Profile
I am a research fellow working on a postdoctoral project titled “Restitution and the Moving Image: Decolonising Global Film Heritage” (2022–2025), which considers colonial legacies of uneven development and unequal exchange in global audiovisual archiving through the lens of restitution.
My wider research is concerned with moving image practices of the Global South and their insertion into a global economy of image-making, taking a critical transnational view of “World Cinema” as an uneven global relation rooted in a long history of (neo-)colonial extraction and extraversion. My work traces this uneven relation – between cinemas of the Global South and actors and institutions in the Global North – across the entire life cycle of the moving image: from funding and co-production arrangements to the preservation and “heritagisation” of Global Majority cinemas by archivists, curators, critics, and scholars.
Recent publications include an article on the futures past of African cinema (2022), a chapter arguing for the restitution of Africa’s displaced and sequestered film heritage (2023), and a forthcoming book chapter exploring how Indigenous claims to images held in Australia’s national heritage institutions challenge liberal conceptions of image authorship and property while suggesting radically different modalities of archival care. The edited volume Restitution and the Moving Image: On the Politics and Ethics of Global Audiovisual Archiving (co-editor Cecilia Valenti) is currently under review with Amsterdam University Press. I am also preparing a monograph titled Against Development: Early African Cinema as Worldmaking (Oxford University Press).
Nikolaus is a member of the Queen Mary Postcolonial Seminar.
Teaching
- Contemporary World Cinemas (with Ashvin Devasundaram)
- Decolonising Film Heritage and Curatorship (with Grazia Ingravalle)
Research
Research Interests:
- African cinemas
- World Cinemas
- Third Cinema
- North-South film co-production and distribution
- Global audiovisual archiving and curatorial practice after the digital turn
- Restitution and visual culture
- Postcolonial theory and decolonial methods in film and media studies
- Early television and Post-TV
Publications
Edited volumes & special issues
Perneczky, Nikolaus, and Cecilia Valenti, eds. Restitution and the Moving Image: On the Politics and Ethics of Global Film Heritage. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (in production).
Korporaal, Astrid, and Nikolaus Perneczky, eds. “The Moving Image as Medium of Restitution.” Special issue, Journal of Visual Culture (under review).
Journal articles & book chapters
“Safi Faye with and against the United Nations: African Women, Development Filmmaking, and the Neoliberal Turn.” Feminist Media Histories, special issue edited by Dalila Missero and Masha Salazkina (accepted for publication).
Perneczky, Nikolaus, and Cecilia Valenti. “Film/Restitution: Global Audiovisual Heritage between Repatriation, Digital Access and Archival Reparation.” In Restitution and the Moving Image: On the Politics and Ethics of Global Film Heritage, edited by Nikolaus Perneczky and Cecilia Valenti. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (in production).
“Reanimate, Recuperate, Repair: Post-Independence African Archival Filmmaking and the Question of Restitution.” Sources: Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies, special issue edited by Anita Afonu, Jennifer Blaylock, and Dan Hodgkinson, forthcoming.
“Ancestral Images, Cultural Protocols and the Politics of Digital Storage: Restricted Storage at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.” In Devices, Dispositifs, and Moving Images. Approaches to the Film and Media Archive, edited by Giovanna Fossati and Annie van den Oever, 377–389. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025.
“The Bibliographic Diaspora of African Cinema: Paulin S. Vieyra, ‘Shared’ Film Heritage, and the Politics of Archiving,” in PUBLIC, no. 71 (special issue edited by May Chew, Susan Lord, and Janine Marchessault, 2025): 155–164.
