FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026

Cinemateca da Quebrada is a community-based audiovisual archive created in the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, as a response to the historical erasure and misrepresentation of working-class and peripheral communities within official media archives.
The project focuses on collecting, digitising and activating films produced inside these territories, many of which have circulated through informal networks such as pirate DVD stands, independent productions and grassroots audiovisual initiatives. These images, often excluded from institutional preservation, constitute a vital part of contemporary audiovisual memory.
Rather than functioning as a traditional archive, Cinemateca da Quebrada operates as a living and collective platform. Through cineclubs, public screenings and educational actions, the archive is constantly reactivated in dialogue with the communities from which it emerges. In this sense, preservation is inseparable from circulation, and memory is understood as a dynamic and shared process.
The project also engages in transnational collaborations, notably with the Cinemathèque Idéale des Banlieues du Monde, fostering exchanges between peripheral territories in Brazil and France. These dialogues expand the understanding of audiovisual memory beyond national frameworks, highlighting common experiences of inequality, migration and resistance.
This proposal reflects on the challenges of building an archive from the margins: how to preserve without institutional support, how to legitimise informal images, and how to construct memory as a tool for political agency. By sharing this experience, the project contributes to rethinking archival practices in more inclusive, decentralised and community-driven ways.