Introduction

Archives of film and media are being challenged, critiqued, and reimagined. The heritage that has been preserved and the knowledge production to which it contributes has typically reinforced systemic structural barriers and inequalities and privileged dominant histories, identities, and communities, whilst sidelining and marginalising others (Cade; Gaines; Gledhill and Knight; Hagener and Zimmermann; Sawadogo). But a paradigm shift is taking place. Film and media history is in flux and being reframed through, for example, women’s film history (Ball et al.; Bell, Movie Workers; Galt; Gledhill and Knight; Hennefeld and Horak), queer history (Anselmo; Damiens; McKinney) Black film history (Cade; McLeod Cramer; Posner and Cifor), African film history (Mano et al.), object-centred approaches (Fenwick; Hastie; Stead), memory studies and oral history (Bell, ‘“I”’; Biltereyst et al.; Cobb and Williams; Kuhn), museology and media archaeology (Cere; Hall and Ellis; Huhtamo and Galili; Lameris), ethnography and early film history (Groo; Ingravalle; Porter), decolonisation (Cere et al.), and filmmaking and performance (El Hassan; Dust & Metal; Siewert).