Donda Retrieved: Inquiry Into a Disappearance (Book Review)

A film can survive its disappearance. Preserved in a collection, it continues to occupy physical space while its place in cultural memory contracts to an illegible point. This peculiar interval, where existence persists without recognition, gives Stefano Miraglia’s Donda Retrieved: Inquiry Into a Disappearance its intellectual urgency. The inquiry began in 2019 with a print of Ellis Donda’s Engel und Puppe held by the Collectif Jeune Cinéma in Paris, a surviving work whose author had become difficult to locate. With Cecilia Ermini’s assistance, Miraglia found the filmmaker and began reconstructing the dispersed circumstances of his practice. Published in 2026, following Donda’s death in November 2023, the resulting volume makes recovery itself available for critical examination. What emerges exceeds the satisfaction of returning a neglected name to circulation. A name has to find its way through the institutions that authorize it, while an image requires someone capable of receiving…