Data related to the article
South Ethiopia film archive of the Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Main.
https://www.frobenius-institut.de/​en/​
In particular, two film excerpts presented in this article:
“Excerpts from two films shot in South Omo and Sidama, South Ethiopia, 1950s.”
https://nakala.fr/​10.34847/​nkl.7d1bf271

Introduction

1The Frobenius Institute’s film archive today houses seventy-eight film rolls from expeditions to southern Ethiopia in the 1950s, a collection that we, as researchers, discovered almost by accident. While exploring the institute’s ethnographic collection, we came across a stockpile of old metal tins stored in refrigerators. Many of these films were produced during anthropological expeditions led by Leo Frobenius and his successors in the early to mid-20th century. The tins bore labels of varying clarity—some detailed, others cryptic, and a few humorously marked as “precious rubbish” (wertvoller Mist), sparking our curiosity. What initially seemed like a forgotten miscellany of footage turned out to be a treasure trove of ethnographic history, containing a wealth of published and unpublished footage. Since these films capture local traditions before critical transformations reshaped Ethiopia in the 20th century, they hold significant historical and heritage significance, offering unique visual records of diverse communities worldwide.

2These films were mostly produced through the framework for scientific films developed by the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (IWF), or Institute for Scientific Film, established in 1956 in Göttingen. The IWF specified the methods and technical proceedings to be followed for a film to be considered of scientific value, becoming widely recognised in Germany for its work in ethnography and scientific documentation. Collaborating with research institutions like the Frobenius Institute, it supported expeditions by providing technical expertise and suitable film equipment for diverse environments. Among its most notable projects was the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, a comprehensive catalogue of short films documenting human activities, animal behaviour, and scientific experiments, often accompanied by detailed written descriptions.

3As anthropologists and archivists, we see in the context of these films both unique challenges and opportunities. Ethnographic film archives in museums and research institutions hold significant relevance in the decolonial debate because, historically, such archives were reluctant to open to the colonised (Chakrabarty 2000, 72). Moreover, because they were produced in the framework of scientific method, films made as components of ethnographic research inevitably reflected the epistemic values that informed much of the early 20^th century philosophy of science. Most of the ethnographic films made in the first half of the 20th century are implicitly or explicitly informed by epistemic imperialism, which systematically undermines, marginalises, or erases non-Western epistemologies, treating them as inferior, irrational, or unscientific (Harrison 2015, 190). In this context, scientific films contribute to framing Western science, rationality, and history as the only legitimate forms of knowledge, dismissing indigenous, traditional, or alternative knowledge systems.

4Inspired by the important task that anthropologists have carried out over decades to problematise epistemic imbalances in the discipline, and informed by the “archival turn” in the humanities and social sciences (Stoler 2002; Dirks 2002), the Frobenius Institute has been exploring how its archive can join the decolonial discussion by emphasizing collaboration with Global South partners. Concerning archival films, decolonial critique must go beyond simply granting public access. It must involve opening archival materials to radical deconstruction and critical intervention, allowing communities to reinterpret and dismantle the colonial ideologies these materials once upheld (Perneczky 2022). More broadly, we want to explore the importance of reimagining ethnographic archives as spaces for epistemic transformation, especially under the broader decolonial movement in anthropology, which calls for an “ontological turn” (Viveiros de Castro 2015; Holbraad & Pedersen 2017). The ontological turn in anthropology challenges traditional Western assumptions about reality by emphasising that different cultures perceive and inhabit fundamentally distinct worlds rather than merely having different beliefs about a shared reality. It seeks to move beyond cultural relativism by recognising these diverse ontologies as equally valid rather than interpreting them through a Western philosophical framework. This shift encourages us to engage with Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems on their terms, and we want to position our film archive not only as a site of memory but as a platform for epistemological activism.

5We argue that in the case of ethnographic films, the use of found footage and montage in filmmaking exemplifies a powerful method for the emergence of decolonising epistemologies. Found footage refers to pre-existing film or video material repurposed within new productions. Historically, such practices were labour-intensive, requiring physical manipulation of analogue film. Found footage filmmaking allows for what Horwatt (2009) describes as “media jujitsu”—using the weight of the original material’s power against itself. Through montage, we believe that filmmakers can dismantle the colonial and scientific ideologies embedded in ethnographic films, creating new narratives that challenge the authority of their original producers. This technique could not only subvert the intentions of the original footage but also reclaim its imagery to affirm Indigenous perspectives and alternative epistemologies. Film montage emerges as a tool for epistemic disobedience (Mignolo 2009), challenging the dominance of Western knowledge systems which informed the formal structure of the original ethnographic films and opening space for plural, decolonial forms of film narrative.

6Taking into account the argument we have sketched above, we are planning a series of workshops in the format of artist-in-residence, where Ethiopian filmmakers and members of the original communities can re-use the archival footage for new films. We selected the South Ethiopia film archive of the Frobenius Institute, particularly the footage from the Sidaama and Gedeo regions in the first half of the 20th century, for several key reasons. Firstly, the extensive nature of the film collections from these two regions (Sidaama: approximately 1,600 meters across 17 reels; Gedeo: around 700 meters across five reels) provides a substantial amount of high-quality and well-composed footage. This offers contemporary filmmakers significant creative flexibility in selecting and recontextualizing material for new narratives, unlike the more limited footage available from other regions. Secondly, a notable portion of these films was shot by Elizabeth Pauli, whom we recognize as a pioneering, yet often overlooked, figure in early German ethnographic cinema. Focusing on her work offers an opportunity not only to engage with the colonial gaze inherent in the footage but also potentially to shed new light on the role of women in the development of ethnographic filmmaking during that period. By foregrounding Pauli’s contributions, the project can explore the complexities of representation through a gendered lens within the historical context of anthropology. Her perspective, even within the limitations of the era, might offer unique points of departure for contemporary filmmakers and community members to consider when re-interpreting the archive.

The South Ethiopia film archive at the Frobenius Institute

8This focus on visual documentation led to the employment of professional artists for his research expeditions, starting with representational and landscape painters. Frobenius’ emphasis on visual documentation is understandable not only from his research perspective but also from a historical point of view. Photography remained cumbersome for researchers until the widespread distribution of 35mm cameras in the 1920s, which were easier to handle (Kuba 2012, 330). Frobenius’ successor as director at his institute, Adolf Ellegard Jensen (1899–1965), who established the research focus on Ethiopian studies at the institute, followed more conventional research methods, documenting the cultural history of the peoples of southern Ethiopia. Still, he continued with Frobenius’ documentary work and put a strong emphasis on visual documentation, including documentation in the form of drawings, paintings, photographs and films (Thubauville 2019).

9For the 1950s expeditions to Ethiopia, Elisabeth Pauli was hired as an artist and made an immense contribution to South Ethiopia’s visual documentation. Pauli pursued her artistic education at the Kölner Werkschulen (the Cologne Art and Craft Schools), from 1923 to 1927. Soon after completing her studies, she joined the Frobenius Institute in 1933 as an expedition painter-artist-illustrator. Over the next several years, she participated in six major expeditions to the Libyan desert, Jordan, France, Spain, and Italy, where her artistic skills were vital in documenting the cultural and archaeological findings of the institute.

10During World War II, when most of the male members of the Frobenius Institute, including its leadership, were drafted into military service, Pauli stepped into a pivotal role. Together with Karin Hahn-Hissink and other female colleagues, she managed the institute and worked tirelessly to preserve its collections. The women’s determination and self-reliance led them to nickname their group the Amazonenstaat, or “State of the Amazons” (Beer 2006), referencing their role in maintaining the institute under extraordinary circumstances. After the war, Pauli’s leadership continued to shape the institute’s direction. She was instrumental in laying the groundwork for a series of expeditions to Ethiopia in the 1950s. During these expeditions, her role extended well beyond that of an artist. She took charge of organising the expeditions, overseeing all logistical preparations, and established herself as an autodidact anthropologist (for her contributions, see Jensen 1959).

11The 1950–52 expedition to Ethiopia marked the first German ethnographic expedition after World War II. Generously supported by German companies and widely covered in the media, the mission required meticulous preparation, particularly for visual documentation. Elisabeth Pauli, serving as the expedition’s logistical leader and artist, was tasked with overseeing this aspect. However, neither she nor her colleagues had prior experience of filmmaking in the field. To address this gap, Adolf Ellegard Jensen, the expedition leader, enlisted the support of the German Institute for Scientific Film (IWF). Between April and May 1950, the IWF trained the team in camera operation in Frankfurt and advised them on equipment suitable for tropical conditions, including the Pailard-Bolex H16 film camera, which was subsequently used during the expedition.

