ABSTRACT
This chapter, by film curator and researcher Léa Morin, considers the decolonial potential of cinema, emphasizing its dual role as both a tool of colonial oppression and a weapon for anti-colonial liberation. While advocating for the preservation and restoration of marginalized film heritage, Morin also acknowledges the complex challenges and new forms of domination that can arise in the process. At its core, this intervention contends that nonexistent or incomplete films are significant cultural artifacts. By calling for the reconstitution of suppressed cinematic histories through a combination of archival research and narrative speculation, Morin argues for the restitution of “films that don’t exist” as vital nodes of potential history, and for the importance of alternative methodologies in film preservation and curatorship.
