Making Unknown Histories Known Through a Toolkit for Archiving Women Filmmakers: Reflections on Archive Research and Practice

Our research into the archiving of women amateur filmmakers offered an intervention into common forms of archival (under)valuation of women’s creative work. Our main project output, a toolkit designed with and for archivists of moving image material, identifies key stages and issues within archive practice that work to obscure the contribution of women. Covering the acquisition to cataloguing cycle, these include the absence of information provided to or acquired by archives at the point of donation and in accession records; a lack of data capture around women’s filmmaking (e.g. identity, biography, collaborations, creative practice); concurrent absences in naming conventions and metadata; and the lack of research materials to fully uncover the range of women involved. Our chapter offers a reflection on the scholarly and practical archival work that underpinned the creation of the toolkit, reveals four case studies from three film archives sites in the UK and Ireland that show how current invisibilisation can be tackled, and reflects on how our feminist-informed academic experience help can advocate for, and encourage, changes to the prevailing cataloguing habits within archives.