14The films made by Pauli integrated the South Ethiopian film collection along with material from other expeditions and remained within the contemporary conventions of ethnographic cinema. Since the IWF trained expedition members to produce scientific films, they had to follow rigorous production procedures to imbue their work with the IWF’s epistemic values. For the IWF, the adoption of mechanical observation and film recording marked an evolution towards more objective data gathering. It championed the superiority of cinematography over older methods like description, drawing, and photography in achieving objectivity. The IWF emphasized to anthropologists that dynamic processes, such as pottery-making, ironworking, or traditional agricultural methods, could only be scientifically analysed effectively through the medium of film. Furthermore, the IWF highlighted the unique capability of ethnographic film to document a broad spectrum of human activity, from the economic practices of hunter-gatherers, fishing communities, farmers, and pastoralists to cultural expressions like dances and music-accompanied performances, including the creation and use of musical instruments. This promotion of film as a superior method reveals the IWF's epistemic values, which prioritized realism through mechanical recording, the capture of dynamic processes, and the comprehensive documentation of socio-cultural life (Ruby, 1992).

18While these exhibitions introduced the drawings and photos to wider audiences, the restored films themselves remain largely unexplored in terms of deeper analysis and public engagement. We felt that this was a critical issue that we wanted to address. Firstly, the films were recorded among hitherto little-studied ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia (Haberland 1986:35, see footnote 6) before the conversion of the indigenous population by foreign Protestant churches. Conversion to Protestantism from the 1960s onwards (Donham 1999, 47–49) and the socialist regime that ruled Ethiopia between 1974 and 1987 (Donham 1997) brought radical cultural and social change to the diverse ethnic groups of southern Ethiopian. Secondly, Pauli and the ethnologists of the Frobenius expeditions were among the few researchers worldwide who had comprehensively documented southern Ethiopia before these changes. Therefore, this material is unique compared with other ethnographic archives worldwide.

Ethnographic films and decolonial epistemology

20In our case, the colonial dimension of the South Ethiopia film archive is translated into the form of the ethnographic films regulated by the IWF, which had strict production guidelines to conform with scientific research. According to Wolf (1967), since it would rarely be possible for anthropologists to fully capture social phenomena on film, they were supposed to select “representative” excerpts to be recorded. This means that anthropologists were encouraged to record only segments that could depict the overall sequence of actions. Which segments were representative of a whole process were left to the anthropologist’s discretion, but the films were presented afterwards as an authoritative discourse on cultural processes. Moreover, the IWF warned of the always lingering danger of altering or distorting “natural” behaviours due to the presence of the camera. The IWF instructed that the camera was a tool for mechanical observation, collecting data objectively while maintaining a deliberate distance from the object of study. Such distancing was said to reinforce the scientific truth claims about the observed phenomena, an assertion that has since been largely criticized by several film scholars (Daston and Galison 2007; Plantinga 2008).

21For the IWF, the tension between creating a coherent and technically efficient film narrative while still claiming impartial objectivity was a tricky one to navigate. We must remember that in the 1950s, there were several technical limitations to field recording. There were no batteries to light up artificial light sources, therefore, filming indoors was barely possible. In remote villages, anthropologists had to rely on natural sunlight to create the appropriate light exposure for film celluloid, so activities which were traditionally performed indoors had to be re-enacted outside. Also, besides heavy tripods, there were barely any other options for image stabilisation. Therefore, the location selection for the film shooting was an arbitrary choice guided by the ethnographer’s “expertise,” ethical concerns and, foremost, technical constraints. This complex dynamic left the filmmaker as the sole guarantor of the strict enforcement of authenticity (realism). To ensure scientific value, despite the impossibility of filming social phenomena as they usually happened, according to the IWF, there had to be reliance on the ethnographers working “to the best of their knowledge and conscience” (Wolf 1967, 147).

22A good example is the film “Ensete Processing among the Sidama and Gedeo” filmed by Elisabeth Pauli and Eike Haberland in 1954 and 1955 (Video 1). The film is intended to provide an overview of the cultivation and use of ensete and begins with the planting of the tuber. We see an anonymous older man in an ensete garden. He digs up a tuber, divides it into pieces and plants them in another place in the same garden. He moves slowly and sometimes looks in the camera’s direction as if waiting for instructions. No further explanations are given to us about this man other than the short subheading ‘Planting pieces of tuber/planting cuttings’. We may assume that he is in his usual workplace in the garden because of other ensete plants in the frame. But the exact location where he is processing the ensete, as well as the way in which his tools are organised, enhance the light exposure on the film, due to the specific angle of the sun at the time. These issues and other cues suggest that much of the process was planned and staged by the filmmakers. The people filmed move and work slowly, ensuring that tools and crops are visible for the camera.

