Unpacking the ArteArchive Online Film Program: Four Films

In South West Asia and North Africa, there are historical records of women’s cinema since the 1920s. However, a lack of state funding for archival projects, as well as factors such as conflict and war, mean that we often encounter these films only through written accounts. The films themselves are inaccessible, or more often damaged or lost.

Feminist history is subversive, and often excluded from mainstream historiographies. Since the 1970s, many women have made films about archiving practice, or their own cultural histories, which have been erased from popular imagination. In more recent times, digital technology has become a mode of reconstructing stories in the absence of archival material, as well as a tool to undertake more ambitious restoration projects.