Deutsche Kinemathek colloquium: Avant-garde in the archive?!

How do avant-garde and experimental films come into the archive – and then back into the public sphere? Often having come about in unconventional ways and long perceived to be on the edge of film history, these films usually only find their way into an archive because of the personal commitment of individual collectors. Once there, they often put the standard strategies of archives into question: How does one describe works whose contents are not conventional? What rules of conservation should be set for material which does not have a negative as an original? How do films which have their own materiality as a theme be appropriately restored?