"Editing the absent" workshop at Electric Shadows studio

Editing the Absent: On craft, ethics, and what the camera refuses to show Date: 12 April 2026

Time: 17:30 – 20:00

Duration: 3 hours

Format: Seminar + hands-on editing Location: Electric Shadows studio - Lauriergracht 116, D2, 1016 RR Amsterdam

The workshop brought together a group of practitioners, editors, filmmakers, artists, and researchers already familiar with editing and documentary form. Rather than introducing technique, it created a space to critically examine what editing does—formally, politically, and ethically.

Participants worked on their own laptops using provided archival footage, engaging directly with the material through both discussion and practice.

At its core, the workshop asked: what happens when the medium works against your intentions? How do you edit when craft itself becomes a moral problem?

Working with Eva Braun’s home movies of Adolf Hitler, participants encountered a particularly difficult editorial condition: footage that functions persuasively on a cinematic level, yet serves a subject that resists uncritical representation. This tension became the central site of inquiry.

Across the session, the group explored the limits and responsibilities of the editor’s craft, especially when those limits cannot be comfortably resolved.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/69863f_fb5b8ee9d716416385a6de88f7d949f8/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The session developed into a focused and engaged exchange. The editing exercises revealed a wide range of strategies for resisting, interrupting, or reframing the material, while the discussions remained attentive to the ethical weight of each decision. Rather than arriving at conclusions, the workshop sustained a shared space for thinking through irresolvable questions.

Reference works

Harun Farocki, Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1989)

Rithy Panh, The Missing Picture (2013)

Jean-Luc Godard, Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–1998)

Chantal Akerman, From the East (1993), No Home Movie (2015)

About the facilitator

This workshop emerges from the practice of Smaragda Nitsopoulou, a filmmaker and visual artist working between Amsterdam and Athens. Her work engages with archival material, absence, and the construction of memory, often focusing on how images mediate experiences of life and death. Through film and installation, she examines the limits of representation and the ethical tension of looking, particularly in relation to what remains unseen or unshown. This workshop extends that inquiry into a shared, practical setting, where editing becomes a way to think through these questions collectively.