Archives in Movement: Preservation and Diversity of Visual Narratives

Discussion with Chantal Partamian
Tuesday, December 5, 6 pm
In French, English and Arabic
Free, at the gallery

Facebook Event

“A few years ago, I began researching and collecting amateur film archives that were likely to hold images of towns and villages in the eastern and southern Mediterranean between the 1930s and 1970s. I soon found that most of these archives were in European and North American collections or were made by amateur tourists, raising questions about the diversity of content in visual archives and access to them.” In this discussion, artist-archivist Chantal Partamian considers archives as living entities, reservoirs of rich narratives essential to the preservation of historical context, questioning the importance of preserving the integrity and completeness of these archives, particularly in the face of the challenges posed by displaced archives in the context of former colonized territories and periods of armed conflict. Partamian examines approaches to managing dispersed records in our modern, interconnected world, looking at the concept of archives as dynamic entities with multiple affiliations, transcending traditional notions of single provenance.

Chantal Partamian is an experimental filmmaker and archivist. Her work explores themes of migration, identity, conflict and obsolescence, using mainly Super 8mm and found footage. Her archival activities focus on the preservation and restoration of reels from the Mediterranean basin, combined with research into archival practices in regions of conflict. Partamian’s films have been presented and awarded at numerous festivals. They are distributed by Vidéographe, Groupe intervention Vidéo (GIV) and the Canadian filmmakers distribution center (CFMDC).