Restitution and the Moving Image
Product details
- ISBN 9789048558087
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Pallas Publications
- Publication City/Country: NL
- Product Form: Hardback
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As global demands grow for the restitution of looted artifacts from Western museums and ethnological collections, what about the displaced and sequestered moving-image heritage of the Global Majority? This book examines restitutive practices in audiovisual archives worldwide, addressing pressing practical questions with immediate policy implications. It explores legal frameworks, codes of conduct, and institutional governance while offering a groundbreaking theoretical contribution to film and heritage studies.
If calls for restitution challenge traditional film archival practices, film itself—used as an archival medium—complicates conventional notions of restitution. Moving beyond a limited view of restitution as simply “giving back,” the contributors to this volume envision a broader, decolonial horizon. They reassert historical demands for decolonial worldmaking that remain unfulfilled, proposing new political and ethical relationships between the unequal stakeholders of global film heritage.
This book is an essential resource for scholars in film and media history, feminist and decolonial theory, critical geography, and archival studies, as well as for curators, archivists, cultural practitioners, and general readers. It offers a vital perspective for anyone engaged in the ongoing work of decolonizing audiovisual archives.
Cecilia Valenti is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. She has authored articles for journals such as Women and Film and Cargo. Film, Media, Culture.
Nikolaus Perneczky is a researcher, educator, and curator based in London. He has authored articles for journals such as Journal of Visual Culture and Black Camera.
