ABSTRACT
As calls for the return of ill-gotten artifacts from Western museums and ethnological collections multiply, what about the similarly displaced audiovisual heritage of the Global Majority world? In this introduction to the volume, the editors outline contexts, stakes, and perspectives of the restitution debate in relation to the medium of film. Its central argument is that rethinking restitution through the medium-specific affordances and operations of the moving image compels a reconceptualization of that paradigm. Rather than focusing narrowly on the question of return, the debate must be expanded toward a broader horizon of reparative worldmaking that also addresses forms of epistemic violence embedded in archival media, the legal and economic frameworks that govern image ownership and authorship, and broader legacies of uneven development and unequal exchange in global audiovisual archiving. The chapter concludes by introducing the volume's contributions, showing how each speaks to these larger concerns.
