Restitution and the Moving Image

For those yet to engage with restitution and the moving image, this book not only unpacks the concept but also traces its historical significance across multiple territories, offering a valuable introduction to this vital debate and its implications for film heritage.

June Givanni, founder of June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive, London, UK.

An enthralling volume that addresses the possibilities and limitations of a “global cinematic commons” of film heritage. A powerful plea by a multiplicity of voices to reassess traditional debates about the restitution and repatriation of the moving image.

Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia University, USA.

Restitution and the Moving Image is a vital and groundbreaking intervention in scholarship on film archives and debates on global cultural heritage. The volume expands the notion of restitution beyond material, as a process rather than an endpoint—one that unfolds through media infrastructures, institutional practices, and epistemic struggles over the very meaning of the archive. Bringing together scholars, archivists, and artists from across continents, the book reveals how film’s displaced histories are continually reproduced by the inequities that structure global media heritage, while also showing how acts of restitution open new imaginaries of responsibility and repair. This is essential reading for anyone committed to decolonizing visual culture and reimagining justice and solidarity across the longue durée of film history.

Masha Salazkina, Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada