Found Futures 1: Living Archive Residents

When Politics Fails, Who Fills the Void?
Presentation by Lilia Ben Achour

Tunisian cinema does not lack history. It lacks the structures to carry its history forward.

At Arsenal, I encountered around twenty Tunisian titles in the database, from professional productions to amateur films. Their diversity and dispersion made visible something larger than the absence of films from a national archive: the absence of a sustained system for collecting, preserving and transmitting our own cinematic memory.

This raises a more urgent question: what happens when the responsibility for a nation’s memory is left to those who – nominally – possess the means necessary to preserve it?

For me, a decolonial archival practice cannot stop at questioning inherited classifications or narratives. It must also ask who has the knowledge, the skills and the structures to preserve their own memory.

If the State is not fulfilling this role, waiting is itself a form of loss.

The alternative is to organise: to train, to transmit knowledge, to connect existing practices and to build a collective capable of taking responsibility for Tunisian film heritage.

Sovereignty over memory begins with the capacity to preserve it.

Phantoms of the Archive
Presentation by Jere Ikongio

Phantoms of the Archive is an interactive project researching Arsenal's archive from a feminist and Afro-diasporic position (1955-75). The research will focus on Nollywood, Africa and the Caribbean, mapping traces of phantoms to give their absence a form. Starting with: Norma Torrado, Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror, Sara Gómez and many more.

Women Archivists of the Cinemateca do MAM (Rio de Janeiro)
Presentation by Drika de Oliveira

The project will draw from my master's research on a historiographical revision of women who worked at the Cinemateca do MAM, an almost 80-year-old institution. The aim is to reestablish the names and career paths of some of these women, usually forgotten and unseen in history books. This project has already recovered rare and previously unknown materials, and is being developed together with the recording of interviews with several former employees.

Lilia Ben Achour is an archivist, researcher, and former artistic director at the Tunisian Film Heritage Institution, with experience in film restoration and audiovisual heritage. Her work focuses on the politics of film archives, the circulation and fragmentation of Tunisian cinema, and decolonial approaches to preservation. She is currently developing research on Tunisian film heritage, combining archival practice, curatorial work, and critical inquiry into national memory.

Jere Ikongio is the convener and curator of African Film Archive, an interactive platform on cinema connected to Black people, Africa, and its diaspora. A Lagos/Berlin-based artist and organizer, Jere combines media, performance, and immersive tech in his practice to engage with infrastructure, hyper-identity, and marginalized realities. Jere is a Magnum Foundation fellow, a Digital Earth fellow, and a World Press Photo grantee.

Drika de Oliviera is Head of Film Collections at Cinemateca do MAM in Rio de Janeiro. As a member of the FIAF Executive Committee and, together with Caroline Fournier (Cinémathèque Suisse), she founded the FIAF Gender Observatory. She is currently pursuing a master's degree at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF – Niterói), where she is conducting research on the paths of women professionals in the history of the Cinemateca do MAM.