Recovered Images: An Interface of Possible Narratives is an ambitious and timely digital restitution project centered around 15 hours of scanned film files we call 'Recovered Images' currently held by the Palestine Film Institute (PFI). This material was originally produced by international aid organizations and transnational solidarity filmmakers in support of Palestinian liberation but was seized by the Israeli army during raids in Jordan, Lebanon, and Occupied Palestine. The PFI holdings are not the original films, and do not contain any provenance metadata that one might expect from an institutional archive. Instead, this footage shows the 'gaze' of Israeli army archivists as they fast-forward, watermark, mute, and otherwise modify the looted footage for their own purposes and in response to footage requests.

The ongoing genocide exposes tragic limitations in the enforcement of international law and other extant channels for achieving justice and repair in Palestine. Where other decolonial restitution projects have been able to mobilize legal and diplomatic frameworks to achieve return of cultural works, without a sovereign state or functioning international criminal courts, we turn to artistic research to develop prefigurative methods of care that employ cultural production towards material restitution.

With the 15 hours of Recovered Images, we propose first to link this material back to the original Palestinian and solidarity films from which they were plundered. This will comprise metadata and digital platform design, on the one hand, and interview-based on-site research on the other. Additionally, we propose secondary research on how fragments from Palestinian liberation cinema were (mis)used in Israeli broadcast and documentary film. We have a unique opportunity with the Recovered Images to see the construction of a colonial subjectivity from 'behind the scenes.' We believe that exposing this mechanism will play a significant role in its deconstruction.