Screen memories: Activating the audiovisual heritage of Turkish migrant women’s movement in the Netherlands

This article explores the counterhegemonic uses of audiovisual media ––such as film, video, and television–– by migrant worker women, specifically focusing on the media tactics of self-representation by the intersectional feminist activism of migrant worker women from Turkey in the Netherlands in 1975-1985. 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 the lost and abandoned projects, the paper proposes to reconfigure ‘audiovisual heritage’ of precarious groups at the intersection of race, gender, and class – whose archival presences are contingent, arbitrary, and fragmented. To address this specific condition of archival paucity concerning the audiovisual heritage of migrant worker women, the paper concludes with the new perspectives opened by a feminist media historiography of open questions, critical fabulation, and counterfactual speculation.