Led by the University of Liverpool’s Samar Abdelrahman alongside Erica Carter (KCL), and Dan Hodgkinson (Oxford), Unhousing Restitution: African audio-visual heritage between displacement and return (UNREST) will research and disseminate new, Africa-led and practice-oriented methodologies and models for restitution of displaced African film heritage.
Courtesy University of Liverpool
For twentieth-century anti-colonial movements and postcolonial states, cinema was a key medium for articulating and popularising decolonisation. Yet years of resource poverty and political inaction have left a film heritage landscape marked by neglect and material destruction.
For two years, UNREST researchers will work with ten international partners to identify and disseminate Africa-led solutions to this egregious cultural loss.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary research team from film studies, African history and digital humanities, and a partner network spanning Cairo, Accra, Tamale, Berlin, Khartoum and London, UNREST will develop and test new approaches to audio-visual heritage restitution, from collaborative historical research to community digital archiving and creative reuse.
Focus on case studies from Sudan and Ghana.
The project will move restitution debates from a focus on the politics of return, to practices of shared transnational history-making, collaborative infrastructure development and African-led creative renewal.