23

24The film also overlooks the critical gender division in ensete cultivation (Peveri 2020). While men are responsible for planting the ensete, it is the women who handle all the subsequent tasks, from tending to processing the crop. Ensete gardens are typically owned by women, who decide how the harvest is distributed within the household or community. In the film, several men observe the ensete processing, likely because of the presence of the camera. They remain visible for some time after planting but eventually disappear from the footage. This could reflect a declining interest in the filming activity as the novelty wore off. Towards the end of the film, only women remain active in front of the camera. This aligns with the reality of ensete cultivation, where women perform most of the tasks related to planting, processing, and managing the crop.

25Another example is the film of a traditional dance among the Banna (Video 2), for which the anthropologists asked the men to stage a dance. The expedition camp tent is visible in the background. The location has enough sunlight for good film exposure, but we may assume it is not the place where the dancers traditionally perform, nor are these dances usually performed in broad daylight. The angle of the camera does not capture the details of the main performance. Overall, the film does not provide any information about the role this dance might play for the community or about how the participants understand their own part in it. No women join in the dance, which also does not correspond to what is known about dancing among the Banna (Mohaupt 1995). The reason may have been that the women did not want to be filmed dancing or that they were busy working in the fields or that they were with their children during the day and therefore were not as available as the men. The reason cannot be determined from the short film clip. In both examples of films, all the characters are anonymous, which creates a sense of distance, while a lot of context-specific details are also missed. We assume that these challenges arose because although the anthropologists spent several months on the expeditions, they only stayed very briefly in each place. This meant that they had only superficial contact with the local communities.

26

27The fraught conditions of the production of these films compelled us to re-examine the material in collaboration with the original communities where they were recorded. At the same time, as anthropologists, we find ourselves engaging in ongoing debates surrounding what has been termed the “ontological turn.” The ontological turn emphasises recognising and respecting multiple realities and ways of knowing rather than imposing a singular, objective worldview, which could then be explained through the scientific method. Inherent in this kind of research is a commitment to epistemological priority for indigenous groups and individuals to critically transform anthropological theory through their philosophical and ontological concepts (Wagner 1975; Strathern 1988; Viveiros de Castro 2002). Within this framework, ethnographic museums began to re-evaluate their collections, not merely as static representations of “the other” but as dynamic entities that embody different ontologies. This shift challenges traditional scientific narratives and interpretations, prompting museums to radically rethink the significance and context of their collections and create research designs that acknowledge the diverse ontologies occupying their archives (Viveiros de Castro 2004).

28Promoting collaborative practices with indigenous communities, ethnological museums are inviting researchers from indigenous communities to co-curate exhibits and museum collections, ensuring that these materials are not merely preserved but are presented in ways that reflect the values, practices, and worldviews of those communities (Flynn & Hull-Walski 2001; Kreps 2008; Withey 2015). By fostering such collaborations, museums also invite adjustments to archival protocols governing the viewing, circulation, and reproduction of material through their cosmovision and traditions (Scholz, da Costa Oliveira and Dörk 2021). Consequently, the knowledge generated within these collaborative contexts aligns not only with established scientific protocols but also incorporates the knowledge systems and cultural practices of the local communities, thereby shifting the focus of archives to a space for new research designs and memory construction.

29Such considerations persuade us, as anthropologists, to turn the Frobenius Film Archive into a site for such collaborations. However, the use of film material in this context confronts us with many challenges. First, how can historical ethnographic films serve as material for Ethiopian scholars and filmmakers to challenge dominant knowledge systems when the films themselves, through their formal properties and production logic, are rooted in 20th-century scientific ideologies? Put differently, how can we foster a transcultural archival film practice that acts as a mode of translation between distinct knowledge systems, addressing not only the film’s narrative but also its grammar and aesthetics? Secondly, how can film and art be used to reconfigure ethnographic authority and reshape the conceptual frameworks underpinning archival practices at the Frobenius Institute? We aim to engage seriously with the idea of indigenous scholars and artists reconsidering the ontological status of both the archive and the film medium itself (Knopf, Lembcke and Recklies 2018; Schneider 2021). Furthermore, a significant challenge lies in how the Frobenius Institute, as an institution historically linked to colonialism, can genuinely participate in fostering equal partnerships between European and African researchers and artists.

