RE:FOCUS – Film Heritage Through the De/Post/Anti-colonial Lenses: New Perspectives in Research and Teaching

The workshop invites film scholars and professionals from academic and heritage institutions to critically review research directions and course curricula on film heritage and to question established approaches to knowledge production and epistemic power relations within and towards the visual material. During the workshop, we seek to collaboratively explore the heuristic value of new methodological and analytical paradigms in film history and visual studies. Embracing the concept of “epistemic disobedience” (Walter D. Mignolo), Blinken OSA Archivum and Visual Studies Platform at CEU invite film and media historians, visual anthropologists, and film archivists to discuss new research directions and share teaching approaches and methodologies.

The workshop seeks to create space for debating the applicability and uses of post- and decoloniality and other critical methodologies’ heuristic potential for eliciting new, original research questions that challenge implicit hierarchies and create analytical spaces for previously marginalized perspectives. The workshop sets out to discuss innovations in knowledge production in the field of film studies. The methodological issues are approached through a series of case studies that incorporate a plurality of perspectives. The workshop also aims at fostering cooperation between teaching institutions and initiatives beyond academia, including heritage public programs and civic engagement.

Contributions are invited on the following thematic issues:

• Assessing conceptual challenges and perspectives of decolonial approaches: Terminological debates in post and decolonial studies: how the intellectual legacy of the concepts affects the field of cultural heritage/film studies, multiple regimes of knowledge production and alternative conceptual frameworks, (relativizing) centers and peripheries.
• Audiovisual heritage in teaching and research: New research themes and methodologies and transformation of teaching curricula; contested historical themes and their contemporary representations; contemporary approaches to the Soviet film heritage; how the “decolonizing” approach affects practices of presentation and preservation.
• Academia and beyond: Audio-visual heritage in public art and civic engagement; film criticism and new platforms; collaborative and participatory approaches in visual storytelling; curriculum connected to institutions beyond academia.

To apply: please send the title and abstract of your presentation (up to 300 words) along with one film suggested for discussion and your CV. Partial travel support is offered to select invited participants. Please indicate in your application letter if you request travel support.

Send your application as one file to info@osaarchivum.org (subject: Re: Focus workshop) by May 31, 2023.

Organizing committee: Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken OSA Archivum); Almira Ousmanova (European Humanities University); Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva (American University of Central Asia); Katalin Gadoros (Blinken OSA Archivum)