Paper short abstract:

The key to the future lies in the past. The archive of the past is our immediate future. The question is not that we merely take and place the archive. We are not merely inheritors of a culture but its inherent makers.

Paper long abstract:

The key to the future lies in the past and so the archive of the past is our immediate future. As we negotiate the role of material for visual storytelling in various ways, filmed, imagined, memory, sound, story, we are accessing the past for the mapping of new worlds. The question is not that we merely take and place the archive but how it is used.

How do we use archive to our advantages in Africa? How do we access archival material? How do we confront the neo colonial project of 'extraction' and 'preservation'? How do we build and preserve our stories within our own contexts so that the documents they become stay true to us?

We are not merely inheritors of a culture but its inherent makers.