim of opening a dialogue around, and finding ways to use, these repositories of the visual evidence of violent oppression. To those ends, we present five articles that collectively reflect on the colonial film archive and its contents, articles which emphasize the importance of digitizing and accessing colonial documents and offer different perspectives on the possibilities of decolonizing these materials, their histories and the spaces that hold them. These contributions range from ethical meditations on the uses of colonial sources to the pragmatic concerns of archivists, filmmakers and programmers. Besides these commonalities, the articles are bound by their common interest in the representations of African nations and peoples found within European archives. Our discussion highlights the individual contributions to the issue while illuminating the collective challenge faced by historians, theorists and practitioners of postcolonial cinema when using these archives as part of a larger project, one which fosters an accurate film historiography but also contemplates social change, equity and justice.

Uses of colonial film archives: Five ways of rethinking colonial histories Articles