Symposium Panel 3: Book launch “Restitution and the Moving Image”

As global demands grow for the restitution of looted artifacts from Western museums and ethnological collections, what about the displaced and sequestered moving-image heritage of the Global Majority? The book Restitution and the Moving Image. Global Film Heritage Between Return, Access and Archival Reparation, published by Routledge in 2026, examines restitutive practices in audiovisual archives worldwide, addressing pressing practical questions with immediate policy implications. It explores legal frameworks, codes of conduct, and institutional governance while offering a groundbreaking theoretical contribution to film and heritage studies. The book launch will offer an opportunity to discuss these questions with the editors, together with Giovanna Fossati and Lisabona Rahman, while also critically reflecting on the volume’s own gaps and limitations. Which histories, geographies, archives, and forms of audiovisual heritage remain underrepresented? What questions does the book leave open, and where should research and restitution practices go from here?

See also: Restitution and the Moving Image. Global Film Heritage Between Return, Access and Archival Reparation

Giovanna Fossati is Professor of Media Heritage, Technology, and Culture at Utrecht University and Research Director of ICON. Formerly Chief Curator at Eye Filmmuseum and Professor of Film Heritage at the University of Amsterdam, she researches film history, restoration, digitization, and audiovisual heritage, with a focus on global and sustainable approaches. She is author of From Grain to Pixeland co-founder of GAVA.

Nikolaus Perneczky is a Teaching Associate at Cambridge Digital Humanities. He is a film and media scholar and curator whose work examines audiovisual heritage, archival governance, and media infrastructures across uneven global contexts shaped by colonial legacies and contemporary inequalities. His work has appeared in Black Camera (2022), Public (2025), and Feminist Media Histories (2026), among others. With Cecilia Valenti, he is co-editor of Restitution and the Moving Image (Routledge, 2026).

Lisabona Rahman works with film preservation from Berlin and Jakarta. She has been contributing to knowledge-sharing activities with archives in Berlin, Cairo, Jakarta, and Jos. Her works have been supported by the Arsenal Institut, Thai Film Archive, Eye Filmmuseum, Sinematek Indonesia, and rubanah underground hub. Lisabona has initiated several film digitization or restoration projects as collective learning frameworks involving archivists, technicians, and artists. She also creates screenings for festivals and galleries, focusing on Southeast Asian cinema and women’s works. She is a member of Southeast Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA). Lisabona is part of Kelas Liarsip research collective and a founding member of the translocal School of Women’s Thought feminist network. Since April 2025, she has been appointed as FIAF’s Training & Outreach Coordinator.

Cecilia Valenti is an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Recent publications include an article on Ateyyat Al Abnoudy and transnational coproduction in public television in Germany (2025) and on the militant film manifestos of the 1930s Workers Film and Photo League (2025). Currently she is working on a book on global-critical perspectives on television and film coproductions. With Nikolaus Perneczky, she is co-editor of Restitution and the Moving Image (Routledge, 2026).