1st Edition

Exposing the Film Apparatus Global Laboratory Perspectives

Edited By Giovanna Fossati, Annie van den Oever Copyright 2026
392 Pages
by Amsterdam University Press

This book addresses the growing awareness of the historical collections of film and media devices in film archives and media museums. Over thirty experts reflect on the prominent roles media technologies play in a range of social, cultural, curatorial, and educational practices as well as in storage, presentation, and research strategies, looking beyond the more customary range of debates to... Read more

Acknowledgements

Introduction - Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever

PROLOGUE

1. The Moving Image Archive as Research Laboratory Ten Years On - Giovanna Fossati and Christian Olesen

2.On Teaching Media in the Apparatus Archive, Hands-On - Annie van den Oever

PART I SMALL AND PORTABLE

3. Camera Obscura - Tom Gunning

4. The “Bande-Cache,” or: The Material Art of Light Filters - Miriam De Rosa, Andrea Mariani and Warshadfilm

5. Teaching from the Archive in Black-and-White 35mm: Analogue Nostalgia in Post-Apartheid South Africa - Landi Raubenheimer and Bongani J. Khoza

6. Socio-Technological Margins as Research Topic for Media Archaeology - Liri Chapelan

7. How to Re-Activate the Endangered Archive of a Historical Science Film Festival: A Speculative Approach - Silvia Casini

8. The Kinora as an Intermedial Dispositif of Early Twentieth-Century Home Cinema - Tim van der Heijden

9. The Homemade Film Projector - Guy Edmonds

10. Amateur Archaeologies and Hybrid Thinkering with the Kodak Reels Film Digitizer - Sanna McGregor

11. Double Vision: William Kentridge and the Stereoscope - Josef van Wyk

PART II MEDIUM AND NOT EASILY PORTABLE

12. The Mazo Cinématographe Mixte: A Hybrid Media Apparatus - Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk

13. Bending Efforts and Beams: The Use of the CRT Projector in Video Art Installations - Evelyne Snijders and Ellen Jansen

14. A Projectionist and his Percepto: Personal Archives and Embodied Film Education - Keith Bennie

15. The LAPA Scanner and the Possibilities for Sovereign Film Preservation - Carolina Cappa and Isabel Wschebor

16. Nostalgia: Emulation as a Service - Seán Cubitt

17. Caring for Obsolete Technology “in the Wild”: Former Users as Caregivers in the Maintenance and Repair of the U-Matic Video System - Sergio Minniti

18. The Anabasis of Super 8 - Gülce Özkara

PART III LARGE

19. Film Inspection Tables as Historical, Operational and Learning Devices - Simone Venturini

20. Jan Bot: Exposing the Bits & Pieces Collection Using AI and Algorithmic Montage - Pablo Núñez Palma

21. Moving on a Budget: The Mahlase-Roodt Eco Dolly - Tumisho Mahlase and Waldo Roodt

22. Rear Projection in Brazilian Silent Movie Theatres: Sobrados, Wet Screens and Alternative Media History - Rafael de Luna Freire

23. Empowerment or Digital Colonialism? Indigenous Virtual Reality in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - Andrew Simon Tucker

24. Sensing Film Archival Data: The Film Catcher - Christian Gosvig Olesen

25. Ancestral Images, Cultural Protocols and the Politics of Digital Storage: Restricted Storage at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia - Nikolaus Perneczky

Biography

Giovanna Fossati is Professor of Media Heritage, Technology, and Culture at Utrecht University. Formerly Chief Curator of Eye Filmmuseum and Professor of Film Heritage at the University of Amsterdam, her research focuses on audiovisual archiving with a global and sustainable approach.

Annie van den Oever is Distinguished Visiting Professor (University of Johannesburg) and, until recently, Professor of Film (University Groningen) and Extraordinary Professor of Film and Visual Media (University of the Free State). She published Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory in 2022, with Andreas Fickers, and Technics in 2024, with Nicholas Baer.