On 7 July 2024, we hosted a panel entitled Transnational Archival Practice as Necessity: Fabulations Beyond National Film Heritage as part of the Cinema of Commoning Symposium. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Cinema is a public space where archives are made accessible and visible. Archival work, a fundamental aspect of cinema practice, is not limited to preservation and restoration but also encompasses creating a discursive and artistic space through films. This practice advocates for diverse film cultures and contributes to the work of cultural memory. However, it also raises questions about other forms and aesthetics of storytelling, collective authorship, the status of the speculative and fictional, and the necessity of “critical fabulation” (Saidiya Hartman). With “critical fabulation,” Hartman proposes a practice which combines historical research with critical theory and fictional narratives to fill the gaps left in mainstream historical records. Archives must be critically examined. Certain stories are included, while others are excluded. This raises the question: Who gets to speak? Who tells which story, and from which perspective? How can we make visible underrepresented cinematic perspectives? How can we create transnational, non-institutionalized alliances that operate beyond “national film heritage?” In this panel, we aim to explore these questions, discuss how different memory cultures relate to each other, and propose forms of film archiving that can enable dialogues of remembrance.

Deniz Tortum, filmmaker and researcher (Istanbul, Türkiye)
Mosa Mpetha, film curator (Leeds, United Kingdom)
Can Sungu, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA (Berlin, Germany)
Jesse Gerard Mpango, Ajabu Ajabu (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Moderation: Lisabona Rahman, film archivist and curator (Berlin, Germany)

Lisabona Rahman: Even though your experiences are very diverse, and you all operate in different places, it’s striking how many similarities emerge when working with archives, even across different parts of the world—especially when dealing with films outside the celebrated film canon. As Madhusree said in her Keynote, some memories are much more treasured than others, and these values are often imposed from outside. I’d like to open up straight away to audience questions.

Audience Question: I have two questions, one for Deniz Tortum and one for Can Sungu. Can, you mentioned Kara Kafa earlier as a film you have worked on screening through your curatorial practice. Could you tell us more about the backstory of that film? When was it banned? How was it received when it was first made, and what was it like to re-screen it so many decades later?

Deniz, you spoke earlier about your research into the Hisar Short Film Competition, which was the first short film festival in Turkey. Could you elaborate on who the organizers of this festival were? Given the political nature of the event, was there a crackdown by the authorities? Did the event continue, and how does it link to the current culture of short film festivals in Turkey?

Can Sungu (SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA): Regarding Kara Kafa, which was made in 1979, it is probably useful to first consider the political climate in Turkey at that time. The late 1970s were marked by intense political turbulence in the country. Right-wing groups and left-wing groups were essentially clashing everyday, often violently, on the streets. It was a really tough and chaotic period. Then, in 1980, the military coup took place. 

During this era, Turkey had an active censorship committee.  Any film you wanted to show in the cinemas, had to be submitted to this committee for approval. If the committee deemed the film unacceptable, it couldn’t be shown. Given this context, it was arguably quite naive of the filmmaker Korhan Yurtsever to believe that Kara Kafa, with its very clear left-wing political message, bordering on agitprop and, at times, quite didactic, could be released in Turkish cinemas. 

When the censorship committee reviewed the film, they essentially saw it as communist propaganda, and it was immediately banned. In addition, all of Yurtsever’s materials—scripts, photographs, and more—were confiscated. It became clear to him that staying in the country was no longer safe. He left Turkey and lived in exile in Germany for years. Later, we rediscovered the film and began searching for the filmmaker. We invited him to two screenings at bi’bak’s previous space in Wedding, Berlin. He still had the last surviving copy of the film on videotape, from which we created a DVD. Since then, we’ve been working towards restoring the film. 

In 2023, we held two very emotional screenings as part of Berlinale. One was at the Delphi Theatre, with an audience of around 700 people. We also screened the film in Istanbul, and I was quite surprised by the reception. I had feared some kind of backlash due to its politics, but this wasn’t the case. Since then,Kara Kafa has been shown at various venues.

Deniz Tortum: To answer your question about the history of the Hisar Film Festival: the festival was originally organized in 1967 by Robert College, an American-founded university. In 1970, the university became known as Bosphorus University, which is the name used today. The festival was initiated by a student club with support from professors. At the same time, the Turkish Cinematheque and the National Film Archive were also emerging, creating an interesting and lively cultural scene. 

