2023 Mexico City Symposium
Opening Remarks and Panel 1: "Preserving Film Heritage: A Female-Driven Dialogue"
Mexico, 17 April 2023
In the absence of stories in feminine about the practice of film archive, this round table proposes a six-voice dialogue in which historians, managers and professionals in restoration and conservation, will review the conditions in which women have performed their profession, their position in relation to their male colleagues and their presence in leadership positions.
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Preserving Film Heritage: A Female-Driven Dialogue
Camille Blot-Wellens is a film historian, researcher and independent archivist. Graduated in History (University of Paris 1) and Cinema (University of Paris 8), she began to collaborate with film archives in 2000 in identification, research, restoration and training projects (FIAF Summer School, School on Wheels, identification workshops…) and has worked more specifically for the Filmoteca Española (2000-2007), the Cinémathèque française (2007-2011) and the Svenska Filminstitutet (2016-2019). Specialized in silent films, she is the author of two books and numerous articles and editor of an enriched version of Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification, by Harold Brown, for FIAF (2020). Member of the FIAF Technical Commission, she currently teaches classes on film archives, conservation and restoration at the University of Paris 8 (France) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). In 2018 she was awarded the Jean Mitry Prize (Il Giornate del Cinema muto Festival, Pordenone – Italy) and the Outstanding Achievement Award for Film Preservation (Film Heritage Foundation, Mumbai – India). She is developing a PhD on early films in the collections of the Swedish Film Institute (Stockholm).
Mariona Bruzzo Llaberia has a diploma in Art History and a master’s degree in Museography and Museology. Although initially she was linked to television and cinema, it is at the Filmoteca de Catalunya where she has developed her professional activity. Since 2002 she has been in charge of the Conservation Area and in 2013 she became the head of the Conservation and Restoration Center. Her actions have been guided by the will to equate cinema to the performance standards of Cultural Heritage; promoting a professional team, to develop and implement actions, principles and protocols close to those of other cultural heritage institutions, especially museums, but adapted to the particularities of the cinematographic event, achieving that in 2011 the Filmic Collection was declared Catalan Cultural Heritage and establishing a collections policy in 2014. Under this same principle, she promoted the construction of the current conservation center, the 2CR, inaugurated in 2014. She participates in numerous national and international film archives meetings, and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of European Cinematheques, ACE, between 2016 and 2020.
Guadaluppe Ferrer Andrade is a Mexican manager, cultural promoter and producer of silent films. She has been director of the Cineteca Nacional de México, of TV UNAM (University Television of the National Autonomous University of Mexico), of Cinematographic Cultural Promotion of the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE) and of the UNAM Film Archive. She has been a member of the Committee of Experts of the Spanish-Mexican Audiovisual Space and advisor to the Ibero-American Educational Television Association and the Coordinating Committee of the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences. In 1994 she was decorated as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Government and in 2015 she was recognized for her career with the MUSA prize awarded by the Association of Women in Cinema and Television of Mexico. She has been a teacher for more than 40 years, where the systematic use of cinema has been fundamental for both the teaching of history and the creation of social imaginaries.
Caroline Fournier has been Head of the Film Collection Department of the Cinémathèque suisse since 1 March 2018, after having been responsible for the conservation/restoration sector since 2009. She is also the institution’s representative in the Memoriav association and is a member of the FIAF Technical Commission. Holder of two master’s degrees, in Modern Literature and Performing Arts, specializing in Cinematographic and Audiovisual Studies, Caroline Fournier has worked in the restoration and identification of several films in Spain, especially at the Filmoteca Española in Madrid together with Luciano Berriatúa and Alfonso de Amo. In 2014, Caroline Fournier successfully defended a doctoral thesis on The proliferation of multiple versions in Spanish cinema from 1955 to 1967, under the supervision of François Thomas, professor at the University of Paris III. She is also the author of several articles published in specialized magazines.
Avril Guigue-Ortiz graduated in History before specializing in film. She is currently studying a master’s degree in Cinema, specializing in the promotion of cinematographic and audiovisual heritage, at the University of Paris 8 (France), for which she is preparing a thesis on the history of the Latin American Coordinator of Moving Images (CLAIM). He has done several internships in festivals (Quinzaine des réalisateurs – Cannes, Festival du Film de Muret, Court ou Long – Festival de cinéma en plein air, Festival du film roumain de Toulouse) and heritage institutions (Cinémathèque de Toulouse).
Tzutzumatzin Soto Cortés holds a degree in Latin American Studies from the UNAM and a master’s degree in communication and politics from the UAM. She also has a postgraduate degree in Management, Preservation and Dissemination of Photographic Collections from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. From 2012 to 2022, she was in charge of organizing and making accessible the Videographic, Iconographic, and Digital collections of the Cineteca Nacional. She has developed projects for the creation of regional community archives, through educational programs including the Diagnosis of Oaxacan Audiovisual Collections with OaxacaCine and PreservaLAB Laboratory for the creation of independent audiovisual archives at IMCINE. She also collaborates with initiatives that program renegade archival material and create works with found material (Ambulante Documentary Festival and the Archival Experiences Group). In 2022 she was recognized by the Secretary of Culture of the State of Puebla, Memórica y el Fotobservatorio, with the Incentive for Good Practices for her work in documenting the iconographic heritage of the Cineteca Nacional.
