This symposium takes place during the Delphine Seyrig season at the Institut Français. Filmmakers, curators and academics look at Seyrig's legacy and contemporary feminist video practice, activism and archiving in France and the UK. Following two strands - firstly, video activism; and secondly, archives, curating and dissemination - participants engage with a series of questions relating to the use of video and other alternative formats as a political tool. 

• What do we mean by video activism today? 
• What are the legacies of the portable video technologies that were taken up by feminist movements in the UK and France in the 1970s? 
• What are the role of archives in preserving activist video projects, and what possible archival futures can we imagine? 
• How do we curate queer and feminist video practice?

 Programme 

13.00 - 13.40 Panel 1: Introducing Seyrig and video activism

Azadeh Fatehrad (Leeds, Herstoriographies) and Ros Murray (KCL, Herstoriographies): Welcome and introduction

Catherine Grant (Birkbeck, Film Studies for Free): ‘Delphine Seyrig, Videographically’

13.40 - 14.20 Panel 2: Queer and feminist video curation practice

Selina Robertson (Club des femmes, Birkbeck) ‘Millions like us: remembering through practice queer feminist film curation as activism in 1980s London’

Giovanna Zapperi (Université François-Rabelais, Tours, curator), ‘Feminist Constellations. On curating an exhibition on Delphine Seyrig, feminist collectives, and video in France’.

14.20 - 15.00 Break

15.00 – 16.30 Panel 3: Working with video archives I

Sandi Hughes (Rewind fastforward) introduces us to the Rewind Fastforward project

Ed Webb-Ingall (writer and filmmaker, The London Community Video Archive): On All You Need’s An Excuse and archive reactivation

Ash Reid (Cinenova, Goldsmiths) and Charlotte Procter (Lux, Cinenova), ‘Circling Cinenova’

16.30 – 17.00 Break

17.00 – 18.00 Panel 4: The Benefits of Feminist Video: preservation and distribution (from Les Muses amusement to the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir)

Pascale Obolo (filmmaker, curator and editor of Afrikaada) ‘The black body beyond a living archive’

Nicole Fernandez Ferrer (Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir) on feminist video activism at the Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir

The symposium is followed by a screening of Seyrig's Sois-Belle et tais toi! (France, 1976). 

To book your tickets, please visit www.institut-francais.org.uk.