Event overview
"Useful Cinemas/Useful Archives: Labour, History & Mediation in Latin American Film & Video" explores the conditions of making, preserving, and archiving audiovisual works
This symposium brings together researchers and filmmakers to reflect on the intersections of labour, the narration of history and archival practice in ongoing research on Latin American film and video. Participants will consider how feminist, educational, oppositional, and transnational film practices have been shaped by the material and institutional conditions of their making, circulation, and preservation.
Each session combines presentations with screenings of rarely seen films, fragments, and offcuts, opening space for collective engagement with fragile and heterogeneous audiovisual materials. The symposium aims to foster a seminar setting in which ongoing projects and methodological challenges will be shared and debated, from questions of historiography and archival care to the politics of reactivation and reuse. By placing research methods into dialogue with the modes of production and mediation under study, the event foregrounds the intertwined forms of labour involved in both historical film practices and contemporary archival work. In doing so, we seek to illuminate not only the afterlives of “useful cinemas” but also how these “useful archives” help challenge dominant ways of doing film history.
This event is co-convened by Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths) and David Wood (University College London), with the support of UK Research & Innovation “Horizon Europe Guarantee” program through projects "Screen Internationalism: Audiovisual Pedagogies of Modernisation between Postwar Europe and Latin America" (EP/Y015088/1) and "Tracing Cooperation: Images, Memories and Archival Restitutions of Early Film Workshops in Bolivia" (EP/Z001919/1 ), the Centre for Visual Anthropology of Goldsmiths, University of London and SELCS-CMII/Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.
Day 2
Wednesday, October 8
4-7 pm
Prof. Stuart Hall Building, LG02
Goldsmiths, University of London
Session 3. Material Histories of Alternative Film Productions
With interventions from Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths, University of London) & Sonia García López (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)
Film screening: excerpts from films of the Miners’ Film Workshop (FSTMB-Association Varan, Bolivia, 1983). 10 min.
Session 4. Fragile Archives and Feminist Historiography
With interventions from María Aimaretti (University of Buenos Aires), Lorena Cervera (Arts University Bournemouth) and Mary Carmen Molina (St Andrews University)
Film screenings:
Preview of a forthcoming documentary on Annemarie Heinrich (dir. Mariana Sanguinetti). 11 min.
Offcuts of Araya (Margot Benacerraf, Venezuela, 1959) and excerpts from Yo, tú, Ismaelina (Grupo Feminista Miércoles, Venezuela, 1982). 12 min.
Nacer hombre (To Be Born a Man) (Danielle Caillet, Bolivia, 1991). 10 min.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Oct 2025 | 4:00pm - 8:00pm |
Accessibility
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