Complicating Legacies: Restoring and Re-releasing the Films of Xhanfise Keko Available to Purchase

In 2020 the Albanian Cinema Project’s restoration of Tomka Dhe Shoket e Tij (Tomka and His Friends, 1977) premiered on Turner Classic Movies in their “Women Make Film” series. This event marked the culmination of my work to bring the films of Albania’s first female film director, Xhanfise Keko, into global distribution. A key aim for these projects was to begin to open up a space for Albanians at home and in the diaspora to address the silences that persisted around their years under an extreme, isolationist dictatorship. This article maps the project of re-education that I embarked on as an archivist, curator, and media historian. Now, with ACP shuttered and the benefit of hindsight, I reflect on the work of restoring and re-releasing Albanian films as a project of re-programming (double entendre intended) Albanian socialist-realist cinema for contemporary, global publics.