Documenting the Restoration Process: The Documentaries of Sara Gómez at the Vulnerable Media Lab

This thesis is an applied case study wherein provisional restoration documentation tools were developed for the Vulnerable Media Lab at Queen's University. These tools were developed to support the ethical digital restoration of documentaries made by Afro-Cuban revolutionary filmmaker Sara Gómez, whose original film negatives and some prints were lent to the VML by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). FIAF's Code of Ethics calls for archivists engaged in restoration to "faithfully and fully" document any technical and aesthetic choices which have been made for future archivists and researchers, and in order to guarantee reversibility. The Gómez films are the VML's first restoration project, thus this thesis suggests practices that can be added to the VML's established workflows as necessary, and help ensure accurate restoration records. Besides the ethics and practices of digital film restoration, this thesis examines Sara Gómez's complicated place in Cuban film history.