“Moving Image Restitution in Australia: Towards an Indigenous Critique.” In Inward Outward: On Witnessing and Care in the Archive, edited by Rachel Somers Miles, Alana Osbourne, Eleni Tzialli, and Wayne Modest, 32–37. Amsterdam: Research Center for Material Culture, 2024. https://inwardoutward.nl/publication/moving-image-restitution-in-australia-towards-an-indigenous-critique/
“African Film Heritage: The Case for Restitution.” In Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past, edited by Vinzenz Hediger and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, 395–402. Lüneburg: Meson Press, 2023. https://archivism.meson.press/chapters/trajectories-of-restitution/african-film-heritage-the-case-for-restitution/
“Motor, Mirror, Reinvention: Paulin Soumanou Vieyra on the African Cinema to Come, 1956–1961.” Black Camera 13, no. 2 (2022): 372–93.
“Continual Re-enchantment: Tunde Kelani’s Village Films and the Spectres of Early African Cinema.” Frames Cinema Journal 6 (2014). https://framescinemajournal.com/article/continual-re-enchantment-tunde-kelanis-village-films-and-the-spectres-of-early-african-cinema/
Interviews & translations
Essafi, Ali, Jihan El-Tahri, Nii-Kwate Owoo, Jean-Marie Téno, and Nikolaus Perneczky. “Footage Lost and Found: A Roundtable on Africa’s Displaced and Silenced Film Heritage.” Sources: Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies, special issue edited by Anita Afonu, Jennifer Blaylock, and Dan Hodgkinson, forthcoming.
Fossati, Giovanna, Nikolaus Perneczky, and Cecilia Valenti. “A View from the North: On Global Audiovisual Archiving, Shared Heritage and Archival Cooperation.” In Restitution and the Moving Image, edited by Nikolaus Perneczky and Cecilia Valenti. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (in production).
Aventurin, Annabelle. “Restoration, Restitution and Potential History in the Archive of Med Hondo: A Conversation with Abdoul War.” Translated by Nikolaus Perneczky. In Restitution and the Moving Image. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (in production).
German-language academic publications
Foerster, Lukas, Nikolaus Perneczky, Fabian Tietke, and Cecilia Valenti. “Drittes Kino und Weltkino” (Third Cinema and World Cinema). In Handbuch Filmwissenschaft (Handbook of film studies), edited by Britta Hartman, Ursula von Keitz, Markus Kuhn, Thomas Schick, and Michael Wedel. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, forthcoming.
Foerster, Lukas, Thomas Morsch, and Nikolaus Perneczky, eds. Before Quality: Zur Ästhetik der Fernsehserie vor HBO, Netflix und Co (Serial television aesthetics before Quality TV). Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2019. Includes chapter “Live Anthology Drama: Frühes Fernsehen und frühe Fernsehkritik” (Live anthology drama: Early television and early TV theory), 105–124.
Eschkötter, Daniel, Lukas Foerster, Nikolaus Perneczky, Simon Rothöhler, and Joachim Schätz. Amerikanische Komödie: Kino, Fernsehen, Web (American comedy: Film, television and new media). Berlin: Kadmos, 2016. Includes chapter “Backstage Comedy: Zur gewöhnlichen Reflexivität der amerikanischen Unterhaltungsindustrie” (Backstage comedies and vernacular reflexivity in the US cultural industry), 17–53.
“’How to Fucking Live’: Deadwood als Sittenwestern” (Deadwood, TV westerns, and ethical life). In Genre und Serie, edited by Thomas Morsch, 219–236. Munich: Fink, 2015.
Foerster, Lukas, Nikolaus Perneczky, Fabian Tietke, and Cecilia Valenti, eds. Spuren eines Dritten Kinos: Zu Ästhetik, Politik und Ökonomie des World Cinema (Third Cinema remains: aesthetics, politics, economy). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013.
“Pasolinis Afrika oder Die Krise des eurozentrischen Laufbilds, ca. 1968” (Pasolini’s Africa or the crisis of the Eurocentric moving image). Zeitgeschichte-online (2010), https://zeitgeschichte-online.de/themen/pasolinis-afrika-oder-die-krise-des-eurozentrischen-laufbildes-ca-1968.
In preparation
Against Development. Early African Cinema as Worldmaking. Research monograph, under contract with Oxford University Press.