Accidental Archivism, eds. Stefanie Schulte Strathaus & Vinzenz Hediger

Review of Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past , edited by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Vinzenz Hediger. Accidental Archivism is a compendium of essays, statements, and interviews collected to mark the 60 th anniversary of the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin. For the accidental archivist, cinema reveals itself to be more than a succession of great works, it is a “string of productive stumbles.” Divided into seven thematic sections, the forty-three pieces assembled here recount such productive stumbles, reflect on the labor necessary to turn chance encounters into accessible records, and do not shy away from acknowledging the limitations and pitfalls of the digital media ecology.