Martha Helga López Cortez
area: Film, Research
Key Facts
nationality
Spainarea
Film, Researchresidence
Madridrecommending institution
MQ Wientime period
November 2024 - December 2024Martha Helga López Cortez (La Paz, Bolivia, 1995) graduated in Cinema from Universidad Camilo José Cela, UCJC (2014-2018) and specialized in Art Direction and Production Design. In 2019 she directed her studies on Cinema towards Conservation and Restoration of film material, focusing her research on the degradation processes of film material, at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE, 2019).
Since then, she has worked as a freelance archivist for artistic projects such as La Salvaje Experiencia de Usuario, together with contemporary art curators Enrique Radigales and Pedro Soler. She has worked as head of the digital art archive of Harddiskmuseum and as an archivist and digitization technician for the National Library of Spain.
Currently, she works as a film digitization technician for Filmoteca Española.
Audiovisual preservation in Spain began late, in 1953 with the creation of the Filmoteca Española, while other European countries like France and Italy already had a consolidated ideology on the importance of preserving cinema. This delay, along with a lack of resources and knowledge, led to the significant loss of Spanish films and cultural heritage. Films on plastic have suffered degradation due to their chemical composition, and the sensitive layer is prone to damage from microorganisms and extreme climatic conditions. Martha Helga López Cortez explores audiovisual conservation from a research and philosophical perspective, raising questions about the impact of climate change, conservation decisions, and social involvement in heritage. She seeks to generate empathy towards audiovisual heritage and its cultural consequences by showing how film material degradation is affected in different climatic environments.