[Coming soon from the Press] Keeping Memories: Cinema and Archiving in the Asia-Pacific

Multi-awarded filmmaker and film historian, Nick Deocampo, is set to release a notable new anthology on film and cinema archiving, Keeping Memories: Cinema and Archiving in the Asia-Pacific, this July with Ateneo University Press.

Deocampo, who edited this diverse work, asserts the role of cinema as a memory guardian, “by preserving the verisimilitude of contemporary life, it has given us a mirror with which to view the past or a means to project ourselves into the future.” Merely over a century old, films produced in the Asia-Pacific region are already irredeemably lost. Works made by filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu, King Hu, Lino Brocka, Woon-kyu Na, and Ji-ming He, to name a few, have disappeared through natural causes, technological obsolescence, and human neglect.

Deocampo further explains how archives stand the test of time, “it is in their struggle to keep memory from being corroded by temporality that allows archives to journey in epic, if absurd, stride to give things of finite nature a touch of immortality.”

Keeping Memories: Cinema and Archiving in the Asia-Pacific brings together film scholars, archivists, film artists, academics, media practitioners, historians, and cultural advocates to share their thoughts that touch the heart of our Asian film heritage. In four themes, the sections in this anthology deal with topics such as Archives and Memory, Archives and National Identity, Archives and the Asia-Pacific, and Archives and Cinema History.

The anthology covers topics as varied as personal meanderings in the region and archival encounters (Archival Encounters with the US-Trans-Pacific Empire by Charles Musser), archival work and its politics (Tabula Rasa: On My Way to Archival Consciousness I reached Henry Francia by Benedict “Bono” Salazar), cinematic imaginaries of nation and lacunae in film deposits (Archival Lacunae, Vernacular Filmmaking, and the Elisions of National Cinema by Bliss Cua Lim), pandemic media and digital archive (From Pandemic to Media Crisis: Open Access and East Asian Film Archives by Aaron Gerow), and ‘lost’ film histories (Motion Picture Archives and Retrieving “Lost” Film Histories by Nick Deocampo).

“It is for the archivists of the future,” Deocampo writes, “as it is for future filmmakers and historians, scholars, and ordinary movie viewers to harness the use of technology to preserve film medium that has a history rich with memories and filled with legacies from the past.” Forthcoming this July, Keeping Memories reveals a robust concern for both the cinemas in the region and how they are preserved for the future.

Keeping Memories is co-published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press, Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA), and Vietnam Film Institute (VFI).

Pre-order your copy at bit.ly/KM-preorder and avail of a 15% discount. Promo runs until July 10, 2022. Visit the Ateneo Press Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages (@ateneopress) for more information.