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Opening the Archive | Elisions - Film programme notes

Opening the Archive | Elisions - Film programme notes
Publication Date 21 Apr 2021
Description

This four-part screening programme invites us to think about the role of archives in shaping collective memory, histories and stories. Archives were created as centralised repositories of record-producing public agencies in an attempt to preserve a singular, official history. Across the centuries, colonialists, dictators, conquistadors, all understood that to control history is to wield power to shape the future. However, history is mutable, partial, messy, and the story of the future rests on a more truthful, nuanced account.

The democratisation of the capture, storage and reinterpretation of information in the last 100 years has opened up archives to a reappraisal of the past and the making of more plural futures, shaped by multiple perspectives. As the films in this programme demonstrate, in the course of one short century, archives have become a means to write alternative histories and to speak back to power.

Click on the image above to download a pdf of the programme notes.

Format PDF File
Month April 2021
Category Film and Artists' Moving Image
Related Event Opening the Archive | A season of online events (April – June 2021)
Related Gallery BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Related Curator/Producer Adam Pugh

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