Found Footage as Decolonial Epistemology

31European film heritage institutions are actively exploring ways to create access for researchers, curators or artists from the Global South (Sarr and Savoy 2019; Hicks 2020; Ohene-Asah 2022). For example, due to the increased potential for reuse and recirculation made possible by digitisation, the British Film Institute has, in the last decade, reframed its colonial archive through several projects. One example was the BFI program India on Film, part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture. Through two funding sources, the BFI digitised most of his collection of colonial films made during the British Raj in India and developed several exhibition programs. Additionally, the BFI invited the filmmaker Sandhya Suri to produce a found footage film called Around India with a Movie Camera, which was released in February 2018 (Ingravalle 2022). This project shifted the BFI film archive to become a locus for contemporary artistic and curatorial practice, a place of participation and production. Sandhya interrogates the entanglements of this shared Indian and British history and turns the archive “into signifiers of a colonial visual culture that inextricably ties together coloniser and colonised in a mutually dependent construction” (Ingravalle 2022, 66).

32Sandhya’s reuse of archival film material collapses the power relationship between consumer and producer. She carries through her film a process analogous to the way conventional archivists work with the archive: the selection, decontextualisation, re-contextualisation and finally, presentation of narratives. This process not only changes the original film's meaning and cultural value, but also critically interrogates the story behind the original images. The ideologies behind the film's initial production become historicised since found footage film is “discursively embedded within their history of production, circulation, and consumption” (Zryd 2003, 42). Through her film, Sandhya Suri challenges the role of archives in establishing hegemonic historical narratives and pluralises these narratives through a decolonial perspective (Fossati 2012).

33Drawing parallels with Sandhya’s work, it appears that the limitations and biases inherent in the Frobenius expedition films highlight the importance of critical engagement with archival footage that Sandhya’s approach advocates. Sandhya’s work explores how found footage can be made to reclaim marginalized narratives or to challenge dominant historical and colonial perspectives in existing archives. An analysis of the Frobenius films reveals the consequences of neglecting subjects’ perspectives and silencing their voices, a pitfall that decolonial filmmaking practices seek to avoid. Therefore, Sandhya’s methodologies could offer valuable tools for re-interpreting and potentially counteracting the colonial gaze embedded in historical film archives. With access to equipment for filming and funding, German researchers in the 1950s were able to produce a series of films, which had as their objective producing artifacts for scientific research. The films decontextualized cultural practices and underrepresented women. As we see today, these filmmakers neglected the subjects’ perspectives and silenced their voices through the gaze of epistemic imperialism. The fact that there was a portable sound recorder, but that the research team could not record sound synchronous with film, and that the recordings were eventually lost, further undermined possibilities of self-representation for members of Ethiopian communities. The rich life of the people portrayed in these films is relegated to anonymous bodies performing repetitive gestures, and some Intertitles.

34Sandhya’s film also shows us another interesting aspect of found footage films. They collapse the linearity of time by integrating the product of a past production process into a contemporary one. She uses old footage made from films produced within the ideologies of colonial administration and gaze, to produce an affective drive towards the future through decolonial narratives. Therefore, there is a continuity and linearity between these two moments of the same film—firstly as colonial propaganda, secondly as a reclaimed, resignified material for a decolonial discourse. Alfred Gell (1998), in his influential work on the anthropology of art, analysed art production foremost as a sociotechnical network. Gell conceived artworks as compositions shaped by temporal, social, and material mediations within the social relations that surround their creation and circulation in space and time. He found that artworks contain both retentions, that is, elements from previous works by the artist, and projections of future works. These retentions, projections and present elements inform the analysis of an artist’s oeuvre and form a composite object in time. In found footage film, the images rest in a contiguous exchange with diverse temporalities and production processes: all actors, institutions, ideologies and social relationships from the time of the film production are available for their re-encoding, diversification or re-contextualisation by artists and filmmakers in the present. These new films thus contain the potential for future narratives.

35Taking Gell’s cue, we see the Frobenius Film Archive as a space-temporal configuration of latent new narratives to come, where filmmakers can appropriate, transform and actualise the ideologies, production processes and characters “dormant” in archival films. But as anthropologists, our curiosity also drifts into the possibilities for these filmmakers to decolonise Eurocentric research practices imbued in the formal aspects of ethnographic films. The novelty here would be to do so through the base foundations of the film grammar, such as the pacing and timing of cuts and transitions, thus using film montage to surface new knowledge. Found footage filmmaking is per se already a form that problematises authorship and positionality, as well as the tension concerning positions of power within hegemonic discourses. If we apply this critical perspective to ethnographic films, we hope the filmmakers can also challenge epistemic imperialism and epistemology.

