This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice is Eye’s annual public lecture series with international guest speakers and remarkable archival footage. Together with invited guests, each of the six sessions will touch upon different forms of creative archival reuse: from compilation film to audiovisual immersive VJ set, from controversial 3D film to real-time VR experience.

This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice runs from March 11 until May 20 on Wednesday at 3.30pm in Eye, IJpromenade 1, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, eyefilm.nl/thisisfilm
The lectures are in English and can be attended as a series or on a one-off basis

Each session will feature an introduction by Giovanna Fossati (Chief Curator at Eye and Professor of Film Heritage at the University of Amsterdam), followed by a talk by, or interview and Q&A with, an international expert on the topic and a film screening or performance.

This is Film! #1: Copyright
Wednesday, March 11, 3.30pm – 7.30pm
Guest and screening: Claudy Op den Kamp (Programme Leader BA (Hons) Film, Bournemouth University, UK) will give a lecture on copyright, taking Los Angeles Plays Itself (USA, Thom Andersen, 2003-2013, DCP) as a specific case study. This underground documentary essay on the depictions of Los Angeles in movies consists entirely of excerpts from more than 150 films.

This is Film! #2: Bits & Pieces and the VJ
Wednesday, March 25, 3.30pm – 6.00pm
Guest and screening: Rossella Catanese (VJ, Adjunct Professor at Sapienza University of Rome) will make the audience part of her experiences as a VJ working with found footage material and will perform an audiovisual immersive VJ set with Eye’s unique Bits&Pieces collection. She will be accompanied by electronic musician Jan Willem Hagenbeek.

This is Film! #3: the Polaroid Effect
Wednesday, April 8, 3.30pm – 6.30pm
Guest and screening: Jens Meurer (filmmaker/producer) will address a renewed desire for analogue media by presenting his feature documentary An Impossible Project (GER, 2020, 35mm), in which he follows an analogue lover during his endeavors to save the last Polaroid factory in the world.

This is Film! #4: the Afghan Film Archive
Wednesday, April 22, 3.30pm – 6.30pm
Guest and screening: Ariel Nasr (filmmaker) will zoom in on Afghan film history. Through the screening of his documentary The Forbidden Reel (CA, 2019, 2K DCP), this session will offer a rare view of the once hidden and forbidden treasures of Afghan film heritage.

This is Film! #5: Restoration or Re-appropriation?
Wednesday, May 6, 3.30pm – 6.30pm
Guests and screening: Matthew Lee (Head of Film at Imperial War Museums) and David Walsh (Training and Outreach Coordinator for FIAF) will give a talk on They Shall Not Grow Old (NZ/UK, 2018, Peter Jackson, 3D, DCP), a documentary film that sparked heated discussions within the audiovisual archive community. The film tells the story of what it was like to be a soldier during the First World War, using original footage from the Imperial War Museum’s extensive archives.

This is Film! #6: Archival films and VR
Wednesday, May 20, 3.30pm – 6.00pm
Guests and screening: Oscar Raby (Creative Director of VRTOV), Richard Misek (filmmaker and Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent), Charlie Shackleton (filmmaker and film critic) will present their A Machine for Viewing (2019), a unique hybrid of real-time VR experience, live performance, and documentary that explores how we now watch films by putting cinema and VR face to face. Misek and Shackleton will also present a compilation of their video essays in line with the topic. 

In collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)