ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the politics of transnational cooperation evidenced in efforts toward “saving cinema.” It is premised upon the author's experience attending the 2018 Film Preservation and Restoration Workshop India (FPRWI’18), which framed film restoration primarily as a technical process overseen by archival professionals from the Global North. In response, the chapter argues for the need to rethink North–South archival cooperation beyond technocentric frameworks, attending instead to unidirectional knowledge flows, unequal exchange, and the broader geo-cultural politics of saving cinema. The 1995 photochemical restoration of Satyajit Ray's Aparajito and Jalsaghar serves as a historical lens through which the chapter examines enduring power asymmetries in the field of film restoration and preservation. By reconstructing this case, the author broadens the conversation to include material concerns such as the acquisition of restoration elements, the settlement of insurance claims, and the necessity of financial transparency and compensation. The author thus analyzes the 2018 workshop's discursive regime in conjunction with a historical reconstruction of the earlier photochemical restoration of Ray's films. This conjunctive methodology, while rendering visible the transnational cooperations that film restoration entails, also provides an avenue for thinking about the power asymmetries constituted in the process. Tracing the construction of restoration as a “First World concept,” the author argues for the need to critically contextualize transnational pedagogy and exchange in audiovisual archiving.
