TOWARDS A FILM MICOLOGY?: Biodeteriorated Archival Images of Havana as Incurable-Images of the Cinematic City

The proliferation of documentaries about Havana’s ruins during the Special Period has coincided with the biodeterioration of moving images filmed in Havana during the revolutionary period and collected in Cuba’s National Film Archive. Havana’s cinematic ruinology is therefore the story of a twofold material helplessness: the helplessness of a crumbling city, whose ruins appear in front of the camera, and the helplessness of the moving images of Havana’s past, which may soon vanish from the archive. Rather than equating biodeterioration with the death of cinema, the author appeals to TarekElhaik's notion of incurable-image to elaborate a concept of film micology as a semiotic engagement with the filmic mutations associated with celluloid'sbiodeterioration.The article offers a semio-micological analysis of CascosBlancos (Fernando Pérez, 1975), a biodeteriorated Cuban housing documentary from the 1970's, to highlight how the challenges posed by biodeterioration destabilize our conceptions of audiovisual heritage, collective memory, and both archival and historical images.