Presenting at Eye International Conference 2022
I will be participating in this year’s Eye International Conference taking place at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam between May 29-31.
I submitted to the conference’s open call, this year’s theme is Global Audiovisual Archiving and will make a presentation about Behind The Veil, a film by Eve Arnold, the only one she directed, that was filmed in Dubai in 1970, and the difficulty to get it screened here.
Below is the line up of the conference section I will be in and you can find the complete line up and schedule here.
May 31
10:05 - 11:30 (CET)
Challenging the Red Tape
This panel is composed of different submissions that all examine how institutional and governmental structures make the work of archives more challenging through bureaucratic ‘red tape’, and how archives find ways to navigate through it.
Moderated by Maral Mohsenin (Cinémathèque Suisse, University of Lausanne/UvA)
Infinity War of the Film Archive
Sasikorn Likhitwong (Thai Film Archive)
Sanchai Chotirosseranee (Thai Film Archive)
With this presentation, we explore the bureaucratic red tape the Thai Film Archive must face. How does the Thai Film Archive survive the system? What are the future challenges of the Thai Film Archive? As a governmental organization, the Thai Film Archive has been requested to abide by many bureaucratic rules and regulations. Though it is seen as ideal for an organization to work with integrity and transparency, the evaluation and assessment process is based on written reports and numbers. The value of preservation and restoration is not recognized unless it contributes to the national strategies which have very little interest in culture. Many rules and regulations were enforced on all governmental organizations in order to prevent corruption. The budget allocation procedure, which should be submitted almost two years in advance, becomes problematic especially when digital technology is rapidly changing.
Eve Arnold’s Behind the Veil
Hind Mezaina (Independent Artist, Writer, Film Curator)
Behind the Veil is a film produced and directed by Eve Arnold, the renowned photographer and the first female member of Magnum Photos. It was filmed in 1970 when she was on a photo assignment to document Muslim women in the Middle East region for The Sunday Times magazine. Described as ‘a rare glimpse into a Dubai harem and a document of the significant changes in the lives of Arab women during the early 1970s,’ this documentary/travelog is the only film made by Eve Arnold. The presentation addresses the film’s unavailability in the city it was shot in, the limited access to audiovisual archives of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in general, and how research by artists and curators helps unravel and reassess recorded histories.
Stepping Out of the Soviet Shadow The Post-Soviet Legacy in the Film Archives of Transcaucasia
• Anri Vartanov (National Cinema Center of Armenia)
The former Transcaucasian republics and now countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan face the challenge of preserving and promoting a film heritage they do not have complete access to. Most of their materials – camera negatives and original elements – were preserved in Moscow’s Gosfilmofond as a matter of policy during the Soviet era and have remained there ever since. The study draws on primary sources, field research in the archives, and interviews with archivists as a source of context and comparative analysis. These countries have attempted to restore their film heritage with varying success, including Georgia’s negotiation of a repatriation deal, Azerbaijan’s investment into their own archive to house locally sourced materials, and Armenia’s solicitation of international funding for preservation initiatives. Film history demonstrates that cooperation among the republics was much more common in the Soviet era and must be reinvigorated to facilitate a collaborative and ultimately more robust approach to film preserva tion in the region.
National funding Between Doing Local and Thinking Global
• Tzutzumatzin Soto Cortes (Cineteca Nacional de México)
A paradigm shift regarding the way in which the responsibility for audiovisual preservation has been assumed (or not) by the Mexican government, moving from a centralist position to a project subsidy model to both independent initiatives and institutions not necessarily specialized in preservation. This perspective is compared to the operation of similar state financing funds for preservation in Spanish-speaking countries: Colombia, Peru, and Chile. This presentation shows an interest, on the one hand, in recognizing how alternative interlocutors to the role of the state emerge, are strengthened, and developed; and, on the other hand, in identifying the activities that are privileged or discarded as being of interest within the universe of preservation: equipment, training, creation of collections, digitization, research, and access.