Interestingly, the first film festival featured two notable awards. One was the Shell Award, sponsored by the oil company, which came with a prize of 1,000 lira. The other was the James Baldwin Award, named after the writer, who was living in Istanbul at the time. Baldwin personally donated the 500 lira prize for his award, which is pretty amazing.

However, by the festival’s second year, some filmmakers objected to the festival being organized by an American university and funded by Shell,from an American imperialist angle. They started a young, leftist cinema movement, which organized a competition and festival in opposition to the Hisar Film Festival. 

These tensions escalated, and the Hisar Film Festival ended in 1970. The political climate further intensified with the 1971 coup, which disrupted cultural and academic initiatives. By 1974, a continuation of the festival emerged as the Bosphorus University Short Film Festival, but this was also interrupted by the 1980 coup. 

This repeated institutional discontinuity in Turkey means that much of the knowledge and tradition from these efforts has been lost over time. Today, there are ongoing attempts to restore this legacy, but the current climate remains difficult. The Mithat Alam Film Center, which served the Turkish film scene a lot over the past 20 years, has been shut down, and many queer film screenings are being canceled on campus. So it’s a tense and challenging time for both the university and academia in Turkey as a whole.

Audience Comment & Question: Just 10 days ago, we screened a program in London of films from the Sudanese Film Group collective, including another work from the Sudanese Film Archive by Hussein Shariffe. The curator of this program, Talal Afifi (founder and director of the Sudan Film Factory), was present, and during the Q&A, someone asked about the production of these films, which were made between the 1960s and 1980s. Some were produced for television rather than as theatrical feature films. 

The audience member wanted to know if these films had ever actually been broadcasted on television in Sudan. Talal wasn’t certain, but another Sudanese person recalled seeing one of these films as a child on television as a child. They mentioned that, at the time, they didn’t understand much of it, but they had a vivid memory of watching it. 

What I find interesting is this question of collective memory. Sudan is currently at war, and it’s losing parts of its archive and collective memory. Yet, some of these films survive outside the country. This brings up ethical and philosophical questions: Who does this archive truly belong to? Do we have the right to hold these films in other countries while Sudan is at war? Should they be kept safe abroad, and if so, how do we also recognize that they ultimately don’t belong to us? 

What about the collective memory associated with these films, the knowledge that comes from people who might not be film practitioners or scholars, but who have experienced watching these films? For example, the Sudanese audience member at the screening in London provided a narrative about these films that even the curator thought had been lost, which was very enlightening. Talal was happy to meet this person, someone he had never met before. Screening these films opens up conversations with the diaspora, who experience these films. I am interested in another critical question: When a country like Sudan is at war, should its archival films be safeguarded elsewhere, or do they inherently belong in the country, even in difficult circumstances? It’s a complex issue, but one that’s important to address.

Mosa Mpetha: This is an ongoing conversation, isn’t it? I’ve been traveling to different gatherings, such as the FIAF conference in Thailand (International Federation of Film Archives) and the archive conference at FESPACO (The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou), and in these spaces, the question of where archives should reside keeps coming up. There is a recurring argument by the West, or the Global North, that goes, “You can’t look after your archives properly, so we’ll take care of them for now.” While there may be a grain of truth in the logistical challenges some regions face, this attitude is patronizing and perpetuates the assumption that archives don’t belong in their place of origin. 

A hot topic of debate which I’ve come across recently revolves around the issue of heirs managing films. Often, the children of filmmakers become the new custodians, but they may not share the same political beliefs as their parents. I was part of a discussion involving Alain Sembène, the son of Ousmane Sembène, who has entrusted his father’s films to an American university for restoration and preservation. This created a heated debate with Dr. Aboubakar Sanogo, who is leading many African restoration projects, because he argued that this sets a dangerous precedent. If a renowned filmmaker like Sembène’s works are allowed to reside elsewhere, it could encourage other heirs to follow the same logic, potentially displacing more archives.  

This is a really tense, emotional and challenging conversation. Some have proposed that instead of passing these works to heirs, they could be entrusted to the filmmaker’s peers or members of a collective—people who are more aligned with the original vision. It’s a complex issue without easy answers.

