Revisiting In Visible Colours: An International Women of Colour and Third World Women Film/Video Festival and Symposium (1989) Gendered Violence: Responses and Remediation

Abstract

ABOUT OUR EDUCATIONAL GUIDES SERIES One of the central goals of Archive/Counter-Archive is to increase public engagement with our partner organizations and their collections through an “activation” of archival materials that foregrounds the pressing need to rethink what archives can/might do in the 21st century. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a series of Educational Guides designed to accompany film and video from A/CA’s Case Studies and facilitate their integration into K-12 and postsecondary classrooms. This educational guide activates one of three archival collections held at VIVO Media Arts Centre’s Crista Dahl Media Library that focus on the subject of gendered violence as it was discussed, debated, and exhibited in and around Vancouver in the 1980s. Although united by a common theme, these collections span a variety of topics: feminist porn wars and resistance to censorship, activist video responses to the Pinochet dictatorship, and the 1989 In Visible Colours film and media festival which aimed to foreground discussions of settler colonialism, decolonization, Indigeneity, and solidarity. Taken together, these three collections generate intersectional and multigenerational dialogue about gendered violence; as such, the films and videos in this archive are modes of creative resistance against several forms of subordination and oppression. In partnership with VIVO, the Archive/Counter-Archive project has developed three separate educational guides that engage with each collection as part of its Gendered Violence: Responses and Remediation Case Study. These guides are available digitally for free at counterarchive.ca This specific guide centres on the history and archives of In Visible Colours: An International Women of Colour and Third World Women Film/ Video Festival and Symposium (IVC), co-founded in 1989 by Zainub Verjee and Lorraine Chan in partnership with Women in Focus and National Film Board. With over 100 films and videos from 28 countries, In Visible Colours emerged amid the socio-political upheaval of the late 1970s and 1980s that foregrounded race and gender and the politics of cultural difference. This educational guide also draws from In Visible Colours: Remediated 2022, a symposium that brought together some of the original participants of IVC along with students, researchers, curators and contemporary producers. The event was organized in collaboration with VIVO Media Arts Centre, Archive/ Counter-Archive, the Vulnerable Media Lab, and the Screen Cultures & Curatorial Studies graduate program at Queen’s University. The City of Vancouver Archives generously shared audio recordings of the original 1989 panels with the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive for inclusion in the archive and for the 2022 remediation. This guide includes a selection of 3 films and videos curated by Roya Akbari and Ana Valine. It includes a curatorial essay by Roya Akbari, synopses, and discussion questions oriented toward a range of thematic areas. We recommend previewing the works before you screen them for your students and reading the contextualizing information provided in this guide.