Activating the Archive: Contemporary Film Practice

This film and media production course explores historical and contemporary archives as sites of both artistic and critical intervention. Engaging with questions of inscription, memory, erasure, and historical re-imagination, students will examine how artists and filmmakers repurpose archival materials to craft counter-histories and speculative narratives. Through workshops in video and image-making, screenings, discussions, and guest lectures by invited artists and filmmakers, students will engage with archives as spaces for critical inquiry and poetic retrieval. Each student will select one or more archives to develop a major project that reinterprets, recontextualizes, or reimagines the retrieved material. The course will culminate in a final group exhibition and screening at the MCM Carriage House.