The Ostrovsky Family Fund (OFF) has been carrying out, since 2015, the Brazilian Film and Video Preservation Project (BFVPP), dedicated to preserving and promoting access to films and video artworks on different media (super-8 film, U-matic, 1/4 inch, among others) made by Brazilian women artists between 1960 and 1984. The project, which was launched in the opening week of the 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, in partnership with Associação Cultural Videobrasil, aims to include part of these works in the institution’s collection. One of most celebrated Brazilian contemporary artists, a pioneer in the use of video in the country, Anna Bella Geiger (Rio de Janeiro, 1933) had ten of her audiovisual artworks restored and digitized by the project, maintaining the standards of the original material. These videos, which will be incorporated in the Videobrasil Collection, will be available in the Video Library of the 22nd Biennial’s 40-Year Special exhibition and, after the event, at the headquarters of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil in São Paulo through pre-scheduled visits (arquivo@videobrasil.org.br).
Anna Bella is the first of the artists selected by BFVPP to have her works restored and made available to the public. The project will continue with five other pioneers who, in the 1960s and 1970s, experimented with moving images on different media: Analivia Cordeiro, Iole de Freitas, Regina Silveira, Regina Vater and Sonia Andrade. The inclusion of works by these artists in the Videobrasil Collection is of great relevance to the Association, both for the quality and importance of the productions, and for covering a period prior to the creation of the VB festival, in 1983.