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(Sliding Scale starting $20)
Co-presented by MENA Film Festival and VIVO Media Arts, Editing in the Archive is a full-day program around archival, editing, and documentary practices for filmmakers and artists working with found footage and archival material and those who are interested in working with hybrid essayistic forms.
Our two facilitators, Lebanese editor and video artist Deena Charara, and experimental filmmaker and archivist Chantal Partamian, will share conceptual frameworks and propose technical approaches to editing archival images in the context of film and video art. The session will further situate archival mediation, media excavation, and “digital sculpting” as decolonial practices.
Partamian’s work focuses on experimental editing techniques to create short projects and video capsules from a pre-existing archive. She will share practices of reassembling fragments of everyday life, intimate gestures, and landscapes into new narratives that challenge and enrich our understanding of the MENA/SWANA region using existing footage shot on Super 8mm and 16mm cameras in towns and villages across the eastern Mediterranean from the 1920s to the 1970s, which comprise Partamian’s Katsakh Mediterranean Archives, through the lens of personal and collective memory.
Deena will shed light on the practice of “emotional editing” — where narrative is shaped not from scripts or continuity, but from fragments and coincidences. She will share how emotion and intuition can guide structure, rhythm, and meaning in the editing process. What Deena refers to as a process of creative excavation: finding story beats, listening for rhythm, and searching through images and sounds until an emotional truth emerges. Through film excerpts, live demonstration, and collective reflection, participants will be invited to experience editing as both a craft and a philosophy: a way of shaping memory, identity, and imagination through the fragments we carry.
The program will include a lunch break and will end with an open discussion between the participants and both artists.
VIVO is located in the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in a warehouse space at 2625 Kaslo Street south of East Broadway at the end of E 10th. Transit line 9 stops at Kaslo Street on Broadway. From the bus stop, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight decline. The closest skytrain station is Renfrew Station, which is three blocks south-east of VIVO and has an elevator. From there, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight incline. There is parking available at VIVO, including wheelchair access parking. There is a bike rack at the entrance. The front entrance leads indoors to a set of 7 stairs to the lobby.
A wheelchair ramp is located at the west side of the main entrance. The ramp has two runs: the first run is 20 feet long, and the second run is 26 feet. The ramp is 60 inches wide. The slope is 1:12. The ramp itself is concrete and has handrails on both sides. There is an outward swinging door (34 inch width) at the top of the ramp leading to a vestibule. A second outward swinging door (33 inch width) opens into the exhibition space. Buzzers and intercoms are located at both doors to notify staff during regular office hours or events to unlock the doors. Once unlocked, visitors can use automatic operators to open the doors.
There are two all-gender washrooms. One has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The other is a single room with a urinal and is wheelchair accessible: the door is 33 inches wide and inward swinging, without automation. The toilet has 11 inch clearance on the left side and a handrail.
To reach the bathrooms from the studio, exit through the double doors and proceed straight through the lobby and down the hall . Turn left, and the two bathrooms will be on your right side. The closest one has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The far bathroom is accessible.
Deena Charara is an award-winning film editor, video artist, and educator from Lebanon. Her work blends archival and found footage into poetic explorations of memory, resilience, and the shifting landscape of the self.
She received Best Editing for Heritages (2015), and several films she has contributed to have earned major international recognition — including a Grand Prix nomination at Sundance for Sous Les Bombes (2008), broadcasts on ARTE, and selections that represented Lebanon at the Oscars and Golden Globes.
From 2008 to 2020, she taught Art of the Moving Image at the Lebanese American University’s School of Architecture and Design, guiding emerging designers and architects in visual literacy and creative practice.
Chantal Partamian is an experimental filmmaker and archivist with a focus on super 8mm and found footage. Her films, recognized and awarded at numerous festivals, are distributed through Vidéographe, Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center.
As an archivist, Partamian specializes in preserving and restoring film reels from the Eastern Mediterranean through the project: Katsakh Mediterranean Archives, while also conducting research on archival practices in conflict zones. Her written works are primarily published in the Revue Hors-Champ.
Chantal Partamian's work spans both the artistic and archival realms, merging experimental cinema with preservation efforts to safeguard the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean region.
