Archival Engagement as Educational Infrastructure: Digitizing Guatemalan Film Collections as an Act of Pedagogical Possibility

• In Event: Archival Pedagogy: Moving Images as Research, Resistance, and Relational Learning

Abstract

This paper examines archival digitization not merely as preservation practice (Lipman, 2009), but as the foundational infrastructure (Monahan, 2008) for educational possibility. Drawing from my ongoing work with the Guatemalan national film archive, the Cinemateca Universitaria, and their collection of 16mm films produced by Guatemala's Tipografía Nacional (1920-1950), I argue that acts of digitization constitute material practices of educational research. These material practices constitute an infrastructure upon which transformative pedagogical engagements with moving image archives become possible.
The Cinemateca houses over 800 films documenting Guatemala's pivotal mid-20th century period, including coverage of political upheavals, Indigenous community life, and rural development during the revolutionary era leading to the 1954 CIA-backed coup (Barillas, 2016). These films capture what Jiménez-Martínez terms contested visual narratives—images produced within nationalist frameworks that simultaneously document Indigenous communities' participation and resistance to state modernization projects (Jiménez-Martínez, 2023). However, deteriorating storage conditions and limited access have rendered this collection largely unavailable to the communities it depicts and the educational contexts where it could generate critical dialogue about Guatemalan history and identity.
I position digitization and technical preservation work as educational research methodology itself. The process of inventorying, assessing, and digitizing these films constitutes what I call "pedagogical infrastructure building"—material practices that create the conditions for future educational engagements. This archival methodology (Russell, 2018) involves making curatorial decisions about which stories become accessible, how metadata shapes interpretation, and what forms of access enable different pedagogical possibilities.
Drawing on theories of material pedagogy (Tehrani & Riede, 2008) and critical archival studies (Russell, 2018), I examine how digitization processes embody educational values and political commitments. When we digitize the Tipografía collection with attention to its potential use by Guatemalan diaspora communities, Indigenous communities depicted in the films, and transnational scholarly networks, we are not simply preserving historical artifacts—we are constructing educational infrastructure that enables specific forms of learning, remembering, and creative production.
This paper documents the pedagogical considerations that have shaped our digitization methodology: How do we create metadata that honors Indigenous knowledge systems alongside institutional requirements? How do we design access protocols that serve both academic research and community cultural reclamation? How do we prepare materials for use by artists and filmmakers who might transform these historical images into contemporary creative works that speak to ongoing struggles for justice?
I argue that these questions position archival digitization as educational research practice, requiring the same methodological rigor and ethical consideration we bring to classroom-based studies. Infrastructures of digitization create possibilities for what I term "archival pedagogy,” educational approaches that engage learners in the creative transformation of historical visual materials rather than passive consumption of fixed historical narratives.
By examining digitization as pedagogical infrastructure, this paper contributes to expanding our understanding of educational research beyond traditional classroom boundaries. It demonstrates how material practices of archive engagement constitute educational methodology, creating the foundations upon which transformative learning experiences can emerge. Without this infrastructural work, the creative educational futures imagined in our session—where moving images become tools for counter-narrative construction and community knowledge production—remain impossible.

Author

• Alex Mejía, San Francisco State University