Lisabona Rahman is FIAF's New Training and Outreach Coordinator

We are very pleased to inform you that Lisabona Rahman, an independent film archivist, curator and researcher from Indonesia and currently based in Berlin, has been appointed FIAF Training & Outreach Coordinator. She succeeds David Walsh, who decided to retire at the end of last year after almost a decade of dedicated service to FIAF. The position has been offered to Lisabona Rahman on a freelance basis, initially for a one-year contract, starting on 1 April 2025.

Here is Lisabona’s professional biography:

Lisabona Rahman began her career in 2004 as a film journalist and arthouse cinema programmer in Jakarta, where she developed an interest in film preservation. In 2013, she earned a degree in Moving Image Preservation and Presentation from the University of Amsterdam. From 2014 to 2016, she worked in the Film Comparison and Reconstruction Department at the L'Immagine Ritrovata restoration laboratory in Bologna.

In 2016, Lisabona returned to Jakarta, where she began consulting and conducting film handling workshops for audiovisual archivists. That same year, she collaborated with Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. in Berlin to assess vinegar syndrome in its collection. She has helped develop training programs for institutions such as the Indonesian Film Centre (Jakarta) in 2017 and 2018, as well as Arsenal's transnational collaborations with the Cimatheque Alternative Film Center in Cairo and the National Film, Video, and Sound Archive (NFVSA) of Nigeria from 2019 to 2025. This collaboration was presented in a panel titled ‘Opposing the Current | Transnational Collaboration as a Mutual Learning Tool’ at the Film Archives in the Global South symposium during the 2024 FIAF Congress in Bangkok.

As part of her interest in interdisciplinary collaboration in film preservation and historical research, Lisabona has worked with audiovisual archives, post-production technicians, and film historians in Indonesia to digitize and restore films from the post-colonial period. These restoration workflows were designed alongside efforts to identify potential partnerships. The outcomes have been presented at academic institutions and film festivals to raise awareness about lesser-known filmmakers and film histories. Her reflections on these projects were published in 2024 as a chapter titled ‘Reflection on Film Restoration, Acculturatie, and Democracy – The Case Studies of Lewat Djam Malam and Aladin’ in The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas.

Lisabona also creates lectures and archival film screenings. Her interests intersect cinema practice and history in post-colonial societies, transnational networks, and women's work. From 2018 to 2021, she organized LAYAR Forum, a platform for sharing Asian cinema heritage, which led to a collaborative online cinema program involving the Film Preservation Society in Japan, Yayasan Cipta Citra Indonesia, and the Thai Film Archive. Her other programs and lectures have received support from institutions such as Eye Filmmuseum, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Národní filmový archiv, and RUBANAH Underground Hub.

Currently based in Berlin, Lisabona is an Associate Individual Member of the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) and an active participant in Kelas Liarsip, an Indonesia-based virtual study group on film preservation and its feminist history.

We look forward to working with Lisabona on the further development of our Training & Outreach Programme. Note that all queries related to this programme can be sent to training@fiafnet.org.