Welcome to Mexico!

¡Que viva México !

FIAF feels very honored to be able to be welcomed (finally!), for its 2023 Congress, by this great heritage institution, the Filmoteca of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). This is actually the second time, as UNAM had already organized a FIAF Congress in 1982 in Oaxtepec, more than forty years ago – an edition that was preceded by the second seminar dedicated to the Audiovisual Archives of Latin America and the Caribbean, and whose main symposium was entitled “The Forgotten Cinema of Latin America”. While the 1982 Congress also tackled a theme that is more relevant than ever in the digital age (“What Future for the Past? Keeping Cinema Alive”), this year’s symposium will focus (it’s about time!) on the theme of women, cinema, and film archives. Fourteen years after the Buenos Aires Congress, this return of the Federation to Latin America is a reason of joy for all archivist colleagues around the world, and an opportunity to strengthen our ties and knowledge of all the countries of this immense territory, which has a rich cultural and cinematographic heritage.

Frédéric Maire, President of FIAF

Although women have been an important subject in cinema throughout its various stages, we know little about the change in its representations and the role they have played in the history of safeguarding, preserving and rescuing its images.

The discussion on how cinema and the film archives of the 21st century can promote gender equality is the central issue of this FIAF symposium in 2023, which will be hosted by the Casa del Lago UNAM. “Women, cinema and film archive” is the title with which we return after the pandemic to this important international meeting and we do it with a theme that permeates a historically patriarchal industry.

In this 2023 we want to review the work of women who paved the way in film collections, such as: Elena Sánchez Valenzuela, Mimí Derba, Adela Sequeyro, Gloria Schoemann, as well as Adriana and Dolores Ehlers, to mention a few.

We also seek, through academic reflection, to vindicate the work of women in industry and film collections, understanding them as active people who dedicate their profession to different film institutions; and review current practices in the film industry, specifically in film archives, to chart different and necessary routes leading to the post-patriarchy.

At the closing date of the call more than 115 proposals were received from countries such as Colombia, Sweden, Italy, Korea, India, Ireland, France, Chile, Brazil, Germany, Australia, England, Holland, Romania, Hungary, Switzerland, Ecuador, United States and Mexico, among others, which allows us to value the importance of a subject like this and that crosses all the film archives of the world. The scientific committee, formed by women film managers from around the world, will analyze the proposals and determine which ones can be carried out this coming April at Casa del Lago.

For all these reasons, and within the framework of the reflection that the Department of Cultural Affairs has made on the post-patriarchy, I am pleased that the FIAF has decided to trust the National Autonomous University of Mexico to organize its 2023 congress.

Welcome!

Rosa Beltrán Álvarez

Coordinator of the Department of Cultural Affairs – UNAM

Welcome to Mexico!

We are very happy that the Filmoteca of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) will host the congress of the International Federation of Film Archives in 2023. As you know, in 2020 we would be the hosts, but everything had to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, three years later and with an almost post-pandemic panorama, it is a great honor that the FIAF has once again looked and trusted Latin America to organize its annual congress and symposium with such a necessary theme as “Women, cinema and film archive”.

On behalf of our Rector, Dr. Enrique Graue and Dr. Rosa Beltrán, Coordinator of Cultural Affairs, I warmly welcome you. I am sure you will enjoy your stay in Mexico and your participation in this congress that will have the Casa del Lago UNAM as its main venue, located in the Bosque de Chapultepec, the largest green lung in Latin America.

The largest University of America welcomes you and wishes you a great stay in which we will learn and exchange knowledge and experiences.

Hugo Villa Smythe

General Director of Filmoteca UNAM

For Casa del Lago UNAM, it is a great honor to host an important part of the activities of the 2023 edition of the congress of the International Federation of Film Archives, which will receive in our country prominent exponents from diverse backgrounds to review a topic that concerns us as a society, as a university space and, of course, as reader-spectators: the archival recovery and re-reading of film documentation to rethink them in our present context.

In the cross reading of images, texts, sound and movement, and in the imbrication and resonances that only cinema knows how to produce between these languages, the reading of our being in the world, of our conception of time and imagination as a creative and, beyond, vital motor is at stake. The fact that this congress occurs in the Mexican and university contexts is therefore no less: the commitment to the sustainability of cultural production in our country has become urgent and requires attention from communities willing to protect and recover what constitutes us politically and poetically.

We thank Filmoteca UNAM, as well as the UNAM Ingmar Bergman Chair in Film and Theater, along with the other participating bodies, for their confidence in developing this initiative at Casa del Lago, which is also a center that recovers, due to its history and vocation, the experimental capacities of various cultural memories in Mexico. We hope that your experience in the congress will be completed in a very positive way in this privileged space located in the heart of the Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City, and that the resonances will be enhanced in this meeting.

Cinthya García Leyva

Director of Casa del Lago UNAM