Collective filmmaking practice in Germany is still a blind spot in film historiography. This is all the more surprising since independent film and video workshops established a nationwide network of political media practice during the 1970s. Inspired by Brecht and Tretjakov, Negt/Kluge and Enzensberger, their aims were twofold: first, to empower political activists departing from Tretjakov’s idea of “operative” art and second, to establish film archives and distribution networks. Yet, currently the archives are facing severe problems concerning  preservation: as the video tapes slowly disintegrate, the memory of the various media practices of the last decades is fading away. As digitization is costly and time-consuming, many video productions will not survive. This has, as I will argue, consequences not only for (left-wing) historiography, but also for the visual iconography of cultural memory. My paper focusses on the archival practice of two workshops in Hamburg: the mpz (Medienpädagogikzentrum, 1973-) and bildwechsel, the feminist film archive (1979-).  International influences such as the independent workshop sector in the UK as well as questions of auteurism and canonisation will be discussed.