Screen Memories: The Audiovisual Heritage of Turkish Migrant Women in the Netherlands Across Political Film, Video, and Television

This article explores the counterhegemonic uses of audiovisual media —such as film, video, and television— by migrant women workers, specifically focusing on the media tactics of self-representation used in the intersectional feminist activism of migrant women workers from the Turkish Republic in the Netherlands from 1975 to 1985. Through comprehensive archival research, it aims to historically contextualise and critically evaluate the archival conditions of this marginalised audiovisual heritage. Drawing on archival presences of extant film and television material as well as archival absences, such as lost and abandoned projects, the paper proposes to reconfigure the ‘audiovisual heritage’ of underrepresented communities at the intersection of race, gender, and class, whose archival presences are contingent, arbitrary, and fragmented. To address the specific condition of archival paucity concerning the audiovisual heritage of migrant women workers, the paper concludes with the new perspectives opened by a feminist media historiography of open questions, critical fabulation, and counterfactual speculation.