Another point I want to make relates to that earlier anecdote about an audience member sharing their personal experience of a film. That’s why I’m so passionate about documenting these stories. African cinema often feels like a puzzle we’re all trying to piece together, and everyone has a role to play. We’re all clues to the puzzle. This “living information” is just as important as the films themselves, offering clues for future generations. 100 years from now, understanding how audiences feel and respond to a film, whether that is positively or negatively in a politically charged situation, can help us grasp its cultural and emotional importance.

Finally, I want to bring up a concern I have about how information is preserved in the UK. State funding requires constant feedback and data collection, and quite often the only records of past events are reports written to satisfy funders. My worry is that one day, 1000 years from now, someone might look through these reports in the BFI (British Film Institute) archives and come away with an inaccurate picture of what happened. These reports are written to appeal to funders, not to reflect the lived reality of events. That’s why I’m really standing for authentic collecting of information, capturing how people respond, and involving the audience in that conversation. My fear is that this crucial information is being overlooked, hidden, or reduced to a diversity project of the BFI.

Jesse Gerard Mpango (Ajabu Ajabu): I would like to briefly reflect on economic and material realities. In Dar es Salaam, where I work, these realities often dictate how we channel our energy—focusing on specific spaces to facilitate broader progress down the line. Within Ajabu Ajabu, we have different perspectives on this, but I personally don’t center my work on the object or artefact itself. 

Speaking broadly about restitution and return, I think that collective frameworks can be built which provide access and space for memory that prioritize the right to the story over the right to keep the object. That’s the approach that we try to take.

The work we did with Manifested Belonging, was definitely also a way of informing ourselves about how far that can go, how much space and flexibility a story can create—how far it can travel through the hands of people. Specifically speaking to my context working in Tanzania, heritage is classified as mali ya serikali, or state property. This creates challenges, as certain modes of creating space for remembrance are already entwined with state control, which can be toxic. It forces us to rethink who should be involved  in the act of memory-making. We must avoid replicating harmful precedents or simply adopting frameworks from elsewhere without critique.

Mosa: Building on that, I’d like to share a practical example connected to the restitution of African cinema. The first stage of this process is knowledge—simply identifying where materials are located. FEPACI (Pan African Federation of Filmmakers) and others working with African film archives are calling for institutions and collectors around the world to digitize their holdings and to share those digital formats with the countries of origin. While returning original formats may take time, even sharing knowledge of what exists and providing digital access is a crucial starting point. This is actively being worked on as an initial phase of restitution.

Can: I want to add something here. I think what was mentioned about discourses and space, and opening up conversations around the archive, doesn’t necessarily depend on a post-screening discussion or any particular setting. Jesse and Deniz are working in Tanzania and in Turkey, excavating and closely looking at aspects of film history that have been overlooked. Meanwhile, Mosa and I are focusing more on the diaspora aspects of this work. 

There is a migrant scholar, Aisha Gulich, who is very active in Germany. She says that narratives and memories of the city need to be formed by migrant knowledge, which also highlights a form of knowledge that has always been there, but has often been overlooked or unheard. It also carries critical insights into social contexts, which ties directly to what we are reflecting on here. With this kind of migrant knowledge, it’s not always possible to prove that it is correct or incorrect. Sometimes it’s about excavating gossip, which also has its own importance as a form of knowledge. If we view archival practice as a way of rewriting history, bringing visibility to what was once once unseen, then we need spaces for discourse. And this is only possible when we come together in physical spaces such as SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA and Ajabu Ajabu.

Deniz: I would also like to add something quickly. In Turkey, we are at a transitional moment when it comes to archives and what we do with these films. The Turkish National Film Archive has actually been a private archive, controlled by the same group of people for over 40 or 50 years. Their strategy was to keep it closed off and not show it to anyone. Because of this, no comprehensive film history has really been written in Turkey, as so many films remained inaccessible. 

But this is also part of the reason Kara Kafa exists. The archive was closed, but this also served to protect the films during political coups. I’ve heard stories about the head of the archive hiding films in different boxes to safeguard them. This approach paid off then, but now we are in a position to disseminate and digitize these films much more easily and cheaply. So why are we not doing that? That’s the question.

