Symposium: Useful Cinemas / Useful Archives

This 2-day symposium - organised by David Wood (University College London) and Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths, University of London) - brings together researchers and filmmakers to reflect on the intersections of labour, the narration of history and archival practice in ongoing research on Latin American film and video. Participants will consider how feminist, educational, oppositional, and transnational film practices have been shaped by the material and institutional conditions of their making, circulation, and preservation.

Each session combines presentations with screenings of rarely seen films, fragments, and offcuts, opening space for collective engagement with fragile and heterogeneous audiovisual materials. The symposium aims to foster a seminar setting in which ongoing projects and methodological challenges will be shared and debated, from questions of historiography and archival care to the politics of reactivation and reuse. By placing research methods into dialogue with the modes of production and mediation under study, the event foregrounds the intertwined forms of labour involved in both historical film practices and contemporary archival work. In doing so, we seek to illuminate not only the afterlives of “useful cinemas” but also how these “useful archives” help challenge dominant ways of doing film history.

The symposium is organised with the support of the UK Research & Innovation “Horizon Europe Guarantee” program (EP/Z001919/1 and EP/Y015088/1), Centre for Visual Anthropology of Goldsmiths, University of London and SELCS-CMII/Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.

Day 1
Tuesday, 7 October 2025, 5-8 pm
Common Ground (G11) UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Session 1. Archives of Third Worldism and Internationalism
Dalila Missero (University of Lancaster) will discuss some of the archival challenges in researching “Third-World” women’s filmmaking during the UN Decade of Women.

Screening: Extracts from Pan y dignidad: carta abierta de Nicaragua (Bread and Dignity: Open Letter from Nicaragua) (María José Álvarez, Nicaragua, 1983). 12 min.

David Wood (University College London) will reflect on the institutional and methodological complexities of researching and screening the archives of liberal internationalist cinema made in 1950s Bolivia.

Screening: Article 55 (Leo Seltzer, Bolivia, 1951). 11 min.

Session 2. Women Filmmakers In and Against the State
Isabel Seguí (St Andrews University) will reflect on the negotiation processes between urban middle-class filmmakers and subalternised communities and their role in untangling Latin American oppositional cinema.

Screening: excerpts from Los Ronderos (The Night Watchers) (Marianne Eyde, Peru, 1987), and La vida es una sola (You Only Live Once (Marianne Eyde, Peru, 1993).

Julio Gonzáles Oviedo (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) will talk about the state newsreels made by during the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces in Peru (1968-1980).

Screening: Revolución peruana en marcha (The Peruvian Revolution On The March) (Bertha Saldaña Tejada, Peru, 1975). 10 min.

Day 2
Wednesday, 8 October 2025, 4-7 pm
PLEASE NOTE THE DIFFERENT VENUE ON DAY 2:
Prof. Stuart Hall Building, LG02, Goldsmiths, University of London

Session 3. Material Histories of Alternative Film Productions
Miguel Errazu (Goldsmiths, University of London) will talk about the entangled histories of dependence and cooperation in Bolivia, as reflected in the archival film materials of a union-led educational film project developed in 1983.

Screening: excerpts from films of the Miners’ Film Workshop (FSTMB-Association Varan, Bolivia, 1983). 10 min.

Sonia García López (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) will explore the idea of useful films and their afterlives through the discussion of Prijodiat y ujodiat poezda (Trains Will Come and Go, 1961), a student film made by Spanish filmmaker Rosina Prado in the USSR that Prado used as a “presentation letter” after migrating to Cuba.

Session 4. Fragile Archives and Feminist Historiography
María Aimaretti (University of Buenos Aires) will present new perspectives on the historiography of industrial sound cinema based on ongoing research on the papers of an Argentine film industry worker.

Screening: preview of a forthcoming documentary on Annemarie Heinrich (dir. Mariana Sanguinetti). 11 min.

Lorena Cervera (Arts University Bournemouth) will discuss the challenges of preserving films made by women in Latin America through her engagement with collaborative research projects on marginalised histories of alternative film production.

Screening: offcuts of Araya (Margot Benacerraf, Venezuela, 1959) and excerpts from Yo, tú, Ismaelina (You, Ismaelina) (Grupo Feminista Miércoles, Venezuela, 1982). 12 min.

Mary Carmen Molina (St Andrews University) will share methodological challenges and perspectives on archival research and circulation, as approached through her project “MUJERES/CINE: Bolivia 1960/2020”.

Screening: Nacer hombre (To Be Born a Man) (Danielle Caillet, Bolivia, 1991). 10 min.

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