Filmreihe Shared Histories - Collaboration in Ethnographic Film

In the organizer's words:

Shared Histories - Collaboration in Ethnographic Film

25.09. to 28.09.2025

The Ethnologisches Museum presents 16 films in the cinema of the Dahlem research campus that are dedicated to the topic of collaboration in the history of ethnographic film from multiple perspectives and were made between 1914 and 2022.

Can films, gazes, images be restituted? What forms of participation or "shared histories" can exist in ethnographic film? What new approaches can be used to open up a collaborative examination of the colonial legacy of the archives and a new dialog with various actors, filmmakers and indigenous communities? The film series addresses these current discourses of decolonization and participation in knowledge and transformation processes in close collaboration with indigenous filmmakers and archives worldwide.

The films, including Berlin premieres, new digital restorations and analog film prints, will be shown in the original with English subtitles and accompanied by introductions and discussions with filmmakers, protagonists, film scholars and ethnologists. Lectures on the film archive of the Ethnologisches Museum and film restoration as well as an international panel discussion will frame the film program.

An English-language, richly illustrated volume with 13 essays by international filmmakers, ethnologists, film critics and film scholars will be published on the occasion of the film series.

The film series, curated by Dr. Regina Knapp and Louise von Plessen, is supported by the Capital Cultural Fund.