In Turkey, I think this also ties to copyright issues. Across 60 years of Turkish film history, over 5,000 films are freely available on YouTube, partly because filmmakers used uncopyrighted songs to sell their films. This has created an interesting dynamic where the best way to protect these films now might actually be through openness, rather than the secrecy of 30 to 40 years ago.

Lisabona: Thank you. I think we often forget that filmmaking’s fundamental principle is multiplicity. Distribution and creating more copies is important, which is why I sometimes wonder about this question of limiting access or keeping exclusive rights. How relevant are these ideas? And what about films that are erased or buried, unknown to anyone? I think we need a different approach to policies for films that exist outside the realm of commercial production and distribution.

Audience Question: Jesse, I really appreciate your practice and the work you are doing with DJ Black. It seems like a way of creating a decentralized, intangible archive closely tied to oral tradition. Have you seen your screenings with DJ Black and live narration inspire others or be replicated in unexpected places?

Jesse: The practice of dubbing has been around for decades, at least since the late 1980s with the emergence of VHS. The key question is about access: What materials are allowed into the ecosystem, and why? A lot of popular cinema and B-movies from around the world circulate within dubbing circles, developing incredible, interesting histories along the way.

Essentially, in these ecosystems live dubbers and movie libraries are functioning as distributors. If you go to a movie library, they can tell you what was popular and when. So our idea is to have new sorts of stories circulating in these movie libraries. It’s still early days—we’ve started with Maangamizi and Touki Bouki—but we’re exploring collaborations that could connect with broader audiences and help grow collective memory in new directions.

Can Sungu is a curator, researcher and author. He is Co-founder and Artistic Director of bi‘bak and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA in Berlin where he curated various international programs, events and exhibitions such as Cinema of Commoning (since 2022), the documentary exhibition projects Sıla Yolu – The Holiday Transit to Turkey and the Tales of the Highway (2016-17) and Bitter Things – Narratives and Memories of Transnational Families (2018). He has served as a juror and consultant for the Berlinale Forum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Duisburger Filmwoche, Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the DAAD Artist-in Berlin Program, among others. He has published several books, including Please Rewind – German-Turkish Film- and Video Culture in Berlin (Archive Books, 2020). Between 2020-23, he has been part of the curatorial team of Fiktionsbescheinigung at the Berlinale Forum – a film program that parries German film history with intersectional perspectives. Since 2023 he is curator for filmic practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

Mosa Mpetha is a film curator of Black, African and archive films in a freelance capacity and in a permanent role at her local heritage cinema, Hyde Park Picture House (est 1914). At Hyde Park Picture House, amongst other things, Mosa curates a new permanent strand of African films called Cinema Africa! for African and Non-African audiences. Mosa also co-founded Black Cinema Project, a national evolving space to bring Black people together with care, to meaningfully watch and discuss Black films and the landscape they are situated within. Based in Leeds, Mosa is originally from Liverpool and South Africa.

Deniz Tortum works in film and immersive media. His work has screened internationally, including at the Venice Film Festival, IFFR, IDFA, SXSW, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Hot Docs, True/False and Dokufest. In 2019, he was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. His recent works include the virtual reality piece Shadowtime (2023, co-dir Sister Sylvester), the essay film Our Ark (2021, co-dir Kathryn Hamilton); and feature documentary Phases of Matter (2020). He is currently researching the history of Turkey’s first short film festival, Hisar Short Film Competition (1967-1970), in collaboration with SALT (Istanbul).

Jesse Gerard Mpango is a storyteller from Kasulu, Tanzania. He is a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu, a multimedia curatorial collective based in Dar Es Salaam. The collective uses participatory, open-ended approaches in its programming and events to explore de-centralized and communal forms of presentation, production and preservation of audiovisual work in Tanzania. Recurrent within his work as part of Ajabu Ajabu, and as an independent practitioner, is the capacity for participatory rituals of imagining to unsettle and dislocate dominant narratives and extractive power structures.

Lisabona Rahman is a film archivist and programmer who works with international film archives concerning heritage, preservation and knowledge sharing activities related to analog film. She curated programmes for various film festivals and works on a database of Indonesian film history.