36During the expeditions in the 1950s, the IWF also issued instructions for when changes to traditional processes were made due to technical constraints in film recording. The anthropologists had to keep detailed protocols in a film production diary, explaining their rationale for changes. Together with hundreds of photographs, hand-drawn sketches, maps and extensive publications, this material is in excellent condition, well catalogued and accessible via a digital database. The Ethiopian filmmakers who use found footage could work with these documents stored at the Frobenius Institute and the archive films to re-contextualize film sequences. This would allow the material to be integrated into new film narratives as paratext (Genette 2001; Böhnke 2007), thus enhancing the material resources for new film narratives and how they can be composed.

37In South Ethiopia, we envision a collaborative project involving Ethiopian filmmakers and members of the original communities through a series of artist-in-residence workshops held in the villages filmed during the 1950s. These workshops aim to invite participants to view the historic film collection, explore the supporting materials, and collaboratively develop concepts for new films. We anticipate that, working together, filmmakers and community members will select archival footage and supporting materials to shape their own narratives. To facilitate this, we plan to set up a video editing station on-site, enabling collaborative film production during the residency. Our hope is that the resulting films will be screened in the village, fostering local engagement with their visual history, and potentially submitted to international festivals to share these stories more widely.

38This initiative is conceived as an experiment, and we understand that the actual unfolding of these workshops and the resulting collaborations may take unexpected directions on the ground. We are currently in discussion with potential Ethiopian filmmaker partners who have expressed enthusiasm for exploring these historical materials through contemporary lenses. Similarly, initial conversations with community representatives, as well the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and the School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa, have indicated a strong interest in revisiting and reinterpreting the archival footage.

Conclusion

39The rediscovery and digitisation of seventy-eight film rolls from the South Ethiopia expeditions in the 1950s present a unique opportunity to re-evaluate these visual records in collaboration with Ethiopian filmmakers, artists, and members of the original communities filmed during those expeditions.

40Revisiting the Frobenius South Ethiopia Film Archive, we have highlighted the importance of engaging with these historical materials through a decolonial perspective. Promoting public engagement with the film archive is not only an opportunity to challenge the dominant narratives embedded in these films and foster new interpretations that centre indigenous perspectives. It is, above all, for us, a potential form of artistic and anthropological research in which Ethiopian filmmakers and community members can develop a critical epistemology in which novel concepts and categories make us rethink ethnographic film archives. The production of ethnographic films during these expeditions, as we explained earlier in this article, was done in collaboration with the German Institute for Scientific Film (IWF).

41Technical limitations and the necessity of staging scenes for clarity led to selective portrayals that often reflected the biases of mid-20th-century ethnographic cinema. While valuable, these visual records reveal the motives and inherent constraints of ethnographic documentation and of its method at the time.

42Since the formal aspects of the films, such as the film grammar, shot sequences and style were oriented towards scientific methods, we propose found footage filmmaking as a method for recontextualising these archival materials. Through montage, this footage can kindle a new epistemology in tune with Ethiopian filmmakers’ philosophical and ontological concepts. By repurposing historical footage, filmmakers could disrupt epistemic imperialism, creating new narratives that reflect the worldviews of the communities originally depicted. Our main argument is to suggest that archival films can be transformed into dynamic, multi-temporal entities that invite critical reflection and promote intercultural dialogue.

43The Frobenius Film Archive wants to move beyond mere preservation and digitisation, to focus on fostering collaborative archival practices that actively involve the communities represented in their film collections. Through initiatives like artist residences and workshops in the original villages where the films were first recorded, the Frobenius Institute wants to make its Film Archive available to Ethiopian filmmakers. Hopefully, these efforts can create new narratives that challenge traditional notions of authorship, ownership, and representation. In the broader context of anthropology and visual anthropology, we argue that found footage filmmaking offers a critical tool for confronting the colonial legacies embedded in ethnographic practices. By creatively reinterpreting archival films, filmmakers and scholars may disrupt hegemonic narratives and promote more diverse, inclusive knowledge production. This effort aligns with contemporary discussions on the decolonization of museums and archives, emphasising the need to recognize multiple ontologies and ways of knowing.

44In conclusion, our paper calls for a reimagining of ethnographic film archives as spaces of collaboration and co-creation through found footage filmmaking. The Frobenius Institute’s ongoing efforts to digitise and make its film materials accessible to the public provide a foundation for this work. However, we want to go beyond merely making these materials available. By actively involving the communities depicted in these films, the institute can transform its archive into a living repository of shared knowledge and memory, contributing meaningfully to the ongoing decolonization of film heritage and visual anthropology.