Theory/Praxis/Politics: Archival Labour

 

Join us for the webinar focusing on archival labor and its contribution to Southeast Asian cinemas. This Roundtable is part of the continuing series "Theory/Praxis/Politics," co-hosted by Palita Chunsaengchan and Elizabeth Wijaya since 2021.

 

 

Bliss Cau Lim is Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Her first book, Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic and Temporal Critique, was published by Duke University Press in 2009, with a Philippine edition by Ateneo de Manila University Press released in 2011. Bliss is a member of the Editorial Collective of the journal, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies and she also serves on the Advisory Boards of Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication and Pelikula: A Journal of Philippine Cinema. Her new book, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema, published in 2024 by Duke University Press, analyzes the crisis-ridden history of film archiving in the Philippines.

 

Sanchai Chotirosseranee is the Deputy Director of the Thai Film Archive (Public Organization). He is on the executive committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and the Southeast Asia-Pacific AudioVisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA). He is a film programmer for the Thai Short Film and Video Festival and the Silent Film Festival in Thailand.

 

Chew Tee Pao has been with the Asian Film Archive (AFA) since 2009. As Senior Archivist, Tee Pao plans AFA’s preservation strategies, oversees the development of film collections, and curates various film programmes to showcase these collections. He also selects and oversees AFA’s film restorations, and has delivered presentations on AFA’s advocacy efforts and the issue of film preservation.

 

Maung Okkar began his film career at the age of 15 when he starred in “Dat-khe”, a feature film directed by his father – the celebrated Burmese filmmaker U Wunna. In 2009, he joined Yangon Film School. Then, he tried his hand at directing. A philosophy graduate, Okkar’s first documentary: “Charcoal Boy” screened and competed at 16 international film festivals such as Munich International Festival of Films schools around the world. Then, he has made some documentaries and a short film. Since 2015, he has been working as a film archive researcher. He has completed a film restoration summer course conducted by International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in Bologna, Italy and some tapes digitalization courses in Thai Film Archive. In 2017, he started working as a project director for Save Myanmar Film Organization and led digital restoration projects. He has been working as a film archivist and founded Save Myanmar Film organization. The organization has been working on preserving all the audio-visual heritage such as films, non-film or film related materials.

 

Palita Chunsaengchan (Co-Chair) is a film and media scholar from Bangkok, currently based in Minneapolis. Professor Chunsaengchan teaches Southeast Asian cinema and media cultures at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota. Chunsaengchan is currently working on a book manuscript, Chimeric Cinema: Early Thai Film Culture (expected in 2026). She is also developing a screenplay for her first short film; which is based on her second book project on professional migration for cinema and media-related jobs in Southeast Asia.

 

Elizabeth Wijaya (Co-Chair) is the Director of the Southeast Asia Seminar Series, at the Asian Institute, and an Assistant Professor in both the Department of Visual Studies and the Cinema Studies Institute. In 2010 she co-founded E&W Films, a Singapore-based film development and production company with Weijie Lai. Wijaya works at the intersection of cinema, philosophy, and area studies. She is especially interested in the material and symbolic entanglements between East Asia and Southeast Asia cinema. Her work emphasizes a multimethodological approach, which is attentive to media forms, ethnographic detail, material realities, archival practices, international networks, and interdisciplinary modes of theorization. She received her PhD from the Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University, where she was affiliated with the East and Southeast Asian Programs.